YMMV / Blue Reflection: Second Light

• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Shiho is a mainstay for most players' teams thanks to her great combination of offensive and supportive moves combined with high Ether Recovery. Being recruited in Chapter 2 also means she isn't that far behind in term of TP, and in fact, she is usually ahead in term of level for the next few chapters.
  • For many players, Hinako's Averse Bélier may as well be her only attack. Most of her moveset is designed to be combo-centric and synergistic, gaining benefits by attacking in succession and increasing the combo so the whole team can increase damage output, and she's a Fragile Speedster with low Attack to balance this out. Averse Bélier flips this on its head by calculating damage based on Speed, given to the fastest character in the game, meaning she can quickly and reliably out-damage the other party members (and the move looks cool). Spamming Averse Bélier to win is a common criticism of the game's balance.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Not to the same extent as the first game, as the gameplay is well received this time around. But for most players, a large subset being Yuri Fans, the close interactions among the all-female cast as well as actual lesbian representation are the primary reason to play the game. While the combat is praised for its fast-paced, dynamic flow, it's not the main draw (and often gets an It's Easy, So It Sucks! reaction due to how quickly overpowered the girls get). In fact, the game itself emphasizes this, because doing all the date events takes significantly longer than dungeon exploration and combat.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Uta. She was a Base-Breaking Character in Ray for being a one-note sadomasochist, but the events of this game radically changed her defining Lack of Empathy into something more sympathetic. She became an innocent girl who wants to understand others' feelings, but has trouble doing so, and is unnerved by what she was before. This newfound relatability made her a fan favourite despite being a noncombatant and the last recruited character. She's also commonly paired with Ao due to how compassionate and understanding she is regarding her stigmatized condition and their intense Ship Tease moments.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Hiori has an ability that makes an enemy weak to one of her two main attack types and Shiho shares one of those two attack types. Put the two of them in the active party against anything that's weak (or made weak) against said attack type and they will utterly destroy everything.
  • Rena at Gear 5 gets the Maelstrom attack that guarantees a knockdown. Ostensibly, this is balanced by Gear 5 taking a long time to reach in-battle, but there are so many ways to increase the starting Gear that she can start the battle at Gear 4 and reach Gear 5 after only 1 attack. Enemies become glorified punching bags at that point.
  • Hinako's main gimmick is that she grants extra bonuses for chaining multiple attacks in succession. Rafale Gémeaux increases the combo count by 1 for every attack executed this way, which means if you wait until your characters reach a high Ether and use a bunch of 1000 Ether attacks at once, the combo will go up very fast. Courage Verseau gives a +1 buff to combo for every attack, which also benefits from 1000 Ether attack spam. The higher the combo, the more damage dealt, so Hinako's abilities will make the entire party overpower any enemy quickly.
  • Adding onto all that, Shiho's Akatsuki recovers Ether, which allows the other characters to get to their game breaking moves quicker.
  • In-fight battles have a high learning curve, but doing perfectly on them will utterly demolish bosses to the point those that invoke in-fight battles turn into a Tactical Suicide Boss. Since damage exponentially scales with combo count, repeatedly landing attacks without getting hit will rack up damage very fast, typically depleting enemy HP before the in-fight battle ends. Even on Deathwish, where bosses have more HP, you keep the combo you gained from the battle which allows your party to deal even more damage.
• LGBT Fanbase: Arguably the most talked about aspect of the game is the yuri, especially Rena and Yuki being a canon lesbian pairing.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Stealth missions in the game are considered to be a low point with their finicky enemy AI and the fact that you have to restart if the enemies merely spot you with no option to just trying to outrun them.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Battles are a bit more strategic this time around with a heavier emphasis on chaining combos and exploiting weaknesses. Player stats are also significantly smaller compared to the first game, meaning blows from enemies hit harder than before. The lack of After-Combat Recovery also puts a larger emphasis of Item Crafting. Lastly, you have to level grind the old-fashioned way instead of completing side quests, so you gotta work for those levels just that little bit harder.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: While the first entry received mixed reviews because of its clunky combat system, sluggish pacing, and repetitive structure, Second Light is considered an improvement in almost every aspect thanks to its expanded cast of fleshed-out characters, more strategic combo-based combat, improved pacing, and more varied dungeons.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: When exploring the main hub area, it can be pretty easy for people who are familiar with Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete to think that its intro song, "Wings," is starting up as both songs have near-identical lead-in notes.
• Unexpected Character: You were probably expecting to see Hinako, Yuzu and Lime make a return for this game. Hiori, Mio and Uta from the anime? Probably not.