Gust has made a bold move in recent years, pushing towards unfamiliar territory and new IPs. Azure Nights was their experiment at action RPGs while Blue Reflection is their attempt to tread new yet familiar ground. Blue Reflection is a recent addition to their lineup, and it continues their signature atmospheric music and beautiful visuals, keeping true to what fans of Gust’s beloved Ar Tonelico and Atelier series already know and love. Keeping their audience in mind while pushing a more personal tale of adolescent identity, Blue Reflection is a story that takes place in the nostalgic past: the memory, struggles, and bonds that we go through in high school. Using a familiar and conventional setting, Blue Reflection appears at first to be a rather safe take on the role-playing and magical girl genre, but a number of risks and decisions Gust employs should intrigue old and new audiences.

For those unaware of Gust games, it’s not peculiar for their stories to be intertwined with their visuals and audio. One example is Gust’s Ar Tonelico universe, where the very future, livelihood, and survival of its characters depends on the music you hear, the song the characters sing. Ar Nosurge/Ciel Nosurge, in particular, also play upon the visuals of the game medium, making the screen through which you’re watching an actual part of the story.

What some consider secondary to the story and gameplay, the music and visuals of Gust’s stories are so often intertwined with their works that to remove them would be like yanking the blue out of reflection. It’s not always explicitly obvious or stated within Gust stories, but there’s a very good reason why the music and visuals are such memorable parts of the experience for Gust fans.

Blue Reflection takes place in a seemingly innocuous setting, Hoshinomiya Girls’ High School. The main character, Hinako Shirai, is a girl whose entire identity hinges on her ability to dance. Formerly a prestigious ballerina, a leg injury leaves her unable to move as she did in the past. No longer able to express herself through dance, Hinako is stuck in the past, unable to lift her feelings of regret. After an extended absence, she returns back to high school. Everything seems to be normal until a strange light flashes upon the two empty desks beside her, revealing two girls, Lime and Yuzu.

Yuzu and Lime are Reflectors, magical girls whose power allows them to battle demons in the Common, a world created by Humanity’s collective unconsciousness and emotions. By collecting fragments of human thoughts and emotions, Reflectors can fight back against the Sephira, colossal monsters that threaten to destroy life. Before the world is destroyed, Yuzu and Lime need someone else to join them. That person is Hinako, the third Reflector.

To help convey its messages, Blue Reflection makes a deliberate attempt to convey its dialogue and cinematics through movie directing. In the film, “letterboxing,” is the transferring of film shots into a widescreen aspect ratio. This results in black bars below and above the visuals when movies become ported to videos or discs.

If Blue Reflection is neither a film nor restricted by widescreen displays, the obvious question is “why the letterbox?” The obvious answer is that it serves a simple functional purpose. The black bars exist so dialogue and text can appear, relinquishing the need to design text boxes. This concern for budget might be a partial explanation, however, there is a more fundamental reason. Letterboxes, besides being a visual indicator of the film medium, also have a thematic quality: condensing the world we see.

When we look back upon our lives and examine our past, we’re looking at the past through a focused lens, a singular, condensed perspective of what life is. At some point or another, many people reflect on their childhood, and while not all memories of high school are fond, it’s certainly a time where much of our identity is developing. This is a time before we head into the real world, a time where our worldview has not fully developed. We’re children on the verge of becoming adults, and this closed world, while only one aspect of our lives, is a small and very personal one.

Blue Reflection, without a doubt, wants to conjure up feelings of nostalgia, and by associating itself during a time where we’re still growing up, it chooses to display a highly-condensed and focused narrative about youth. While nostalgia is itself a “rose-colored lens,” Blue Reflection is more than just a story about the past. It’s a story about someone so traumatized by her loss, she can’t give up the past--she is so trapped by the nostalgia of what once was, she’s unable to live in the present or dream of a future. While nostalgia can bring feelings of intimacy, obsessing over the past can be a trap. The letterbox the visuals brings us intimately close to someone who can’t escape it. We’re trapped alongside her, and this narrow, condensed world that we see on the screen is the same world she sees.

There are only two times the game opens up from this “letterbox framing,” and that’s when either the player controls Hinako or during very specific cutscenes when her identity expands.

The magical girl genre is another deliberate decision. If Power Rangers are to boys then Magical Girls are too, well, girls. These stories commonly have themes about innocence, the bonds between family and friends, hesitations in growing up, and conquering fear through the support of your friends and understanding of your emotions. All of these themes help structure a perspective on a very complex issue: adolescent identity.

It’s no surprise that magical girls are often associated with adolescent growth and student life, and it’s this familiar combination is exactly what Blue Reflections wants to emphasize. The memories of high school share themes with the magical girl genre and by borrowing the magical girl genre, the game is given structure. The fights in the Common, the battle against demons to protect humanity’s emotions and thoughts, parallels the same demons we face in our lives. Rampant emotions break bonds, but by understanding them and resolving them, the protagonist’s powers and her sense of self-become stronger. To change the outside world, one must first reflect on themselves.

Music is unquestionably one of Gust’s strongest points and Blue Reflection is no exception in the ever-growing library of Gust compositions. The composer and sound director of Blue Reflection is Hayato Asano. While he has worked on music before, his memorable work being on Atelier Shallie and Nights of Azure, this is his first time where he’s been given full creative direction for a Gust title--a very bold decision given that Blue Reflection is a new IP. However, this boldness is where Blue Reflection best shines. The risks shown in the art direction is mirrored here in the music.

If sound had wheels, then Hayato is the vehicle that drives the music forward. His ability to hone in on to the themes of Blue Reflection make for some of the most memorable soundtracks I’ve heard in any game, and coming from a company that has defined itself by its music, Hayato has more than proven himself as one of the industry’s best composers. I can think of no higher praise than to say Blue Reflection could not be improved by any other composer.

In Blue Reflection there are 3 areas where the music is explicitly different. These areas are the high school, the Common, and the boss fights against the colossal Sephira. In defining these areas distinctly, one begins to see the ingenuity in the sound direction.

Right from the title screen, we’re presented with a brief look into Hayato’s creative mind. A melody reminiscent of a graduation song is played, its voice characterized by a piano solo that echoes as if played in an auditorium. This piano keeps building itself, moving until it comes into contact with daily life. The sound of trains moving across train tracks and the ringing of the closing gates set the listener on a destination.

Continually building its presence, the piano gains momentum, it moves alongside the train until we’re close to people, their voices create an atmosphere, their voices adding a new layer of sound. The piano steps back from the melody. It plays chords to support the introduction of an unfamiliar sound. Without being jarring, synthesized music is eased into the song by the piano gently nudging it forward. Its introduction akin to a new student in the class, scared at first, but part of the nostalgia of school life. The sounds of the chalkboard being erased chime in, and we’re finally at our destination: high school.

Whereas synthesized music was less prominent before, in the Common, a world where the Reflectors fight against demons for humanity’s thoughts and emotions, explodes into fray. Electronic music quickly defines the Common’s battle music. The instrumentals, the clear piano, and violins are given willpower. It synergizes into a symphony against a present threat, a discord of sparse but strong bassline of dubstep. The battle music presents itself as hopeful, the battle favoring our protagonists, however...

Blue Reflection’s gameplay can roughly be divided into 12 chapters with in-between subchapters. As the player progresses through the story, the protagonist interacts and helps the supporting characters come to terms with their emotions, doing so helps her recognize the same emotions within herself. Chapters are usually divided between daily life as a student and fighting as a Reflector.

The main aspect of daily life is structured around a mission system. Whenever you begin a new chapter, a plethora of missions will pop up and these are put into 5 categories:

Vital missions are the most integral missions in the game. At the beginning, there are two vital missions. The first is “Let’s Aim for X Rating Points” and the second is “Let’s Deepen Our Bonds.” The former that lets you progress through a chapter and hitting certain milestones will give you growth points to invest in your attack, defense, support, or “technic.” The latter is the game’s way of incentivizing players to bond with 1 of the 12 supporting girls. Choosing to interact with these characters either prompts visual indicator of their affection, which you can raise by spending the day with them, or a cutscene. Either result will gift the player 1 bond point, 5 of which will grant you a growth point to invest in your stats.

It’s important to mention that level ups are limited and points you invest in your stats will give you different abilities. Luckily, the game displays the requirements needed to get certain skills, so players are able to plan ahead on how they build their characters. Raising the affection of the supporting cast also gifts the player with skill equipment. Attaching this equipment modifies the properties of the attack or support skills ranging from damage output to status-affliction. Carefully modifying your skills will enable multiple strategies to unfold in battle.

The battle system is an interesting mix of real-time and turn-based combat that’s governed by a timeline. Player characters are represented by moving portraits on the left while enemies on the right. Turn order is indicated by whichever character or enemy reaches the center first. When a character turn arises their options are as follows:

As the game progress, you will unlock options while waiting for your turn as well, all of which sacrifice the ether gauge for different effects:

In general, the battle mechanics are well thought out. Decisions governed by the Ether Gauge will generally be the path towards victory, but spending too much time charging it will open you up to attacks. Utilizing attacks that delay enemy turns are powerful, but can only be done twice on an enemy before they are ineffective--the next opportunity arising only after they’ve finally taken their turn. Some skills are placed upon the timeline and have a delayed reaction, allowing players to plan ahead, while others are effective immediately. Overall, the battle system is free-form enough for players to experience a conceptually fun race to dominate the timeline.

Although so much of the visuals in this game help supplement the experience, there are some very unfortunate issues in the gameplay. While the battle system is innovative, the plethora of equipment you can attach to skills allows for a lot of battle strategies, the difficult setting of this game is extremely easy and enemy variety low, which is a huge shame given how free-form player strategies can be.

The daily life missions are also a bit of a hassle. While it’s praiseworthy to use a new leveling mechanic, especially since it synergizes with the idea of how Reflectors build strength from their bonds and emotions ties, it’s a little unfortunate that so many missions become a chore instead of an experience.

Scenes where voice acting takes place and camera angles are purposefully shot end up being the highlights of Blue Reflection’s story while the best battles are almost always the boss battles, the very rare time that players are challenged. Despite the flaws in gameplay, I think most of it is forgivable. The emotional journey ends up being a rather enriching one, and just as Blue Reflection took risks that failed in gameplay, it also took risks that certainly paid off in its story.

I think that whether players can enjoy this game hinges on how much they’re willing to accept Blue Reflection’s risks and flaws. Giving the entire OST to a new composer, structuring visuals through movie directing, creating a unique leveling system, and an open-ended battle system all have their merits, especially when the game seems to have budget constraints. While battles and missions are repetitive, I feel that a second addition to the series could reduce financial constraints while building upon an already amazing foundation. Hopefully, this won’t be the last of Blue Reflection. I truly wish to see more.

I really enjoyed writing this article, and although I wish I could say more, I think I’ll leave it open for future discussion. Feel free to comment below if you enjoyed the game or article. I’d love to hear your thoughts!