Quick Look: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE

@khrae_:That's how it's pronounced if you're talking about the type of sword, in this case though, Falchion is the name of the sword, so I don't think they're pronounced the same. Interestingly enough, Falchion isn't even a falchion, which is a type of single-edged curved sword. Romanized from katakana, it is "fa ru shi o n" so it's closer to "fall-shee-on".

@milehigh17: It would be better if there was an offical patch or people didn't need to go to grey areas to play the game as it was.

looks fun

Yay!!! I've been waiting for this! :plur

I'm actually very curious to know what the Fire Emblem universe reason for them being here is. Especially since it might explain why there are only characters from Shadow Dragon and Awakening.

KOWASHITAI~!

This game is so lovely and my jam and I think it might end up be my game of the year. Of course, I'm still early in it.

However you want to enjoy this game *wink,wink*nudge,nudge*, please make sure you do! I think this game is something really special in these cloudy times.

And though! I know! The world of real emotion has surrounded me!

Huh. I should probably get into this video game, right?

Thanks once again, Austin. This is an appropriate send-off moment.

wowza, this game went from something I knew nothing about to something I am absolutely going to play. I love this kind of rpg and i rarely see ones that excite me like that.

I finished the Japanese version a while ago, it is kind of hilarious seeing the stuff they chose to censor in the West, I'm glad I won't be playing the western version of Persona 5 if this is going to happen to that game too.

"Uta" means "song" in English, so it makes sense....in Japanese?

@deepcovergecko: P5 isn't a Nintendo project so it doesn't seem likely it would get a similar treatment to me at least - Atlus seems pretty faithful with that stuff.

@dannyhibiki: Yeah - there's actually a shareware Vocaloid software called UTAU for that reason as well.

Glad the localization kept that Laputa line in there. Also, yeah, the dude who said that line is not a good guy and is kind of a jerk!

You would think one of the things that would be first on the chopping block when it comes to translation would be Japanese memes, but nope, still there. :D

Some deep Googling reveals that "Look! The people are like garbage," comes from the anime Castle In The Sky. It's a line spoken by the character Colonel Muska, voiced by Mark Hamill.

So Onlooking Boyfriend's claim is accurate; he could still be an ass, though.

Anyone else remember that game announced as Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem, that was co-developed by Intelligent Systems, with that trailer that showed off all the mainline SMT protagonists as well as Fire Emblem characters? I wonder what ever happened to that game...

But hey, Persona, amirite?

I'm 6 hours in and am loving this game! It's got styyyyylllllllle!

Been playing it a bunch, and figured out how to do the whole patch thing. Worth it for those purists out there, but even if you don't, yo it's pretty much Persona and I am okay with that.

I have been waiting for this. Really been wondering what the bubbling hype has been about. Can't watch it all now, but so happy it's here.

When I heard Austin was leaving, I had given up on the site doing anything for this - so happy they got around to it.

This looks like ahneemay.

Bought. I hadn't been following this really because I was thinking it would have a lot more Fire Emblem or be a crossover type game. It looks like they just let Atlus do their thing and I vastly prefer Atlus style RPGs to nintendo style.

I just don't get the platform choice. Its like they asked the question "Which system are fans of our games least likely to own...perfect will make a game for that!"

Like, what in the world is a Persona game doing on the Wii U..a system with like 1 other rpg on it, which itself shouldn't be on the WII U in the first place!

As a fan of such games, it saddens me, and my wallet. I'm not gonna drop 400 dollars for just two games and a soon to be obsolete system.

Here's hoping this gets ported at some point to some other platform (and the xenoblade follow up (I think) does too). Heck, here's hoping Atlus gets with the program and starts releasing stuff on steam like the vast majority of other japanese rpg companies have begun to do. PS5 on my PC would be lovely. (because I could max my stats in the first playthough woho cheat engine) .

This looks good, Thaustin!!

Glad that Austin got to do this with you guys before he left.

Why did I think this game was Summer Leson.

There's a visual indicator that also gives you this information so it's not that much of a loss - in the session list that pops up while you're selecting the enemy if there's a red emote on one of the attacks it means that the attack will either be reflected or drained. If there's a yellow emote then that usually means that you don't have all the info on that enemy and that it's unclear whether the attack will connect or not (if the attack connects the session goes on as normal but if it drains/reflects that ends the session).

Based on what I've read it seems that the biggest issue with the untraslated battle voices is that boss fights actually have interesting dialogue. As I don't speak Japanese I can't confirm but I wouldn't be surprised since there seems to be a lot of talking when fighting certain bosses.

That's probably my biggest gripe with the game though. Other than that it's pretty fantastic - getting ad libs and dual arts in battles feels so great even though they only pop up randomly.

I was already interested in this game anyway, but man, this looks really, really good. The Persona games always had styyyyle and this one is the most stylish yet. Possibly GOTY contender?

@paulunga: No doubt a best styyyyyyle contender for sure!

This... this seems like my jam.

@bladededge: I'm hoping for an NX port.

@johnymyko: You mean like how Persona is a cheap Shin Megami Tensei rip off?

Just for Wii U?! Boo boo, Boo-urns

I have about 40 hours in this game so far. The only real gripe about this game is the way the skills unlock on the characters. You get the skills through leveling up weapons.

I didn't realize until several hours that each character has specific spells they specialize in (determined by the game). When I started I thought, "Okay, I need a character that can do each spell type because the enemies have specific resists". Which is fine, but the game already determines based off the characters weapons what spell types they will be good at throughout the game. Tsubasa seems to be wind/spears/healing. Touma is fire/spears/buffs. Itsuki is swords and lightning?

I had a character I was trying to specialize in fire spells but it turned out that wasn't their real specialty that the game wanted them to be. The character that I WAS supposed to be putting fire spells on now has pretty much no fire spells because I was trying to put them on that other character. The character that I was putting the fire spells hasn't had any new fire related stuff for the last 20 hours and I have probably already dropped the things they were supposed to specialize in.

If there is a way to get old spells back I'd love to know!

I didn't realize you could swap to their street clothes for combat. That's cool. I haven't been a big fan of their transformation outfits, so it's nice that is an option.

...It's a Fire Emblem crossover. It's kinda the only choice, unless you think it should have been on the 3DS instead. It's never going to end up on any console besides a Nintendo console. If they made Persona 5 a Wii U exclusive game that would certainly baffle me, but when you set out to make a game that uses characters and imagery directly taken from a Nintendo owned franchise it's not exactly a surprise where it will end up and where it won't.

@zeik: Glad someone said it.

I'd say Nintendo's strongest thing nowadays is how they do hold their cards tight to their chest. They are working with mobile companies now sure but it means that their exclusives are just that. Exclusive. They won't end up on PC somewhere down the line.

@voodoopc: A few chapters in you are able to Reforge weapons which basically is a means to either relearn skills you've gotten rid of or power up ones you like.

Your hour count makes me think this option has been made available already but if not soon?

@voodoopc: Wait wait. You're 40 hours in, what chapter are you at? I forget what chapter it was, pretty sure it was 3 but there's a point at which the game straight up tells you that you can recreate old weapons except with a slight attack boost to relearn their skills (plus an additional skill after the old ones). This lets you either buff the skills you already know or learn a skill that you skipped over.

You can then customise what the characters specialise in to a certain degree. This might be considered spoilerish since it's later on but they took the master seals from Fire Emblem to allow you to advance to one of two classes (if you're familiar with Fire Emblem the choices will be obvious for most of the cast). For example Itsuki can choose between an advanced class that focuses on offense or another that gives him more support and healing abilities.

The character that will have access to most (maybe all?) spell types is Kiria so if you want an offensive spellcaster it'll have to be her. Tsubasa has access to a few different spells but she's mainly a healer. Her magic stat will most likely be much lower than Kiria's at all points in the game since she has a balanced strength/magic growth (skewing towards magic). Similarly Itsuki has a balanced strength/magic growth but skews towards strength. If this last part seemed like gibberish then you haven't played enough Fire Emblem =P

@chicken008: Persona is a spin-off of Shin Megami Tensei, though.

I know this game is from Atlus as well, but it has no "style".

That's just a ridiculous thing to say. I personally like Persona's style far more, but to say this game does not have any style is crazy.

@judgementx@efesell I do have that unlocked (the +1 weapons). The way it was worded made it sound like it would continue to level up those weapons and give new abilities. I didn't know you were able to get back old abilities you gave up from it.

In my mind it was like forcing a Pokemon to not evolve. You can keep using it and it will unlock new things you wouldn't get otherwise, but it's never going to relearn the skills you already gave up.

Thanks for the information. This weekend I guess I will spend some time crafting those weapons and getting the abilities I wanted back.

Yeah it's a bit misleading because if you have a maxed weapon it shows a new skill that you will give the first time you completely re-level it. You just kinda have to ASSUME the others are included since its a reforge.

This looks freakin' great, I'm sad I don't have a WiiU; I doubt I would get a WiiU this late into its life cycle. Maybe if NX is backwards compatible...

The non-subtitled battle chatter is a annoying though.

Hmm I could have sworn that the game specifically mentioned reforging weapons to learn any skills you didn't get or strengthen skills you already have but maybe I'm misremembering. Either way only some of the new skills on the old weapons interested me so I didn't really make much use of this feature - I find that a number of support/healing skills (outside of your main healers/buffers) are pointless to equip since you get sooooo much money that you can just stock up on items that do the same thing and not waste precious slots.

@judgementxd: Well it also makes that weapon stronger and there is value is relearning some skills to power them up. Session Skills perhaps.

o7

What's all the fuss about the censorship of this game? There doesn't seem to be anything you die on a hill for.

And it looks like this isn't the best Shin Megami Tensei but a good fan service jrpg.

This looks pretty cool.

as much as I enjoy the design of this game...... that's not where the heart is located... sigh, shakes my head at japan.

So with Austin gone. Does that mean all of the dumb anime stuff goes along with him?

It's a pretty rad SMT with not all that much Fire Emblem so I don't actually know that it's particularly great at being a fanservice game.

The censorship is almost all anime titty related it's kinda dumb. They're kinda inconsistent about it, as this thumbnail might show.