J-Pop, Demons, and Fire Emblem? (Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE In Review)

     So a while ago, I wrote a little bit about Persona 5 Strikers, and in that post, I said that I wasn't much of an RPG fan, but it was my way into the genre, like a gateway game, if you will. Since then, I've beaten Persona 5 (the original game, not Royal, the "ultimate version," if you will), which took quite a while, and then after that, I rented maybe one of the weirdest games I've ever played, called Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. This game is so bizarre that it's honestly hard to figure out the basic inspiration of the game. It is a crossover between Atlus's Shin Megami Tensei (which I will be abbreviating as SMT from now on) series and Nintendo's Fire Emblem series, and though this seems like it wouldn't work at all, it really does! The influence of Persona games is evident, which is good, because I've not played any SMT games, but from what I understand, Persona is a spin off of SMT, so it makes sense. I feel like people slept on this game when it first came out on the Wii U, though that's partially because the Wii U didn't sell well. I just played the Switch port, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore so today I'll be covering this J-Pop fueled RPG gem full of charm and Japanese culture.

Saving the World is All in a Day's Work for a Pop Star!

    As I said before, this game pushes the weird factor to 11, and it does that almost right off the bat. Several years before the game takes place overall, there was a performance of an opera when suddenly everyone at the performance except for one little girl vanishes in a burst of darkness. That girl is Tsubasa Oribe, the little sister of one of the performers who disappears in the event. Five years pass, and we meet our protagonist, Itsuki Aoi, a friend of Tsubasa's who came to support his friend as she auditions for a new J-Pop group. Unfortunately for the two of them, the host of this contest is possessed by an evil spirit called a Mirage, who kidnaps Tsubasa. In this world, Mirages are essentially the same thing as Personas from the Persona series, but based on the characters from Fire Emblem. Long story short, this gets things kicked off, and Itsuki has to charge into the unknown to save Tsubasa from the evil spirit, and ends up getting a Mirage of his own, a friendly Lord, Chrom (which you may recognize from Fire Emblem: Awakening), who helps Itsuki free Tsubasa and get her a Mirage of her own, Lady Caeda (who was one of the characters in one of the earliest Fire Emblem games). With the help of their new Mirage allies, the two of them, along with fellow Mirage Master, Touma, take down the threat and escape the Idolasphere. From here, Miss Maiko, head of Fortuna Entertainment recruits Tsubasa, and Itsuki, even though he's not really involved in the entertainment industry. It turns out that Fortuna is a front for a group of people who work with Mirages for the betterment of Japan, while also working as a functioning entertainment company. Throughout the game, you meet the different members of Fortuna, which show all of the diverse aspects of the entertainment game. The aforementioned Touma wants to be a Power Ranger, Kiria is a Pop Idol, Mamori is the child star of a microwave-based cooking show who wants to break into a singing career, and Ellie is a TV/Film actress who wants nothing more than to get her big break in Hollywood. While this isn't your whole team, it does a good job of showing how different the interests of your party are. As you go through the plot of this game (which I won't give away much of just in case you're curious about it), you learn more and more about all these characters and help them to achieve their goals, which really help you as you progress. 

Doing work has never been this much fun!

    These little side stories where you help feeds back into the gameplay loop of battles, as helping achieve different goals and aspirations in their careers unlock different attacks and abilities based on what they've done. This was legitimately my favorite part of the entire game, as I was always excited to see what new abilities my party members could learn because of what I helped them to do. I think my favorite example of this came towards the very beginning of the game, when Kiria needed help preparing for a concert, so I helped her with defeating a certain amount of enemies and collecting a certain "Performa" for her. In this game, Performa is the manifestation of talent from entertainers, which is also the main desire of the evil Mirages, hence why they attack in popular places like concerts. Once she got the right Performa, she and her Mirage, Tharja, had a conversation showing them bonding as Tharja cheered her on for her concert. Her concert then proceeded and then she thanked Itsuki for helping her, and she got the ability "The Labyrinth" which was the name of the song that she sang for her concert. The ability had a chance to activate whenever Kiria used an ice spell, and it made it a more powerful and more useful ability than the normal ice spell, as it would hit all of the enemies instead of just one, in addition to giving a nice little animation. This aspect of the game was super cool, and it made me really interested in improving the characters' careers, as it also made me feel a lot closer to all the characters, which in turn, led to my greater enjoyment of the game as a whole. It was a nice stand-in for Persona's confidant system, even though the relationships aren't as deep, and there's no romantic element in this game, even though there is a lot of hinting from the narrative.

    The combat in this game is a lot of fun, in a large part because of the "Session" element. This game built in a group attack, and instead of weaknesses just letting a character attack again here like in Persona 5, everyone in your team has a chance to jump in and attack, even if they aren't one of the three party members that you're allowed to have in the battle at once. This was another huge plus for me, even though it made turns overstay their welcome with 15-hit combos from time to time. It was so nice to see the health melt away like ice cubes in the sun, in addition to getting more and more crafting materials as the sessions would continue on. On top of this, it was a nice change even while a lot of the spells in this game came from Persona. Even though the enemies were all completely different than the ones in that sister game, they were still pretty creepy in their own ways. I also loved the stores and various references to Persona scattered all throughout this game, but I especially loved that Hee Ho Mart customers were dressed like Jack Frost and Dark Frost, plus just the fact that it was called "Hee Ho" after Jack Frost's catch phrase in those games.

    I would say if you're a fan of JRPGs, I would definitely check out Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore for Switch. It's certainly not short, but it isn't nearly as long as Persona 5. This game took me about 40-50 hours to beat, which is about half of the time it took for me to beat the other title. Since this was a shorter game, I didn't get as attached to these characters as I did with the Phantom Thieves, but I still loved all of the different interactions with each other. From the adorable antics of Tiki and Mamori to the cool and sophisticated Kiria trying to hide her love of cute things, there are a lot of lovable characters in this game, as well as a lot of charm overall. One thing that I will say is that if you're not a fan of J-Pop music, you may not be a huge fan, as there's a lot of it in this game, but I'm personally not a big fan of it myself, but the songs are all really well done, especially one near the end which was amazing and I'm not going to spoil. It would have been nice to have English voiceover in this game, but the Japanese that's given does a great job of getting the emotion across of the words that you're reading in the subtitles. The voice cast does a really great job, especially since they had to sing as their characters (unless they hired others to do the singing). The amazing thing about this game is that even though it is a crossover game between Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem, it absolutely stands on its own and has its own identity, even though it takes place where many Atlus games do, in Japan. There's something so lovable about this game that I'm really glad that it received the port treatment from the Wii U, and I've gone one game deeper down the rabbit hole of loving Atlus's games.

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends, I really appreciate your support and I hope you're all doing well! This game was just so strange that I felt like I really needed to let people know about it, especially since I know very few people who have actually heard of this game, and fewer still who have played it. I've been your Self-Proclaimed Mirage Master, and I'll talk to you again next week!