Wiccan Yule Celebration: The Wiccan Yule celebration is an important event in the Wiccan calendar. It is also known as the winter solstice and marks the shortest day and longest night of the year. As with other Wiccan festivals, Yule is celebrated with rituals and ceremonies that honor the changing of the seasons and the cycle of life. During this festival, Wiccans gather together to give thanks for the returning light and the promise of spring. They celebrate the rebirth of the sun and the gradual lengthening of days. It is a time of joy and hope as the darkness gives way to light.
Progression
Minimal Voice Acting There s battle voices, incidental menu voices, and one scene in each relationship story is voiced, but in Blue Archive s main story only a handful of very pivotal dialogue lines have voice acting. As the results were calculated right at the moment you tap on the Fight button, even if you crash or close the game midway, the outcome of that battle remains unchanged.
It is a time of joy and hope as the darkness gives way to light. Yule is often associated with various symbols and traditions. The use of evergreen trees, wreaths, and holly is common during this time of year.
Things I Like: Blue Archive
Blue Archive is a mobile gacha RPG created by Nexon Games, formerly NAT Games, a Korean development studio active since 2013. The studio's past projects were largely free-to-play PC games using the Unreal Engine which amassed little in the way of popularity; one such game, Overhit , had the distinction of having its global servers shuttered only six months after they first opened.
Director Kim Yong-ha and writer Isakusan's most notable past credits were on Qurare: Magic Library together, a card battler developed by Smilegate that made only slightly greater waves. Tapping this studio and these staff to develop a gacha game for the Japanese market was a quirky choice.
Nexon itself is a name notorious overseas for bungling the global releases of a bunch of free MMORPGs like MapleStory and Dungeon Fighter Online, but nonetheless rising to be one of the largest players in the space over the course of its decades of misrule. Despite the involvement of the slightly more reputable Yostar Games as the Japanese publisher, this was a game with the opposite of a promising pedigree.
But sometimes, miracles happen.
Blue Archive takes place in the city of Kivotos, a megapolis made up of the union of thousands of schools and governed (in name) by a student council. In reality, most of the schools unilaterally oversee and police those areas of the city which they deem their "territory"; sometimes, they go to war to expand it, and sometimes schools cease to be, crushed or absorbed by their rivals. It's not very humane, but the folk of Kivotos aren't human in the first place. The city is exclusively inhabited by anthropomorphic cats and dogs, robots, and most notably, angels.
No one ever calls them that, though.
They're usually called just "students", are exclusively female, and are all of high school (or unstated) age; students apparently graduate and leave Kivotos after this, but what exactly this entails is a mystery. They're angels because they all have halos. These halos confer protection upon them from all but the most severe and continuous injuries. Gunshots and grenades merely sting. It takes sustained fire or a blast from a heavy cannon, bomb or missile to knock a student out.
Because of this, all students in Kivotos carry a gun with them at all times as a sort of fashion accessory, and rarely hesitate to use it.
You enter Kivotos in the role of "Sensei", who is apparently the academy city's one and only teacher. Students describe you as "looking just like them," and often observe that unlike them, you can be hurt or killed by bullets and other injuries. But this doesn't stop you. The student council president has gone missing, and it's your role as the representative of Schale—an independent organization with authority over the schools—to solve problems at those schools and mediate between them when necessary.
There are six predominant schools—Abydos, Gehenna, Hyakkiyako, Millennium, Shanhaijing, and Trinity—and most of the main story chapters involve you visiting one of the schools, getting to know some of the students there and helping them with seemingly minor issues which, naturally, prove to be far more than that.
What's Good
The Main Story : Isakusan has said that his greatest priority when writing Blue Archive is keeping it as entertaining as possible, and it shows. BA's story scenes are consistently amusing, with a mostly slapstick and absurd and occasionally raunchy bent. (The sexual humor is far less common than you'd expect from looking at some of the character designs, but it's there; take warning if you're bothered.)
But that doesn't mean Blue Archive never takes itself seriously.
The game favors the approach of introducing a character or group of characters, having you get to know them in lighthearted scenes, then hitting them with an existential threat. By this time, you care about them, keeping you on the edge of your seat as you read about their struggle to prevail against all odds. How will they make it through okay? Will they make it through okay? The answers are always riveting. And though the humor makes itself scarce during these more grim moments, it's always lurking just out of sight, ready to surprise you with impeccable timing when a little levity is called for.
What Blue Archive excels at above all else is its understanding of its own characters, and its commitment to making them into complex people with subtle depths. People who were at first sympathetic sometimes do things that are aggravating, yet eminently human and understandable when you discover their reasons. Villains who seemed incomprehensible and irredeemable slowly reveal their motives, and somehow turn that around into making you feel for them. I don't want to risk spoiling BA's story for anyone by being more specific, but even if the humor doesn't always land for you, there's real substance to be found amidst it.
In my opinion, Blue Archive has the best main story of any gacha game out there, and I doubt that opinion will change. (I've flipped back and forth between bestowing that honor upon BA and Heaven Burns Red , but I now firmly hold that BA has the superior characters and setting.)
Speaking of which—Kivotos is a fascinating place. It mixes its predominant inspiration of Jewish esotericism with a variety of mythologies, and even a little Lovecraft, into a delightful brew of mysteries that the game has hardly even broken the surface of. And yet the consistently excellent writing keeps it from ever feeling like the story is being enigmatic to a fault. Appreciators of worldbuilding will find a lot to like here, and I think the setting is a large part of what elevates Blue Archive to the high regard I hold it in.
Finally, it deserves mention that Blue Archive's English translation is (at least when it comes to the main story) excellent, and among the best of any gacha game's. As its lead localization editor D. Scott Tijerina tragically passed away from illness in October of 2022, it remains to be seen whether this will stay the case, but I'm hoping it will maintain its high standards.
The Music : Blue Archive has fantastic music, as long as you're a fan of its genre. Most of it falls under the label "future bass" or more specifically kawaii future bass , and it's frenetic, happy, and silly. But when happenings are more somber, the game can pull out some pretty emotional tracks too.
I don't have much to write about this—the best way to experience music is to listen to it, after all. But it's good stuff.
What's Okay
Gameplay : You could describe Blue Archive as an autobattler, and you wouldn't be wrong: form a suitable team, hit the button unsurprisingly labeled "AUTO", and the game itself will beat most stages for you. But it has hidden depth.
On account of some other suspiciously similar game systems, my belief is that Blue Archive's gameplay was heavily inspired by Princess Connect Re:Dive (which itself ripped off an older competitor, Valkyrie Connect , and I wouldn't be surprised if that game was cloned from something too.) But BA made a change which, accidentally or deliberately, introduced complexity to that mind-numbingly basic formula. It added a second dimension and made your characters actually move around on the maps, advancing to confront the enemy and taking cover to avoid return fire.
This makes the gameplay engaging , but not necessarily good. You have no control over your characters other than deciding when and where to use their special "EX skills." After taking down every enemy in sight, they'll always pause for several seconds before moving to find the next group of foes, a major annoyance when most stages penalize you for not clearing them in 120 seconds or less. You're nominally the commander of your team, directing them in battle with your orders, but high-level gameplay tends to hinge on simply getting your characters to be where you want them to be with the handful of EX skills that force them to move.
But by the standards of mobile gacha games? This is complex, sophisticated gameplay. Only titles in the vein of Arknights and FGO allow your skills as a player to more greatly affect the outcome of battle. (The merits of actually playing Blue Archive are enhanced by the auto mode being dumb as rocks; it just cycles through using all available EX skills in order, with no strategy. This is often good enough to win, but not always.)
This may look familiar if you've ever played Princess Connect Re:Dive.On top of that, team building in BA is unusually intricate, with a multitude of the elemental advantage systems common to gacha RPGs (damage type, armor type, terrain preference, and occasionally firearm class) creating a game in which even the most powerful characters aren't optimal everywhere —though there are exceptions, mostly when it comes to support characters. This keeps the gameplay somewhat novel, as you'll be bringing different teams to whichever piece of content is current. And if you're a theorycrafter, you'll have a good time digging into each new challenge.
Other Stories : Blue Archive's writing outside the main story is mixed in quality. Some of the event stories are surprisingly poignant, but there's as many that are just comedy and a few that are awful even at that (most egregiously the original Red Winter event, which was to be fair one of the first events in the game.) It deserves mention that with the exception of the Decagrammaton events, BA makes it pretty clear that its event stories are intended to be purely lighthearted and humorous—a break from the sometimes somber main story. This likewise makes it clear that the events aren't the way they are due to a failure on anyone's part. Mostly.
Some groups of characters have "side stories" together that are also purely humorous for the most part. Though I'd say, oddly, they're higher quality than the average event and the best of the game's side content; perhaps brevity lends soul to their wit.
Then there's the relationship stories you can read after you acquire each playable character and raise your bond with them sufficiently. Like the events, these range from alright (with a couple of outliers that are genuinely good) to awful, but are far more tilted towards the low end. Your avatar, Sensei, is a responsible and capable adult in most of BA's stories, but in relationship stories they're often blatantly male-coded and thirsty for whatever girl is the focus of the current one.
Beyond that. the relationship stories are just too short to be particularly great in the first place; the ones that are above average build upon the characterization which the girls got in the main and event stories.
In the global version most of these visibly suffered in localization quality compared to the main story, which, if sacrifices had to be made, was the right call.
Yuri : Blue Archive isn't the cornucopia of subtext that Assault Lily is, nor does it have the explicit queerness of Heaven Burns Red , but it has some cute arguably-gay girls. I say 'arguably-gay' because I know that somewhere out there people have questioned the nature of those relationships, not because I consider doing so valid. I will fight anyone who dares to claim in my presence that Hifumi and Azusa are "just friends" or that the Abydos students and the Squad aren't polycules.
It's also pretty common for the girls to have one-sided crushes on other girls (though not as common as them being implied to have those on Sensei, especially in the relationship stories.) Overall, while it's not the focus of the story, I think BA will satisfy any fan of sapphic romance who, like me, doesn't give a shit about whether it goes beyond subtext.
The global version of the game does a fairly good job treating Sensei in a gender-neutral manner, so you can also think of your Sensei as a lady. That said, some official media (like the Problem Solver spinoff manga), most fanart and most people just depict them as male, so get used to that.
What's Bad
Gender : I feel like I should write something about this purely out of fairness, since I did for Assault Lily, but there's really nothing to say except that Blue Archive doesn't acknowledge gender whatsoever within the game itself. Some antagonists are male-coded, but other than that, it's all girls and nobody ever comments on it.
I shouldn't criticize games that are solely about girls and have never pretended to be otherwise for that fact, but I'm a bit salty that every gacha game with a mixed-gender cast that I used to play drove me away from it for entirely unrelated reasons. Feel free to be skeptical.
Also Assault Lily has male characters in the anime and the wider setting, the gacha could've too. Not that I should be writing about it in this blog post.
Minimal Voice Acting : There's battle voices, incidental menu voices, and one scene in each relationship story is voiced, but in Blue Archive's main story only a handful of very pivotal dialogue lines have voice acting. This is a real shame, since the voice cast is terrific. It's something to look forward to in the upcoming anime, at least.
Some Characters : BA launched with a lot of playable characters, many of who didn't have a role in the main story but had relationship stories and the mediocrity that most of those embody. New main story chapters and events have given some of these characters more depth over time, but there are still conspicuous exceptions, like Sumire, the girl who's obsessed with staying fit. and that's all. (She's not obnoxious, just painfully one-dimensional.)
Hopefully all of these girls will have their starring moments in due time, but in the meanwhile, they stick out like sore thumbs among all the Blue Archive characters who are genuinely excellent.
I'll always have a soft spot for Assault Lily: Last Bullet , and Heaven Burns Red has no equal when it comes to gameplay and presentation, but I can say without a doubt in my mind that Blue Archive is my favorite mobile game and won't easily be replaced.
Everyone knows about gacha hell, right? Well, this is gacha heaven.
But don't take my word for it.
After all, can we prove anyone has ever reached paradise?
In the global version most of these visibly suffered in localization quality compared to the main story, which, if sacrifices had to be made, was the right call.
These symbols represent the life force that continues to flourish even during the bleak winter months. Candles are also an important part of Yule celebrations, symbolizing the light that guides and protects. In addition to these symbols, Wiccans incorporate rituals and spells into their Yule celebrations. They may perform a candle lighting ceremony, where each candle represents a specific intention or goal for the coming year. They may also perform divination rituals to gain insight into the future and to connect with their spiritual guides. Feasting is another important aspect of the Yule celebration. Wiccans gather together to share a lavish meal, often with traditional foods such as roasted meats, root vegetables, and warm spiced beverages. This feast represents abundance and the nourishment provided by the earth. Overall, the Wiccan Yule celebration is a time of joy, hope, and renewal. It is a time to honor the changing seasons and the cycles of life. Through rituals, symbols, and feasting, Wiccans come together to celebrate the returning light and to embrace the promise of a new year filled with possibility and growth..
Reviews for "Finding Joy and Gratitude during Yule: A Wiccan Perspective"
1. John - 1 star
I was quite disappointed with the Wiccan Yule Celebration. I expected it to be a joyful and enlightening experience, but it turned out to be quite dull and uninteresting. The organizers lacked proper planning and organization. The event felt disorganized and chaotic, with no clear schedule or structure. The activities were unengaging, and there was a lack of guidance or direction. Overall, I felt like my time and money were wasted, and I wouldn't recommend this celebration to others.
2. Emily - 2 stars
The Wiccan Yule Celebration left much to be desired. While the idea behind the event was intriguing, the execution fell short. The venue was cramped and didn't offer the ambiance that one would expect from such a gathering. The workshops and rituals were poorly organized and lacked depth. It felt like the organizers were simply going through the motions without putting much thought or effort into creating a meaningful experience. The overall atmosphere was lackluster, and I left feeling underwhelmed and unsatisfied.
3. Mike - 2 stars
Attending the Wiccan Yule Celebration was a letdown for me. The location was not inviting, and it didn't create the spiritual atmosphere I was hoping for. The workshops were uninteresting and poorly presented, making it difficult to stay engaged. The event lacked cohesion and structure, leaving attendees confused about what was happening and when. Furthermore, the food and refreshments provided were subpar, and the lack of dietary options was disappointing. Overall, the Wiccan Yule Celebration failed to live up to my expectations, and I regretted attending.