Blue Reflection: Second Light

This role-playing game (RPG) sequel skips the obvious titillation in favor of stronger, more complex play and is all the more better for it. When Blue Reflection: Second Light's predecessor first came out, it tried too hard to appeal to two completely different crowds. On one hand, it told a solid story of friendship, of coping with emotional trauma, and finding the strength in yourself, with the help of other, to rise above. On the other hand, it never failed to take advantage of any opportunity to showcase its female cast as overly sexualized objects. Thankfully, it looks like the developers have learned their lessons and dialed back the cheesecake factor with the sequel, Blue Reflection: Second Light. That's not to say Second Light doesn't still occasionally let a gratuitous camera angle or pose linger a little too long, but by and large, the sequel's focus is more on showcasing its characters' personalities as opposed to their measurements.

Blue Reflection: Second Light has done a lot more than simply tone down the sexuality. In an effort to gain more traction with the RPG fanbase, the game has reworked some of its core mechanics to be more inline with what that audience is more familiar with. The combat flows smoothly in a mix of real-time and turn-based actions and characters now level up based on a more traditional XP-based model. This adds a few extra levels of complexity to the difficulty over the original's more laid-back approach to character growth, but it also gets players more invested in the experience. And even though the game's story does have threads connecting it to the events of the previous game, Second Light doesn't require an extensive knowledge of what's come before in order to makes sense of the plot. Instead, Second Light is a second chance for the series to stand out to RPG fans for more of the right reasons.