Blue Archive

Steam Reviews

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• Recommended Posted July 22, 2025 on Steam Would love a point shop to buy wallpapers, stickers and emojis on Steam. Other than that I'm happy to see the game made it to a bigger screen, now I can watch Arona giving me the 🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟦🟦🟦🟦🟨 treatment in 4k. Thanks Nexon.
• Recommended Posted July 4, 2025 on Steam Runs fast, looks great, boots up faster than it does on mobile, lets you continue your previous progress from mobile and no emulators needed. Been a long time coming. Welcome, Blue Archive! Quick review: - Story is really good. As with everything, the start is a little slow. Picks up a bit after. It doesn't extend plot points too much. Arcs are generally resolved in their own stories (E.g. Game Dev Club story is separate from Abydos story, etc) aside from the overarching story stages. Main story tends to have a much more serious tone whereas events generally have the more silly/goofy stories. If you aren't too interested, the story skip button summarizes the story for you. *The story stages and actual mission/combat stages are separate, letting you focus on either story or just levelling up. - Music is a banger. All catchy tunes, the really sad ones do hit hard on the depressing scenes (which there is surprisingly more than expected for such a bright game). Infamous Aris BGM included (it's not even her BGM to begin with lol). - Gameplay is good. Squad of 4 with 2 supports. Use their special skills when you have enough points, otherwise they play themselves (autobattle exists). The real tactical part is when you start doing raids. Team comp, skill order, timings, etc matter and even unpopular units can get meta for specific raids. PvP exists but not necessary, mainly being a source of free gems once in awhile. *There is a sweep function to skip stages that have been cleared already. - Characters are all fantastic (slight bias for me based on my two steam profile showcases lol). I believe all characters have a special CG during their bond stories. Levelling them up is typical gacha. Levels, skill levels,and equipment levels are the meat and bones. Weapon level once you max out a character. Maxing out a character is fairly easy. Many game modes included that I didn't mention since it's not the main gameplay. There's generally a character for everyone! (Totally not biased btw but Kazusa and Kikyou are the best). - On premium currency, it's good. There's enough to guarantee if you save up. Many events and giveaways too that leads to free tickets or currency. Raids are easy sources of premium currency and can be done quickly. Just be smart with premium currency and don't blow it onevery banner because admittedly not every character is good. I've been playing for awhile and pretty much was able to get resources to max out multiple characters so it's completely possible to be f2p and be strong. Possible cons is the amount of menus in the game to do dailies (really bad/slow on mobile). Much quicker on PC, but still quite a lot of menus. The game is free so it doesn't hurt to just try it out. Likely to edit and add more to this review later on! Review is based on mobile experience.
• Recommended Posted July 5, 2025 on Steam Finally a PC version. Decent port. Loads fast. Runs fast. Kazusa stepped on my balls. Dreamt of days like this.
• Recommended Posted July 23, 2025 on Steam Launch game ✅Cafe ✅Sweep ✅Assault (sometimes) Close game Best gacha ever
• Recommended Posted July 5, 2025 on Steam The only game where I can say I collect children and not get investigated by the FBI.
• Recommended Posted July 13, 2025 on Steam Having played Blue Archive since it launched globally in 2021, I feel compelled to make a case for it now that it's come to Steam. The tldr is that I would recommend Blue Archive to anyone who has any fondness for bishoujo, anime-style, gacha games, that the story is in many places exemplary and genuinely heartfelt, and that the gameplay can be quite fun, though it often brushes up against its limitations in some higher difficulty content. First let's talk about the "stigma" (bit of a heavy word, but allow me the hyperbole) that, if you're a little familiar with Blue Archive already, may be holding you back from giving this a try. This is, in fact, a horny game for perverts. The girls have bunnysuit and swimsuit alternates, most of the students have a crush on and flirt with the "sensei" player character (scandalous, I know), and some of the stuff that the character Hanako says would get her put on lists. Many of the characters are also tailored to appeal to lolicons. Not my thing, but I don't judge on whatever animated girls do it for you. However, I can also say that, despite whatever exaggeration you may see from both detractors and attempted "gatekeepers," the content in this game is fairly tame if you've played basically any other game with this same type of appeal. Nikke is more face-forward (or ass-forward) in its titillation, Azur Lane has been doing stuff at least this provocative for years, and, hell, even FGO has had bond lines that are more suggestive than anything that happens or is said here. If you are even a little turned off by sexuality or ecchi content in your gaming, than you should stay away. You'll find no pastures to graze here. But if you used to games like those mentioned above, nothing in Blue Archive should be beyond the pale for you. Now, onto the story and the writing, which I think is Blue Archive's strongest aspect. I pre-registered for the game mostly sight unseen. I had seen Asuna and Karin in the bunnysuits but honestly I think that might've been it. I mostly just wanted to get on the ground floor of a gacha and had no idea how long I'd stick with it. Then I got to reading. I've seen the game described as having "vibes based" world-building and that feels appropriate. So many things (what the hell the halos are, what the hell these girls actually are, the nature of Kivotos as a world) have barely been elaborated on years into the story. Sometimes it gets a little messy (see the latest story chapters of Volume I) but for the most part it works by focusing more on character and theme rather than "lore." Volumes I and II, especially in their early chapters, are very solid with very charming girls, but Volume III is where I fell in love. You'll hear the name "Eden Treaty" passed along by Blue Archive fans like it's cinema and that's no exaggeration. A winding, wide-ranging story of love, hate, trust, betrayal, conspiracy, war, hope, and despair. An incredible cast from the lovable misfits of the Make-Up Work Club to the equal parts tacticool and tragic Arius Squad. Hanako, who I mentioned above, reveals herself as an incredibly multifaceted person who is so much more when she drops her mask. Honestly, Volume III is a high water mark that Blue Archive probably hasn't quite gotten to again, but it's an excellent example of what the world of Kivotos are capable of when they are firing on all cylinders. Not to suggest that anything that's come since has been bad or even mediocre. Volume F in particular serves as an excellent "final chapter" to the first wave of the story. I feel absolutely no shame to intimate that Blue Archive's story has moved me on many occasions, even to the point of tears. There's wonderful stuff here. Now, for the actual game. How does the thing play? It's pretty fun, but also basic. You command a squad of up to four on-field "striker" units and two off-field "special" units, but frankly you don't do a whole lot. They attack, take cover, move, and use basic skills on predetermined patterns based on what weapon type they are, and the only real input you have is when to expend cost and use students EX Skills to buff, debuff, or do damage. For standard content of clearing missions and story chapters the loop is pretty fun but not very in depth. For me, it's really all I'm looking for in what used to be a phone game, but for others wanting something more ap intensive you may find it lacking. For the real meaty gameplay, you'll be looking into the Raids of Total Assault and Grand Assault. These are Score Attack modes where you're looking to defeat powerful bosses as fast as you can to get better rewards. The earlier, older raids like Binah are pretty simple damage checks where you're just trying to max out damage by any means, but the fights that were introduced later, like Goz, Gregorius, and Kurokage, are very mechanically involved and are where Blue Archive starts to come up against the limitations of its simple gameplay. To clear these raids in an efficient manner you often need to be very careful in unit positioning and skill activation which requires you to manipulate your EX Skills in such a detailed way that you need to have watched YouTube guides to clear effectively. This many years into the game, I cannot be assed to dive all the way in like I used to. The crit malding and rng fishing isn't for me anymore, but I cobble along what I can to get by and get my gems. I haven't even touched on the music, but I'm sure you've encountered it somewhere in the wild. It's fantastic kawaii future bass and every time there's a new story chapter or event the composers who contract out for Nexon come up with a new banger you'll have stuck in your head for days. I felt compelled to write all this out on account of the other reviews here, both the stupid "uoooooh" ones which sell the experience short and the more thoughtful ones that are honest testaments to what makes Blue Archive compelling. At its core, this is a game about doing what good you can for others. It's about a world that is confusing and cruel to the kids who are going to inherit it, and still fighting for that world and those kids in spite of that. The ecchi stuff is all there, and I'm not gonna pretend like I'm above all that. I've RTd plenty of fanart to prove it. But that's not all Blue Archive is, and to just highlight that element is to do it a disservice. Two thumbs up.