Considering how enduring the magical girl genre is, one would think there would be more video games about it. While there is a brief list, most of them with any notoriety are usually based on an anime or manga property. But after you sift through the Sailor Moon, Madoka Magica, etc. games, you never really hear about original ideas. Enter Blue Reflection. This title is part of the “Beautiful Girls Festival,” an initiative by developer Gust to make games across different genres and about women. This includes a recent entry in the long-running Atelier series, as well as the Knights of Azure games. Blue Reflection is a serious take on the magical girl idea, focusing on realistic problems young people face. While it suffers from jarring fanservice and clumsy systems, Blue Reflection is an earnest story held up by excellent visuals, music and writing that anime fans should gobble up easily.

Blue Reflection is about high schooler Hinako Shirai, who doesn’t have amnesia, dead parents, non-human blood or any sort of those problems at all. She’s a hardcore ballet dancer, but an off-screen knee injury ended her budding career. Returning to school after a long break, she walks in listless and depressed. After a choice encounter with a pair of bizarre characters, she finds herself in an alternate universe of sorts and a new set of magical girl-style superpowers. She later learns the world is under threat of demons attacking humanity’s collective subconscious, and that defeating these demons once and for all can get her a reward in the form of whatever she wants. Perhaps even a repaired knee.

From there, Blue Reflection feels like a mix between a time management-style RPG (think Persona) and something more straightforward and traditional. But there is a long list of caveats that may come as a relief to some, but alienate others. The gameplay loop of Blue Reflection is split between interacting with Hinako’s friends in real life, and solving problems in the alternate world where everything looks more like a video game and demons roam freely. The former involves spending time with the supporting cast and developing personal bonds, while the latter is all about finding items for crafting and getting into combat as needed, mostly for mission objectives.

Two things about Blue Reflection may come off as confusing for RPG fans. First, while there are segments during the day in which you must choose what to do with your time, then go home to bed, time doesn’t appear to “pass” or be kept track of in any way. While it looks like a game that wants you to manage your time, you can really do whatever you want, as long as you don’t opt to advance the story. Second, getting into fights doesn’t give you experience points, and your HP/MP is restored after every fight. So at first glance, it can feel like combat doesn’t matter and there isn’t much of a coherent structure.

That said, there is stuff going on that’s worth working towards. Developing your bonds with the cast not only leads to fun little extra scenes, but you also get a series of items from each major character. These items can be attached to a character’s skills, which will modify the properties thereof. Also, completing missions, many of which have you go out and seek specific item drops or killing x number of enemies, will just sort of give you points to spend on leveling up your characters. Spending points alters overall stats, and unlocks abilities based on how your distribute those points.

It's also worth noting that while Blue Reflection is a serious, character-driven story about young women overcoming life hurdles, there is a lingering, fanservice-y underbelly to the game that succeeds only in undermining what Blue Reflection really wants to be. The camera is often lecherous at best, making many scenes tonally confused. It’s hard to take the game seriously when the camera is pointed up a high school girl’s skirt during an emotional conversation.

When that isn’t happening, Blue Reflection does have a solid, well-told story to tell (although the localization is rife with typographical errors). Hinako is an incredibly grounded protagonist considering the genre here, and seeing her evolve as a person as she makes more friends along the story is a treat. Many of the side characters are less multi-dimensional, but the two other party members are bizarre and intriguing in such a way that unraveling the mysteries of who the heck they even are is just as compelling. 

Blue Reflection fills an odd void in Japanese video games, or at least recent Japanese video games with western localizations. You just don’t ever encounter magical girl games, especially ones as serious and ambitious as Blue Reflection. It’s a little rough around the edges, being a Gust game (fans know exactly what to expect, I figure), but has enough heart and creative juices that it should totally earn a spot in the growing list of PS4-era Japanese cult classics.

Hint: Make sure to not advance the story until you’re ready, and try to remember where your friends hang out as they won’t always appear on the map.

by Lucas White