Game #1198: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore

 Not the crossover we wanted, nor the one we deserved.

 When SMT X FE was first announced I was both excited and scared. I loved SMT, and trailer showed protagonists from SMT rather than Persona, alongside heroes from Fire Emblem, which, to be honest, I still don't know much about. But hey, more SMT with a Fire Emblem flair! How both franchises would mix was scary and.... it seems Atlus didn't know what the hell they were doing, as this is pretty much a lighthearted take on Persona with names from the Fire Emblem franchise. That's it. You can remove every single Fire Emblem reference, 'cause that's all there is, and it'd be the same exact game.

 The first thing that really sucks about the game is the premise itself... it's set in the alienating world of Japanese Idols. It follows Itsuki, the main male hero, as he aids his friends, all forms of different idols, in their endeavors. Every character has a Persona, I mean, a 'Mirage', a being from another world that looks like a Persona but with a proper personality and a name straight out of Fire Emblem. They don't look too similarly to their Fire Emblem counterparts, mind you.

 Honestly, the stuff about idols is just... lame. I find the idol culture to be extremely stupid, so I bet most of the themes in these game won't resonate with people outside Japan. When the game was first announced, I expected something.... dark. It has Fire Emblem AND Shin Megami Tensei, and yet the game is lighter and softer than even the Persona series. And you can argue that Persona is also centered around Japanese culture, but besides having a character that may be an Idol, like Rise from P4, it's not centered around these characters. It's also kinda icky, considering the original Japanese release had these 16-17 year old girls posing for gravure magazines, in their underwear/swimsuits, for a mature men audience. Which might be normal in Japan, but over here it's just icky. This localized version changed that to 'street wear', which makes the character's embarrassment nonsensical. And this release is based around the censored American release, for good or bad, so no swimsuit DLC or Hotsprings DLC. I really don't mind that.

 Unlike Persona, the characters aren't as deep. You get three unlockable 'sidequests' per party member that delve deeper on their goals.... but the characters and their coals are just thoroughly uninteresting. While Persona, the game this is most similar too, also had Japanese humor and culture, the characters in that game always managed to feel somewhat real. In this one you get anime caricatures, like a character who doesn't understand he feels weak because he hasn't eaten and doesn't understand why he would need to eat. And he is a human. Then there's an ally, an older man, who gets mad whenever you spend time with the... youngest girls in the cast. Because he wants their attention. It's played for laughs, but it isn't funny in the slightest. And then there's a party member who talks about Hollywood pretty much every three lines of dialogue she gets. It's hard to relate to these characters. At least the main character is voiced and does speak, but he adds nothing to the game, as he has the most basic blanket personality possible, no goals or aspirations nor anything. And most of the choices you get to make mostly amount to saying the same exact thing in different ways.

 The rest of the game is pretty much Persona. I've seen some people go "actually it borrows from Digital Devil Saga an--"--and let me cut you right there, that's a lie. This plays like Persona. The simple dungeons, made up mostly of corridors, enemies that are represented by a red shadow, which you can hit with your sword for a chance of having an extra first turn... it's all Persona. The game doesn't use the fantastic "1 more" system from SMTIII/Digital Devil Saga, nor the whole downing enemies, like Persona, but instead, hitting an enemy with an elemental weakness will allow other characters, if they have the right 'Session' skill at their disposal, will jump in with an extra attack. At first it's just the characters in your party who join in, but as you level up your characters you can unlock the ability for them to jump in even if they aren't in the active roster. It's kinda neat, it is, but eventually you can have up to 8 hits in a row, or more if you happen to trigger a 'special session'. You can turn on 'quick session', but even then, it takes TOO long. The original Wii-U release didn't have Quick Sessions, the game must've been unbearable.

 The enemies in the game are very spongy, so using MP to use spells and trigger sessions is pretty much the way to go, which means you are stuck watching endless sessions play out. You'll be wanting to exit the dungeon every time you find a warp/checkpoint to restock your MP, which is fine, since defeating enemies rewards you with items you can then use to develop more weapons for all your characters. 

 In this game, characters learn skills by having turns using a weapon. That's right, if they don't get to participate they won't get Weapon XP. And learning skills takes FOREVER. The best way is to use and abuse, you guessed it, sessions. To be fair, this rerelease grants you access to grinding maps, and in one of these maps you can amass Skill Tomes, that pretty much lets you learn the next skill immediately, so I'd say abuse this feature, because the game doesn't respect your time.

 The best bit about the game is easily the music, I loved all the vocal tracks in the game. Most songs are coupled with a 'videoclip' of the idol-character dancing alongside it, and some of the movements feel unnatural. These cutscenes use higher quality 3D models, probably for a cheaper way to animate them. You can argue that they did it in order to make the movements more fluid, but... the cutscene before the last boss, when all your characters come together... only four of the seven playable characters get 3D models, the other characters are show as plain 2-D anime. It looks super weird and very cheap.

 It's sad but this game feels like a lower budget Persona ripoff. The game plays fine, the combat is decent, but the Sessions are poorly thought-out as they take too much time. Learning skills from weapons is a great idea, but it takes SO long that it's not even funny. But the worst part about it... is that this was supposed to be an epic Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei crossover, but the Fire Emblem elements are superficial and add nothing of value to the game, while the SMT elements are just... Persona elements, but without the budget or its soul. I'll admit at some points I found myself enjoying the game, but even so, this is an RPG, and the game just didn't manage to make me care about ANY of its characters.

 6.5