Reflections ~Dreams and Reality~ is an otome fantasy romance visual novel with yuri options. It features a female protagonist, Reina, who is born with a magical talent to see into the future and find cures to various magical curses, earning her the reputation of a Magic Mirror. This places a tremendous strain on her, leading her to be held captive by a noble family before escaping and taking refuge in an abandoned mansion with her loyal werecat friend Solmaris. However, it won't be long before a number of people, animal folk and shapeshifters find out about her hiding place, and they approach her to ask for help in a cure for their magical afflictions.
Plot
There are 9 romance options altogether with 20 different endings (Blanc, Cara, Leo, Peony, Ronah, Sol, Special, Thiria, Wynn). There is a published community guide to help players reach all endings and obtain all the achievements. Although I generally like the story and most of the characters, the plot is the weakest aspect of this visual novel. There are significant gaps in the story such as the bounty hunters being sent to recapture Reina, but they hardly make an appearance or get a brief mention except in a few specific character routes. Also, after entering a character's route, nearly all the other romanceable characters disappear from the story entirely with little or no interaction between them except for a few routes. This makes the story feel rushed and underdeveloped, reducing the quality of the story. Thankfully, most of the routes are very short, especially since there are only 8 save slots compared to the total number of routes and endings in the game.
Artwork
As with Reine Works's other titles, the artwork is the main highlight. Most of the CGs and new character sprites are visually appealing and bring out the light-hearted tones in the game. My only complaint is that some of the Steam achievements didn't show the character portraits, which might have raised the appeal of this game otherwise. The artbook in the DLC contains the character sprites of all the characters in the old and new versions, the CGs, and background art in the game.
Audio
The background music is a bit limited and borders on being repetitive, but they are generally pleasant and match the fantasy setting. My favourite soundtracks are Theme song, Happy, and Romance that really bring out the romance and fantasy themes in the story. The partial voice acting leaves a bit to be desired with the same lines being repeated at different parts of the story, but at least the difference between the voiced lines and the text in script are not too large.
Overall thoughts
After spending over 4 hours to reach all endings and obtain all achievements, I feel that Reflections ~Dreams and Reality~ is a decent visual novel with a number of shortcomings, but given that the good endings and CGs feel satisfying, and the developer has revised the price to be more proportional to the playing time, I can recommend this game and the deluxe goodies DLC when they are discounted to an attractive price. I also hope this game will have normal Steam profile features and can qualify for trading cards in future.
Pros | Cons |
- Good artwork and BGM | - Underdeveloped story |
- Reasonable price | - Limited profile features for Steam version |
- Nice endings | - Limited save slots and background music |
- Easy achievements | |
- Plenty of romance options | |