Quick Look: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE

Yeah, if your willing to compare pics, the parts Nintendo wanted removed like bikinis and alts to a costume are kinda silly since it wasn't off putting enough to do it. Also like the thumbnail shows and many other character designs they didn't really do enough. I say the angry is all from built up frustration of all the censoring Nintendo been doing to their license games.

Still this game is pretty damn good. Atlus top quality game.

It's a crossover with a Nintendo property. The other JRPG I assume you're talking about is Xenoblade in which case Monolith Soft is owned by Nintendo. These both make perfect sense.

The censorship is bad. They are super inconsistent with it and most of the stuff they censored doesn't make sense after they aged up the characters. There's a boss with weird, horrible looking fog over its chest, then the fog isn't there a few scenes later, then it's back. Tsubasa's dumb outfit to replace a bikini and its 4kids level of dumb. I really hate the term "hill to die on". It basically says that anyone with critisism is making a big fuss over nothing and that just shuts down any criticism. I honestly don't mind Tsubasa's FEEL outfit change or taking out the panty shots, but the rest are super lazy or bad. Also them taking away the hot springs DLC is pretty garbage.

Actually really like the costumes they made to replace the swimsuits though. More interesting than a bikini at the least, and something I'd actually use.

Ghost Walker, Ghost Talker.

Since this showed up on Coming up on Giant Bomb, I kept thinking it was going to be a Tokyo Xtreme Racer Quick Look. One can dream...

This looks great, but I'd have to buy a Wii-U

Hmmm...

In terms of fan service I meant it's super Japanese but apparently not enough for some people. It definitely evokes a certain culture within Japan that is particularly Japanese.

I don't think Tokyo Mirage Sessions does anything exceptionally well but it does look like a good game, not going to get a WiiU for this game though.

I kinda want to play this, and I don't know if it's just because I want P5 or if I think this looks good.

Just started this yesterday, and I'm totally digging it. Style for miles and a fun battle system.

@metalsnakezero said:

Yeah, if your willing to compare pics, the parts Nintendo wanted removed like bikinis and alts to a costume are kinda silly since it wasn't off putting enough to do it. Also like the thumbnail shows and many other character designs they didn't really do enough. I say the angry is all from built up frustration of all the censoring Nintendo been doing to their license games.

Still this game is pretty damn good. Atlus top quality game.

What is being "censored" isn't a big deal. No bikinis in the game, no big deal. The lack of a gravure modeling flourish doesn't make or break the game. If this were pokemon snap but with gravure models, then okay I see the uproar.

@jesushammer said:

Maybe anyone can answer me that has played the game.

How is the story/sidequests devided. Ever since Xenoblade Chronicles X i have become increasingly weary of the diversion. That game basically forced you to do a million boring mmo sidequests to ever progress the story for a single mission and then it begins anew. I want the story to be the main thing.

@assirra: Side stories involve hangout with the main cast and helping them with their problems. The game lets you know when their side stories are ready and can be done at any time. They range from simple conversation choices, fetch quest, battles, or a simple scene. Highly do them since they unlock awesome abilities.

You can take on fetch requests or more involved character side events as you like but you can also always just ignore that and play through the main story if that's what you want.

It's pretty recommended to at least do the character side events though.

@henchman_72: Censorship in any form is never "minor". The thing people don't seem to understand (or that they just ignore at this point) is that it isn't what is being censored that's the problem, it's the censorship itself. It's been said countless times before, though you will still always see the responses attempting to belittle our position "sorry u didnt get ur anime tiddies weeaboo losers lol XD".

What the hell happened to Chrom?

Also I love Persona but does anyone else think character design in this game is kind of a hot mess?

But the content is the central point otherwise everything and anything should be allowed. No one is saying you can't have gravure idols because it's not a big deal. Maxim is largely acceptable in America, hell, Playboy is accepted. Should they have removed it, I don't know, I haven't seen all the content. Based on what I hear the content wasn't a big deal. Just Nintendo being Nintendo, which they have done since their inception. They build infrastructures centered around kids, so I'm not surprised it was censored.

Also gotta be willing to accept that localization changes are comparable to actual censorship and I'm just not willing to walk with anyone down that road.

Wow, right in the face with the bad jpop immediately instead of slowly ramping up with gameplay or something? I wanted to give this game a chance but I just can't deal with that.

gonna miss you Awalk

If you want to experience the content in its purist, you would find any way to experience the original, and that also means learning Japanese.

Sorry i should clarified. I was talking about the ratio. I want the main story to be you know the main thing. I will always do sidequests in games like this but i am scared after Xenoblade X where i did like 80% sidequests and maybe 10% story if even that.

I have this weird thing where I'm a fan of Fire Emblem, Persona and JPOP, but I hate what's happening here. The fact that they're using the Fire Emblem level-up sound despite mostly ignoring what those games are makes me unreasonably upset.

@assirra: Oh don't worry. Side stories and Main story are about 50 / 50.

So this is interesting to me. You like all the separate parts that make up this game, and yet you're repelled. Alex is mostly indifferent on all the parts (and I'm pretty sure he's mostly good on Persona because he's heard a lot of praise for it from the rest of the staff), and he really wants to play it.

What about this do you think annoys you? Is it Fire Emblem being kinda tacked on? Because as someone from the outside looking in (kind of, I'm a Persona boy myself) the FE stuff seems really tertiary? Like almost in a pandering sort of way? I mean, unless the plot at some point explains why it's Fire Emblem characters specifically (whose designs don't even really look like their actual fire emblem versions), it just kind of seems like they are there so that you can put "Fire Emblem" somewhere on the box.

If anyone has played through a lot of this game yet (which is doubtful, since it just came out), would you mind weighing in here? Because I'm pretty into what I'm seeing, but I feel that if I were a Fire Emblem fan that I would be pretty disappointed by this.

This looks like a game I'd definitely get if I had a Wii U, but not enough for me to buy a Wii U for.

I imagine a PC version is out of the question, but a version for 3DS would be great. If this came to NX, it might help sway me to pick the NX up. (If the NX was Wii U backwards compatible in general, that would go a long way into encouraging me to get one).

The game was published by Nintendo. I don't expect this to happen in Persona 5.

Just because it's not a big deal to you doesn't mean it isn't to others. By your logic everybody needs to stop complaining about jiggly boobs in games because it's not a big deal to me personally. You logic to just not buy games I think look good is also bad. All that would happen is games like these not getting made at all. If I didn't buy every game I had a few problems with I had would maybe own 20 games at most. I love this game. It's already looking like my GOTY. It doesn't mean I don't heavily dislike what Nintendo did and I'm not going to stop voicing my criticism of their bad localization practices just because someone else thinks I shouldn't be upset.

@deepcovergecko said:

Nintendo was the one that wanted the censor. Atlus has full control when they publish their games unless it very extreme. You can confirm it with John from Atlus USA.

o7

For me, it's more to do with "OMG they changed stuff! EVERYTHING'S RUINED" without factoring in the idea that a T rating in the US isn't the same as the Japanese equivalent (setting aside the general cultural differences), that the publisher is making decisions based on how they want to make/advertise the game, or that somehow anytime these kind of conversations happen, it just happens to involve female erogenous zones. In all reality, the censorship ranting and raving (and I mean this intentionally) is inconsistent at best and predictable at worst.

Also, to address that P5 false equivalency: last I knew, Nintendo wasn't publishing that one nor is Persona 5 rated T. You get away with a little more in M rated games and when someone else is spending the cash.

Plus, I'm just not that fired up over costumes/undergarments. I play titles like Yakuza where the intro track is changed because they can't get the rights for the song in the US. Where's my angry torch and pitchfork sporting mob for that?! THEY TOOK BLOODY MOON OUT OF THE INTRO!!!

Crap like this just ends up putting a bad taste in my mouth and makes me want to play the game years after the angry internet mobs have found a new thing to fight about - like how I could only stomach Mass Effect 3 2 years after that sickening display of humanity, and it's a shame. I got about an hour into this, was enjoying it, and now I'm turned off of playing it not by the game itself, but by fellow "fans".

;_; A bitter sweet quick look. Great job, Austin.

Long live the OG BEAST.

I'm with you I want the Gundam music in Gundam games which doesn't happen often. This kind of stuff comes off worse though because it's not as simple as saying "Oh copyright laws between countries are weird and that's lame" and it's coming to a head recently because these mostly unnecessary changes keep happening. It's also spurred on by Nintendo shoving it off and just saying the same statement.

@ravelle: Please note I wasn't making a pejorative statement against Austin, he's a cool dude. I used to be into anime in the early and mid 90's, and spent my fair share on overpriced bootleg anime VHS tapes. There was just a point at which it became self aware and that frightened me. So I had to leave it alone.

No one is saying you can't be critical about Nintendo's choices. But is it a big deal if you are not willing to make a statement by not buying the game?

I don't think what was cut or redone are at all a central component to the game, otherwise it would be a shite representation of the collective ideas.

The characters were supposed to be high school students, I have no problem with Nintendo increasing their ages to adults for America. But by increasing their ages it should have been okay to have the gravure motif. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the stuff ended up in DLC. I also wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo didn't budge.

I don't think a battle with Nintendo over family friendliness is the battle that needs to happen. They have always put family friendliness first, although it was weird when they allowed stuff like Call of Duty Black Ops II.

This just makes me sad there won't be an Austin/Vinny Endurance run for Persona... :(

I fancy the look of that there weapon fusion system, it looks kinda like the skills inheritance from SMT IV with a twist. I enjoy how liberally they've sprinkled bits of Persona, SMT, FE and DDS to make this odd casserole of a game. Ya'll might force me to acquire a used Wii U for this one

What a weird thing. I think their biggest mistake was introducing this as SMT + Fire Emblem without actually elaborating on what that meant since it clearly didn't read as "Pop Idol RPG".

That said, this looks totally fine. I'm glad that it manages to be its own thing over just being an SMT and Fire Emblem mashup, which honestly didn't sound particularly interesting to me in the first place.

@mixmastershake: This game is basically Persona with Fire Emblem references and idols. I just got my first class change.

@counterclockwork87: But then it wouldn't be SMT backwards

That MasqueRaider Raiga voice sounded so familiar! anyone know who it was?

I'm so glad Austin got to be in this before he left.

...what? Call of Duty was published by Activision and Nintendo hasn't restricted third party publishers in a very long time, aside from that thing with The Binding of Isaac.

People have a right to be upset with a BAD localization, but being upset with localizations as a concept is something I don't get. If Atlus wants to make some minor changes to the NA/EU versions so it's more suitable for audiences outside of Japan then that's their right. I'd say I'm not in the audience that wants mostly-naked teenage anime titties thrust in my face so I appreciate the attempt here, even if maybe they were a bit uneven in what they changed or removed.

But nothing in the localization really ruins the spirit or nature of the game, I still think it's a pretty great SMT JRPG and the characters, tone and story hit it just right for me.

The people stretching this out into "IT'S CENSORSHIP"... that seems a bit excessive. I really hope the NX isn't region-locked like the Wii U and 3DS are, because then we'd be officially done with console/handheld region locking and the barrier to just playing the original JP versions of games will be completely gone and then the complaints about censorship will decrease, too.

Austin left as he arrived; with anime girls

@henchman_72: Not buying the game isn't a good solution. Also, just because some of us greatly disagree with Nintendo's localization practices, doesn't mean we can't buy and enjoy their games.

Personally, I wasn't going to buy the game; I have a million things I want to do, so missing out on one game in the grand scheme of things doesn't bother me. However, with the release of the restoration patch, I did buy the game because now I can enjoy the game the way I want to.

I shouldn't have to wade through the murky waters of modding, but now I get to play the game the way I want and you get to play it the way you want. Not referring to you here, but I feel like from both sides of this localization argument, people keep trying to convert everyone to their side. I don't know why we can't just agree on everyone just having different preferences.

Persona 5 is in a similar situation for me. If they don't end up giving me a way to play with the Japanese voices, I won't be playing the game. End of story. However, some people like to attack that stance because for some reason I'm not allowed to prefer Japanese voices or some people say we should just learn Japanese if we care so much (which is just ridiculous — give me a break).

Also, if you don't understand why I prefer games unedited or with Japanese voices, that's okay. You don't have to understand. There are things people like that I don't understand, and that's also okay. We all just need to respect that each of us likes different things. That's all.

My copy is in the mail right now, hesitant to watch this before I've played a good chunk but I want to see Austin's last gig with the Beast duders :-/

God I'll miss this.

I'm so close to just buying a damn Wii U so I could play this game.

JRPGs used to be all about ancient evils that have awoken in a fantasy setting, but modern JRPGs are all about these contemporary settings with contemporary evils and somehow idols. While that formula is running a little stale by now, this game is very well done one of those games.

The censorship changes are ridiculous, but I think the controversy is blown way out of proportion for this game. It's not like Yakuza 3 where a 3rd of the game was cut because SEGA didn't think people would "get it".

Nintendo's gotten a pretty bad rep at this point though, so people obviously get extra fired up over any localization changes, which is reasonable.

@ravelle said:

@michiganjack said:

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

Well, given Jeff and Vinny played all of Persona 4, I think we are okay for getting teh highlight.

Also, we should view the whole year as Austin showing that GB Duders were very broad and very deep in various interests from Gundam model to anime games. And, let's be clear Dan Ryckert did play Night of Azure. That wasn't a fever dream, he played several hours and gave that game a fair shake - as fair as it deserved.

@monkeyking1969 said:

@ravelle said:

@michiganjack said:

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

Well, given Jeff and Vinny played all of Persona 4, I think we are okay for getting teh highlight.

Also, we should view the whole year as Austin showing that GB Duders were very broad and very deep in various interests from Gundam model to anime games. And, let's be clear Dan Ryckert did play Night of Azure. That wasn't a fever dream, he played several hours and gave that game a fair shake - as fair as it deserved.

Don't forget Jason. He's checking out JoJo as we speak!