(en) crit scan: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Review
“I should pick up writing,” I said to myself one random day. “What a fucking stupid thought,” I immediately added. I have never read anything since Half-Blood Prince back in 2013. If I never read, there’s no chance I can write.
Oh, then again, I read a lot of manga. Since I read bunch of stories I should know how they’re structured, and hopefully, what makes them work. After all, with manga most of the times being sold in series of volumes, I decide whether the story is good or not before deciding to buy the rest of them. So yeah, maybe I can make a good story because I know what makes a story good and not.
Except… do I?
Thing is, I don’t think I’m giving manga much thought. When I decide not to follow a series, it’s based on bullshit reasons like “it ain’t my thing,” or “the story’s cringe.” It’s a valid reason to not like something, but I don’t think it’s a good one, because if I really do love manga like I claim it, then I should be more critical of it. I should be able to exactly point out where it goes wrong, and also be neutral enough to point out where it goes right. Only when I am able to do so I can claim that I “love” manga. It’s weird saying you love something even though you don’t know anything about it.
Same thing goes with video games, for me. Well, to be honest, I just did a “critical” “review” of a game I just played, and that triggered me to write this post. Below is the review I wrote for said game. Just skip it if you’re not interested. Hold on, why are you even here in the first place?
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE
Story
The core story is an interesting twist on a basic concept: someone wants to destroy the world, and you plus the gang is going to put a stop to that plan. Except, you and the gang are talents of the entertainment industry, so the battles are likened to stage plays, and to top it off you do this “opera of light” thing in the end of the story. Sadly, this interesting twist isn’t interesting. Since the game is rated CERO B (ages 12 and up) the story is cheerful and stuff, so you don’t get to explore “the dark side of the entertainment industry” or anything. This being a spinoff of Shin Megami Tensei I wanted something like idols having to sleep with producers or record labels doing dirty shit to their own artists… but no. Just character growth stories of idols finding a new way to shine 🌟~! It’s way too tame and might be fun to watch but it leaves no deep impression.
The overarching plot of saving the world from the otherworldly invaders is lame too. They’re here, they make a mess by corrupting someone powerful, and that’s it. Though, the gang always beats every boss using character growth, a very manga/anime-ish way to advance but I do think it works great. Yet sadly, going back to my previous point, none of the character episodes are exciting.
Though the growth itself boring, I do find the characters likable. Even the villain turned ally guy is adorable when you know him better. There’s not enough in-between character dynamics for this to be the game’s strong point, though. They’re important for their part in the main story and side episodes but most of the time they’re just… there. They send messages to you a lot but don’t have a group chat where they banter amongst each other.
Gameplay
I didn’t know this wasn’t a Persona spin-off but a Shin Megami Tensei spin-off, so I thought we’ll have day-to-day time management with social link systems and stuff like that. Nope, just side stories that get unlocked after a certain level and story progression that you can do anytime. So the core of the gameplay is just the fixed dungeon exploration and combat.
Dungeon exploration is… decent? Like palaces in Persona 5 you get a dungeon laid with puzzles that you have to solve to advance whilst battling random encounters. Each new dungeon has it’s own gimmick so it’s not boring, but none of them WHOA me in any way either.
Combat, though… goddamn. They pulled a lot from Shin Megami Tensei so it’s good, but they also added/removed things from it and they absolutely FUCKED it in some ways. For starters, every random encounter is fun. In typical SMT fashion, you try to exploit enemy weaknesses straight on turn 1 because doing so nets you combo attacks. Combo attacks allow you to kill enemy units faster, not allowing them to act because one bad move from them will send one (or more, or ALL) of your characters to death.
The most aggravating problem here is that when one of your characters actually die in a boss fight, you need to fucking forget about that character and soldier on with what you have. Tokyo Mirage Sessions don’t have SMT’s press turn battle system where the battle is divided into “your turn” and “the enemies’ turn” but instead the characters move in accordance to their speed stat like other JRPGs. So, enemies can move in between your characters’ action and vice versa. Thing is, revived characters can’t do jack shit until the next turn. This results in you reviving a dead party member, then having the boss kill them again before their turn comes so you can’t swap them out. You have to go in a boss fight KNOWING all their attacks because if you come in with a party member with a weakness to their attack, then god help you, because they’ll die in ONE hit. So you revive them. And they die again. Rinse and repeat.
I’ll need to play Persona again to study how they do it, because I don’t think that problem exists in Persona, even though they don’t use the press turn system either. If my memory serves, though, revived party members can act before the boss does so you can swap them out.
Second thing I don’t like is the EP management. In SMT, running out of energy means you can’t reliably hit enemy weaknesses because most of them are elemental weaknesses and you need energy to cast them. Like I said before, if you don’t kill enemies fast enough, you’re gonna die. This causes a horrifying, tense situation when you’re low on energy and you don’t know where the next teleporter is. In Persona, you need to think and balance when to hit enemy weaknesses with magic attacks or solve it with physical brute force because, again, magic costs energy and you can only replenish it using very rare items or coming home. So you either waste precious items or waste in-game days. Tokyo Mirage Sessions got nothing. You can teleport out of dungeons anytime and then go to the nearest vending machine to full recover health and energy for a very cheap price. No precious item nor day wasted, no need to fear for your life in dungeons.
Leveling up and upgrading weapons is fun, though. Every new character upgrades feel useful (except in late game where you sometimes unlock stupid upgrades) and learning new skills is the old Pokemon dilemma of pondering whether this new shiny skill is worth throwing away one of your old one. In late game, I threw away my trusted Rakukaja and opted for the sword skill that is effective against dragons (since dragon-types isn’t that common, this is a pretty specific skill to own) because the story has been teasing the final boss to be this “dragon of darkness.” Turns out the final boss is a dragon and is weak against that skill. I felt like a genius not throwing away that skill.
Items is awesome too. I actually felt the need to stock up. In most RPGs–no, in most games I don’t even THINK about using items. I’ll solve it using skills or some other way. But in this game, somewhere around halfway the main story you’ll have enough money to have unlimited supply of most consumable items. And when you have, why waste a skill slot for Rakukaja when you can just buy an item that does that in the convenience store? I don’t even need a specific character to have this “healer” role/position because I have 99x potions that heal to max HP. It can be used by anyone in the team, too. Some items that do overpowered magic like “repel physical” are limited to only at max 6 items in your bag, but since you can teleport out of dungeons anytime, that ain’t much of a problem. The limited skill slots gave neccessity to item use, but it’s still optional and not hinted at so you really feel like a genius when you do.
Aesthetics
Anime music videos are a big selling point of this game I think, and they’re pretty good… I guess. Other than those…
The animations suck. Even on scripted scenes, you don’t really feel them being “animated.” Persona games fixes this by showing 2D sprites, and I think they should’ve used them here too. The animations for the special/co-op skills are decent… no, passable is more like it, I guess. The only awesome thing I can remember is the transformation animations, especially Yashiro’s and Mamori’s.
The artstyle is… uhhhhh??? The character portraits have character, akin to Yoshitaka Amano’s drawing of Final Fantasy characters. They look good! But the 3D models themselves is bleh. Too… generic…? I guess the bright and colorful designs fit the theme of the story but I can’t find anything special about it.
I can’t comment on the music since I’m tone deaf and don’t understand music. Amaoto no Memory (Raindrop Memory) is very catchy though, I find myself singing to it randomly sometimes.
Closing Remarks
This game is disappointing. For something that rides on both SMT’s and Fire Emblem’s name (I haven’t played any Fire Emblem game though) I expected something more, but instead, it feels more like a dumbed down version of it. On it’s own, I think this is a goofy Japanese RPG that you can play, enjoy, and then completely forget about after you complete it.
It’s good, but doesn’t do much to not make itself… average. Oh, look who’s talking.