BLUE REFLECTION Quartet

感觉来了坨大的噶韭菜，依旧被当傻呗，是真爱，差评给暗耻

和原版差别也太大了，去看了一下原版，原版穿着内衣有运镜的换衣服，而我这里全程只有定格的一个头

Even though I absolutely loved Blue Reflection: Tie/Second Light, this compilation is not something I can recommend to most people. I haven't played the original BR and Second Light, so this will mostly be my opinions and reviews of the games themselves and not just the updates and censorship. [h3]BLUE REFLECTION[/h3] The first in the series is an awful game. I liked the theme and visuals as well as the music, but apart from that it is terrible and executed poorly. The story tries to be deep and emotional, but the writing is incredibly boring and shallow. I kind of liked the main trio, but everyone else is very bland and pretty much loses their temper over a small inconvenience. There is also little incentive to battle since you level up through quests and character interactions, so it is better to just run away from most enemies. When you do battle, however, it is braindead easy and often involves spamming the same abilities. I think the lack of budget is very evident. The gameplay loop just consists of searching the school for students losing their minds, entering their hearts, and defeating a certain number of monsters or collecting a certain number of items. I also disliked the lack of variety since there are only four main dungeons to explore, and many of the enemies are the same but recolored. There are also only four story bosses that you have to fight 3-4 times at the end of a chapter. Overall, this is one of the most boring JRPGs I have played. I know some people really like this for the theme and aesthetics, but by the end, I couldn't help but think of it as "Snooze Reflection" in my head. Considering the praise for this series and being a huge Atelier fan, I was incredibly disappointed. I don't think the censorship and cut DLCs are a huge deal, but considering how much I disliked this one, it might have at least elevated my enjoyment a little bit. [h3]BLUE REFLECTION: RAY[/h3] Ray in this collection aims to be a summary of the anime, titled under the same name. Unfortunately, it is simply a walking simulator that poorly introduces the characters and consists of collecting fragments that attempt to tell what happened with a few shots from the anime. I'm glad I decided to watch the anime and stick through it 'till the end because the fragments in this game are very disjointed and told out of context, making it not enough to understand. According to my save file, this only took me 1:36:11 to complete. Apart from the game, the anime is also abysmal and was even poorly received to the point that its Blu-ray Disc release was cancelled. There are a few moments and characters I liked (Shirakaba Miyako and Yamada Niina, in particular), but the plot itself is very slow, barebones and forgettable. I liked the watercolour-like art style, but even the animation was evidently poor and floaty from start to end. I think the characters, however, were a little more interesting than those in the first game, and since a few of the important characters appear in Second Light, I think I was able to appreciate them a little more later. Despite that, the anime is a slog, and the long 24-episode count made it even harder to endure. [h3]BLUE REFLECTION: SUN[/h3] Like Ray, Sun is very short and attempts to adapt the poorly received mobile game that ended service after a little over a year. This one took me 3:27:18 to complete, but unlike Ray, it has a bit of combat gameplay by reusing Second Light's mechanics. I can't say much since I haven't played the mobile game, but I thought this one was good enough, albeit still not great. The world being covered in Ash and the existence of Eroded, individuals who have transformed due to Ash exposure, kind of took me by surprise and after playing Second Light, I appreciated the fact that I could see what this world was like. Considering the poor reception for the mobile game, I think it was good that this adaptation was not long and allowed me to jump to Second Light soon after watching Ray, rather than having to trudge through Sun for long. [h3]BLUE REFLECTION: Second Light[/h3] Second Light/Tie is an amazing game and turned out to be one of the best games I played in 2026. Surprisingly, it fixed a lot of the issues I had with the first game and kept me hooked. I really loved the cast, especially the main character, Ao, who I found to be very cute and relatable. The characters had traumatic pasts that were interesting, and I had a blast interacting with their character stories, which are filled with wholesome moments and humour. I was surprised to also see one of the antagonists from Ray return, and I felt that the game did a great job with her redemption and making her likable, as I detested her in the anime. I think that those who wanted yuri moments will love this game, as plenty of the character stories lean into it. There is even a yuri ship that sails in the main story, with the rest of the characters openly acknowledging it. One thing I did not like, however, is the localization because it clearly makes some unnecessary changes, like turning "chunnibyou" into "goth" and trying to make the students college students, even though they are obviously high schoolers and have no mention of college in the Japanese voice-over. The combat, while similar to Atelier Ryza, is engaging and is a vast improvement over the first title. I thought it was very cool to see characters transform mid-combat, and I loved the One-on-One system that allowed me to counter attacks and perform flashy finishers on bosses. A con I have with this, though, is that, like the first game, the combat becomes incredibly easy by the end, to the point that I could leave most fights on auto. Moving on from the combat, I enjoyed the variety in Second Light as there were many distinct environments, called Heartscapes, that I could explore, each with a different set of enemies. The new crafting system, unlocking closed areas with tools, and interactable traversal points like climbing, made exploration more enjoyable for me as they reminded me of Atelier games. Even the craftable facilities for more character stories and combat buffs reminded me of Atelier Meruru's facility constructions. I also loved the character animations and expressions, and it was very fun to look at them. All in all, Second Light solved many of the problems that I had with the first game and delivered an engaging story and gameplay that kept me invested throughout. As a whole, BLUE REFLECTION Quartet consists of more misses than hits, which makes it very difficult for me to recommend. Second Light is the saving grace of this package for me, but if possible, I would just recommend that most people jump straight to that and buy it from its separate Steam page, as Quartet omits most of its DLCs and Second Light's story can be understood without prior knowledge. Another thing to note is that the performance is not great, especially on the Steam Deck, since it struggles to maintain 30 FPS even on the lowest settings with unbearably poor visual quality. If you are someone who does not care about the censorship and gutted DLCs, I think this is an okay package, especially since the original games do not go on sale anymore.