Thank you Koei Tecmo for sending us this game to review!

Blue Reflection takes place in an all-girls high school in Japan. The main character, Hinako Shirai, was an up and coming ballet performer until a knee injury dashed her hopes and dreams. She’s now back in school and quickly befriends an unusual set of sisters named Yuzu and Lime. Many of the students let their emotions run rampant and the sisters calm them down by dealing with the emotional demons inside of them. Yuzu and Lime promise to heal Hinako’s knee in exchange for her help in saving the world.

As a reflector, Hinako can move freely in the alternate world and misses the mobility in the real one. She makes many new friends and can go on various outings with classmates to build up friendships with them. Once friendships have been made, your classmates can offer support abilities in boss battles. There are twelve chapters in this game and most of them end with an epic battle.

As if saving the world wasn’t enough stress, Hinako must also deal with various school projects and studying for tests. At the end of a long day of calming rampant emotions in the students, Hinako must decide on how to unwind at the end of the night. She can bathe, stretch, plan her lunch, look at her smart phone, or study. The choices vary and some of them like stretching and studying bring up cutscenes for the next day and will increase attributes for her reflector persona.

In the alternate world, there are plenty of orbs to collect and enemies to defeat. Some of the missions require you to collect a certain number or orbs or defeat a set number of a certain enemy type. You can leave the dungeon at any time, finished or not. You cannot save inside the alternate world so make sure you allocate enough time to do what you came in there to do. Story events will trigger a battle and you will be taken out of the dungeon automatically. Sometimes I didn’t go to the proper place to trigger the event which resulted in some aimless wandering.

The alternate dimension also has some crafting pillars where you can create various power-ups with items found in the dungeons and dropped from defeated enemies. Many quests require you to deliver certain goods that you have crafted. Until you have a reference item in your possession, you won’t be able to craft a replica.

The missions are not very exciting, but they do help in leveling up your character. As you earn growth points you can increase the stats for your party to boost their attack, defense, speed, luck, and magic points. These all come to play in the turn based battle system.
Each character has unique fighting styles and weapons ranging from a sword, to wands, and a gigantic fighting teddy bear. The girls are so frilly and magical in their reflector mode. There is a lot of eye candy both on and off the battlefield.

For a game that features all girls, it sure seems like it was written by an all-male team. There are so many bath, shower and changing room scenes that have the girls only wearing their undergarments or less. Thankfully, the important bits are obscured, but enough is shown to stimulate the imagination of many players out there. There are many rainy days that will show off the female character's bras as their white school uniform shirts become damp and transparent.

Many of the conversations among the school girls revolve around love and romance. Some of the characters have boyfriends they gush about while others are clearly attracted to the same sex. As a female, I’ve never had my friends come up and hug me in the middle of a shower or ask to swap underwear with me mid-day. Seriously, who wrote this stuff?

Some of the outing events were funny despite many typical tropes. I think the only character missing was an amnesiac. One of the girls eats too much, another is an extremely gifted musician, a couple of them are overly into (different) sports, and the savant genius provides some good laughs when you take her places. Many Steam achievements can be earned by fully developing your relationships with these girls and unlocking their story sequences. There is also some swimwear DLC available if you’re into that.

The locations for the outings vary and some of them take place at a shrine which talks about praying to different gods. There is also talk of reincarnation. Along with some typos, there are some instances of cussing.

Overall, I found this game more odd than enjoyable. Granted, I’m obviously not the target gender or audience, but some of the dialog seriously weirded me out. The gameplay is fun and it took me less than twenty hours to beat the game though I did not max out all of the relationships. I have no desire to go back for a more thorough playthrough. I think I’ve seen enough. If you’re into fan service and strange Japanese fetishes, then you may enjoy Blue Reflection more than I did.