Long time ago, I had a discussion with community, ‘If one day, you get ONE ticket to a game world, you are granted to travel there and live there forever, but you won’t be able to come back, which game will you choose to go?’ The answers were vary. To me, the answer is: the world of Blue a Reflection, there isn’t another.

As a long time fan of Blue Reflection, I am not going to praise 2nd Light sky high like I did to the first game, instead, I want to use this review to help the franchise at very least has the possibilities to improve even further for the future titles, since the 2nd game is different from the first one, we have the opportunity to see a larger scale of the world setting of the game; a bigger cast than the first one too. Before I get myself started, I’d like to state: 2nd Light has changed many things comparing to the first game, and improved A LOT regarding to combat system, general gameplay. There isn’t any doubt that Gust put tons of ideas and thought into making 2nd Light a better game, and did a great job to deliver the final product to meet fans’ expectations.

This is where we begin to see the true potential of 2nd Light, though the game seems lacks of the depth of the developments of these ideas. Starting with combat strategy & bosses fights.

I love every single character in the game, the art, costumes, personalities, interacted conversations, everyone is different and unique. And that’s exactly why I felt like the combat needs more work in order to let everyone standing in the front equally. What does this mean? Alright, I will give specific examples here. We have 6 reflectors instead of 3 in 2nd Light who can participate in battle, while having one support slot to choose one more reflector who will be supporting members in battle instead of fighting directly, only switching in if the tide of the combat changes. 3 place for 3 reflectors, huh? Classic. However, Ao’s combat efficiency is somehow bond with Kokoro, because her ability is doing high critical damage when enemies are under debuff status ailments and Kokoro has tons of abilities that inflecting negative ailments while doing damage. Which made them a duo, either one of them alone in battle isn’t going to achieve the max potential and efficiency they’re capable of, despite you can still do that as you like. Meanwhile Ao chan is the protagonist of the game, and the ONLY character in 2nd Light who has Combo Guard which is a skill that prevent combo reset from bosses’ special attacks. Which means, Ao is a must in boss fight, because long combo count= high damage, especially for higher difficulties. So logically, Kokoro would tag along, then only leaves one last placeholder for a reflector, in the other word, 1 out of 4 to choose. The problem here is, Shiho chan is so OP in the game, she’s like the Goddess of War, who can do massive damage alone while providing healing and curing status ailment which made her almost pointless to be replaced by others. Other 3 reflectors either is healing focus character(Rena chan) or damage types( Hinako & Hiori chan) who will rely on consumable items to heal or equip healing amour fragment for healing on boss fights which again, doesn’t seems necessary while Shiho chan gets both problem solved solely.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying Shiho can’t be OP, she is a formidable reflector in battle and very heartwarming character in the story. She is my favorite girl and I love her from the bottom of my heart. I’m not complaining the difficulty is low on my first play-through either, I know Gust can easily make a game very difficult if they wanted to. What I am talking about here is: the variety of situations of boss fights 2nd Light lacks of WITHOUT increasing the difficulty. You know, even you can oneshot enemies, there are still many ways about how you oneshot them. The combination of Shiho, Ao and Kokoro(SAK) had done 95% of the situation in battle which got me rarely using the other reflectors in general. Because during the long game progress, I have more than enough opportunities to test which combination is the most effective against foes, SAK was the star-champion all the time.

Now, let’s imagine a different situation the game doesn’t have, what if there is an elite demon/ boss who has a massive chunk of health, it start attacking your party with low damage, the longer you battle it, its attack becomes more and more devastating, eventually, if you couldn’t kill it in time, it will oneshot your teammate that you won’t be able to revive them in time. Well obviously, my SAK is all-in offensive type, and will be no good in a situation like this, this is Rena chan comes to play. Rena has very high defense value and healing ability, by equipping all kinds of defensive fragments and the fragment that taunt enemies to attack her, she will be a sentinel role which likely would be crucial to a fight like this. If we had these type of enemies, Rena will no longer be sitting on the supporting seat only, doing healing and curing status ailments most of the times. Isn’t this a better respect for her after all?

Boss’s 2nd phase?
Though there is a boss that you need to beat it several times during the story, but instead of beating it over and over with the same team members, why not separate 6 reflectors who participate in battle into 2 teams, using the support girls who doesn’t join in battle directly as a support per fight? The idea may not be original, but I found it’s actually suit 2nd Light the best, since everyone levels up equally whether they join the battle or not, and there are more than enough fragments to equip, making every reflector in a ready-to-fight statement. If there are bossses kinda forcing you to form 2 different teams to fight at the same time, I dunno, in a different phase or stage maybe, and everyone gets chance to participate in battle, while putting gamers’ understanding of each reflector’s strength and weakness to test, isn’t it one stone with two birds?
For example, Hinako chan may not have combo guard to stop bosses from breaking the combo chain, but her special ability adds combo count instantly and support other teammates to gain temporary ability to do so. Couldn’t she be the leading role of the 2nd team seems to me? She seems fine to fight a boss with 2 other reflectors along, while team one -Ao is busy with the other boss?

I haven’t studied deeply enough about how Hiori can do her maximize efficiency in battle on my first finished walkthrough, definitely gonna research more about her on my returning 2nd run. Still, it will be much appreciated if we ever get another awesome BF game some time, there are situations she’s a must in combat just like I listed above for others rather than players are desperately creating an opportunity to use her because we love everything about her dearly too.
Last thing in this section, I’d advise one thing, the support slot is a great idea, though using purely support girls might be a even better way for reasons (a)every character is making contributions to the fight by doing so, not just in cutscene stories, it means a lot to the world of BF; (b)because of the existence of support fragments, I found there isn’t any point to switch a character in the middle of the fights, rather than fully prepared 3 set reflectors from the start. Reflector who has equip half of her fragment slots with support fragments won’t be that helpful and efficient in battle comparing the status she’s powered by fully equipped battle fragments, it’s better just let the support role being a full supporter all the time helps a lot which is a waste to let a battle participator doing so, don’t you think?

Deja vu of Ryza ?
Ao chan is a likable character, there’s nothing wrong about being a tomboy, there isn’t any problem to use a tomboy as protagonist in the game. But don’t you feel like Blue Reflection 2nd Light is a bit too Deja vu of Ryza? Please see the comments below to finish

Before I write about my own ‘view’ of this game, I’d like to state something very important to you all about this ‘Legacy of Thieves Collection’ first.
As the title describes, the game is a collection, there’re two different ‘projects’ under the same title in the game with different directors directing the stories. One’s called ‘ A Thief’s End’ which is an adventure of seeking legendary pirate’s treasure with Nathan Drake being the protagonist in the story. The other one is called’ The Lost Legacy’ which is based on Indian mythology, the protagonist in this journey is Chole Frazer. Despite ‘the Two’ have some certain casts appearing in both campaigns, the two protagonists: Nathan and Chole will never bump into each other because it’s not the same story with a different time. Moreover, the gameplay also differs, A Thief’s End is a linear campaign with 60% focusing on gunplay, hand-to hand combat, 40% with exploration the environment such as climbing, puzzle solving, item collecting, etc. The Lost Legacy is a mixture of open world and linear(point to point) adventure that giving you a chance to spend more time on exploring the world they’ve crafted with side missions, complex puzzles, collectibles etc. The gunplay and battles in the other hand, are less heavier, less often.

OK, now we’re clear about the different concepts of the campaigns, let’s talk about them with my own insights. I am being completely honest to say, when I did A Thief’s End, I wasn’t planning writing a review for it at all simply I wasn’t impressed. Why? Despite the game delivers stunning visuals, cinematic cut-scenes, they’re triple A standard, no question here. However, A Thief’s End, had a very disappointing story right from the start, ‘Seeking a pirate treasure’(I don’t go to the point beyond this, spoilers free review). Believe me, as a 30+ years old full-grown man, I’ve at least heard & watched & played more than couples of similar stuffs from radio programs to films and video games, though the details could be different, the idea itself isn’t original. It will be quite hard to impress me by this idea I’ve known pretty too well. I had my gut feeling at the start and it failed as I guessed. What’s worse? Compare to Chole Frazer, Nathan was pretty boring to me ( sorry boys) for the most of time. If this wasn’t enough, in his story, certain characters’ certain decisions and actions they’ve done, I found it’s difficult to acknowledge. Can’t go with the detail, in short, the story was a big letdown. The gameplay is linear, it wasn’t the problem bothering me, the real problem is: the game’s very repetitive aside from sightseeing, all you do is reaching to a place, found a clue, fighting some enemies in a frequent bases. Once short objective was reached, repeating the process in a different place. I’d only recommend this game (if it were A Thief’s End alone), to players who enjoying sightseeing(a beast rig is a must to achieve this goal), gun-fighting, cinematic visuals. Unfortunately, this is not my definition of a magnificent game should be. In quite the opposite, they can simply design a pixel graphic game with some original creative ideas with a well-written story that could easily win my recommendation, none triple A standard were required. On the contrary, all these eyes candies were bring together with a dull story is like talking to a beautiful woman with a boring soul, I don’t think she will keep my attention on her for long, so it was the same with Nathan’s adventure.

The ultimate fact that alternatively changed my mind to write a recommendation for Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is Chole Frazier’s story alone: The Lost Legacy. I must say, girls have done an excellent job this time than boys had. 1st, as I mentioned a little above, her campaign is based on Indian mythology with directors’ own visions of creativity. The idea itself is very original, I’ve never heard nor seen a sophisticate story of this in the first place. I’ve searched my memories, in Tomb Raider III, Lara Croft went to Indian jungle, but aside from some fights and minimum sightseeing, nothing deep down to the mythology or Indian culture itself, nothing in comparison. In TR Underworld, Lara went to Thailand, despite sharing some similar landscapes like South-East Asia mountains, jungles, Buddha(Shiva)statues, again, barely scratched anything under the surface of Buddhism or Indian mythology. The Lost Legacy however, have done it terrifically, not only with the excellent storytelling, but also the amazing landscape to travel around. 2nd, compare to Nathan Drake, Chole Frazer is a much more interesting protagonist to play with, I enjoyed her British accent which woke some good memories of my old days, with a sense of her dark humor, characteristic personality, she was nothing short of fun to tag along. Just as she said,’ no one is perfect’, the good and bad thing she had done, made her ‘a real person’ who walked into my heart in her own way. She reminds me of Catherine Zeta Jones’ performance in the film: Entrapment, though the subjects were not the same. When a game somehow managed to establish a link connecting my real life events, I would no longer treat it as if it were someone else’s story, it undoubtedly got my full attention now. 3rd, gameplay-wise speaking, unlike A Thief’s End, The Lost Legacy approached players by a different path: by encouraging players to explore the world with some clever design’s help, the game came together as a whole new world to adventure. For example, by completing some certain side missions which will reward you ‘an easy way’ to find all the missable treasures scattering across the land. While in ATE, all 100+ treasures have no hints, it’s impossible to find them all on your first run unless you have a guide at hand. E.g. Reducing repetitive combat which weren’t much creative room there to work with. Instead, focusing on well-crafted puzzles that take some serious time to study with then solve. These examples showed the development team does seem to take some time experimenting if they were players, what would be fun to do in the game? (When you design some hidden treasures in the game, you don’t want players eventually couldn’t find them, do you?) Little by little, this was what makes the difference in the end. 4th, I could even say, A Lost Legacy has done better than any piece of new Tomb Raider Trilogy had done. It’s a quite difficult compliment to earn. Especially comes from someone who have played TR first, not the other way around due to Sony’s delusion of what exclusives could have brought to them.

But one thing A Thief’s End did better than The Lost Legacy is: it has few crashing issues for the entire long game and none of them are game-breaking. TLL in the other hand, have some serious issues I have to mention here as a fare warning. It crashes to desktop so often, literally in the 2nd half of the game, every water scenarios, it would crash for unknown reason. Some of them are close to game- breaking because they did happen in the same spots multiple times in a row which almost stuck me from progressing the story. This is a red flag no kidding. I have a high-end PC, 4K unlimited FPS with Render Scale set to 180%, I have no idea what kind of advanced setting inside could have caused this, likely, the problem is not on my end. Look, I am not saying crash issues definitely will happen to you too, but just in case, there’s a potential risk here if you ended up purchasing this game right now. Just keep this in mind. Well, it doesn’t affect my purchase decision by now since I have already completed the game, but it will do for my future orders from Sony: e.g I won’t buy The Last of Us Part.1 in advance knowing full well from the same studio, I could experience the same issue which ultimately could break my game if I were not so lucky next time. I surely have no desire to take the risk.