Blue Reflection: Second Light has a very peaceful side, where you enjoy living with your friends at school. Crafting items and facilities, exploring Heartscapes and getting to know each other better is a laid back experience. But the story couldn’t progress without taking on those pesky emotions that come to life in the form of Demons. Fortunately, those school uniforms come with Reflector rings the girls have on their hands. Ao and her friends can summon unique weapons to battle the demons. As there’s a lot going on in action, we felt a guide would be helpful!
The Action Line
Let’s start at the top. To use skills in battle, you need to accumulate Ether. Ether is a type of energy that exists in this strange world, also known as the power of feelings. Accumulating Ether is an automatic process on the timeline of battle. You can see by the position of your character’s icon on this Action Line ( which is in the lower right corner) how much Ether is accumulated.
Shifting Gears
Also shown is which character can use a skill. the girl you play has an A above her icon, the others ZL or ZR. You can choose to just control one girl and have the others automatically deploy their skills. Set this (on Switch) by pressing up or down on the D-pad. You can also choose to control each girl in turn switching from one to the other. This way you can make the choices as to which skills to use, as the AI isn’t always spot on. But I do feel it make for more frantic battles.
The battle system is a mix of turn-based and action fighting. When you are able to choose a skill to deploy, everything freezes until you’ve made your choice, which is very welcome to me. But you have to be the one to at least press the A button to create that skill choosing moment and as the timeline moves faster and faster, so must you.
When you activate a skill, the Ether recovery speed increases, which reduces the wait time until you can activate the skill again. When the Ether recovery speed has reached a certain level, you shift Gears. When that happens, your skill will become more powerful and your Ether limit will be raised. Plus, you might be able to use more types of skills.
So, where you started out accumulating 1,000 Ether and deploying skills accordingly, you can now accumulate 2,000 or 3,000 Ether. This really changes your chances in battle: as you have enough Ether accumulated you can even use several skills in succession. So choose a physical skill to damage your enemy and in the same turn, choose a skill to replenish your HP.
Influencing Ether by Talent Points and Fragments
The battle largely depends on how fast your character gains Ether, which in turn depends on each girl’s individual Ether Recovery Speed. You can increase this by spending Talent Points, which you get by fulfilling requests from the other girls and spending time with them. With those, you can purchase skills and status increases.
Another way to influence your Ether recovery is by equipping Fragments, obtainable by going on Dates with the other girls. Each Fragment is brought on by a special thing happening, and each has a different way of influencing the way the girl does battle. When deciding where to spend Talent Points and which Fragments to equip, using them on faster Ether Recovery Speed means you can attack more often as well as get to the bigger attacks that require more Ether quickly.
Combos and Knockdown
Once you launch skills to make the enemy lose HP, you start a combo together with the other girls in your party. Combos are all important in damaging the enemy as much as possible. If more attacks land successfully that combo will increase the damage modifier. It’s important to try to get the combo as high as possible, landing more damage.
If you manage to get your character or the other girls onto the next Gear, after hitting the enemy enough times and building up enough Ether, your attacks get more powerful. As soon as you hit third Gear your character will change into their Reflector costume and have incredibly powerful attacks.
Some enemies will unleash powerful attacks that will reset your combo. Not good of course! To counter this, you can use the Combo Reset Prevention skills before the enemies attack is launched.
Knockdown can occur after repeated attacks. If an enemy is knocked down they will be temporarily unable to move, so that’s your chance to deal massive damage. But, you or your allies can be knocked down too. If that happens all accumulated Ether is lost and Ether recovery speed decreases.
Attributes
If you press the + button during battle it will pause and display the status of the enemies and allies. You can see their attribute resistances and any support effects, status ailments or status changes that are in effect.
These attributes are important, as using attacks that the enemy is weak to will do more damage. When you choose which skills to deploy, you’ll see it mentioned next to the skill in the list. An enemy can be weak to a skill, be able to resist a skill or he is neutral, in which case nothing is added behind the skill’s name.
Support Skills
Aside from skills that aim to do damage, there are also support skills. Support skills help your team or one of your allies with a positive impact or take care of an ailment your ally has. This is a list of available Support skills:
- HP Regen: Recovers HP at regular intervals
- Ailment Immunity: makes users immune to certain status ailments
- Damage Taken Down: reduces damage taken by a certain %
- Knockdown Resist: makes you harder to knockdown
- Damage Dealt Up: increases damage dealt by a %
- Knockdown Boost: makes it easier to knock down enemies
- Shield Attribute: shield your ally or party
it’s a good idea to not just depend on healing skills to keep the fight going. Before you leave to explore a Heartscape and, inevitably, fight enemies, make sure you are prepared. Prepare enough food that replenishes health, like sandwiches and tamagoyaki. These recipes are available from early on in the game.
Aside from attackers, you can assign one girl to be a Supporter. They act on their own, without you having to do a thing. When you bring out their screen you see a ring surrounding the Supporter, which is called the Order Ring. For every support order, there’s a set number of cycles that the ring has to be filled up. The support order will activate once the ring hits the corresponding cycles. Supporters can use items too, they will be used after one loop around the Order Ring.
Starting the Battle with an Advantage
When you come into contact with an enemy, a battle will begin. You can also initiate it by swinging at an enemy by pressing Y, which gives you an advantage: it grants everyone in your party 1,000 Ether right at the start of the battle. This allows you to react immediately.
Another way to gain an advantage is to start a battle while you are in Stealth mode. At times you have to go into Stealth Mode, by pressing B, to sneak around without being seen. While in Stealth mode, hitting an unsuspecting enemy from the back with a Back Attack gives you the advantage. When successful, the enemy will be easier to Knockdown when the battle begins.
Status ailments sometimes inflict damage to the enemy over time, like poison and blind. Paralysis prevents action for a period of time. Slow significantly decreases Ether recovery speed. For Blind, there’s a chance that the attack might miss. Curse prevents HP recovery. All ailments, except for Bleed, will disappear after a set amount of time.
One on One Battles
When you manage to get an enemy you are battling in Knockdown, at times Siemens of them will create a barrier. You can break this barrier by attacking with enough force and if you manage to do so you go into a One on One Battle. During this, you engage in single combat and will deal more damage than normal, plus you can combo more easily.
There are now two gauges, the top one your own HP, the bottom one your barrier’s HP. That barrier takes the damage instead of you yourself but if either of those barriers depletes to zero the One on One Battle ends.
Enemies can also initiate a One on One Battle and when they do so, it will automatically cut its own HP in place of creating a barrier.
During One on One Battle, you can press (on Switch) A for attack, X for support, Y for counter and B for dodge. After a command is used it has a waiting time before you can use it again. This is shown by a gauge under the command.
Your combo attack will increase with a successful attack and if your combo count is above a certain number at the end of the time limit you can perform a powerful finishing move. This is indicated by a gauge to the bottom left of the combo count.
When the enemies icon reaches the centre of the timeline, its attack begins. Being hit by the enemy will lower your combo count. You can dodge attacks by using B. You can also press Y to counter but it’s finicky timing.
As you can see, there’s a lot going on in the battles in Blue Reflection: Second Light. I hope, with these pointers and tips you will have fun playing the game!
