When Nintendo announced that they were partnering with Atlus to create a crossover between Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei I don’t think anyone expected it turn out like Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. Maybe some of the details were easy to guess; I wasn’t surprised that it essentially plays like a Persona game, but the end result is something that has little in common with either of its inspirations. There are certainly elements of both that remain, but Tokyo Mirage Sessions is very much its own game. TMS is a game that takes it theme and commits to it whole heartedly.

This is a game about idols, there is no getting away from that. There are numerous musical numbers that pop up as party members put out singles and perform in concerts. The whole game is awash in pastels, all sky blue and pink. The character’s home lives are never even mentioned, they all work for a talent agency that doubles as a cover for their monster fighting, and spend their time training for various artistic endeavors. It is as far away as possible from SMT’s post-apocalypse or Fire Emblem’s fantasy medieval battlefields. Yet, despite being nothing like them, it does feel a bit like the progeny of both series.

The party in TMS is made up of aspiring or active performers. Some are pop star-esque idols, others are actors on teen TV shows and some do it all. Their artistic abilities and aspirations also give them the power to be Mirage Masters, people able to harness the powers of martial spirits from another realm to fight back against the mysterious entities that are stealing people’s “performa,” the essence of their talent and artistry. It is nonsense, but Tokyo Mirage Sessions commits to this conceit with an admirable completeness. Everything revolves around it. As the characters grow stronger in battle their musical skills grow stronger, which in turn makes them stronger in battle. It is a cycle, everything feeds into everything else. Crazily enough, if one is willing to buy into this central conceit, then everything kind of works.

Battles, which take place in an arena and are themed to look like performances, play out much like the PS2 Persona games. Four characters in the party each have an array of skills that are mostly from the SMT series, with a few Fire Emblem themed ones tossed in. Like the Persona games, there is a great emphasis on hitting enemies’ weaknesses. In this game, doing so trigger a session attack, where the other party members take turns jumping in to continue the assault. Eventually even inactive party members start to join in the fray, creating cascading sessions of 6 or even more attacks every time a weakness is hit. Each party member has certain skills that can be powered up with random “ad-lib” performances, which turn the games many musical numbers into more powerful attacks. Soon multiple characters work together in duets that combine two characters for an attack that extends the session. It eventually makes hitting those weaknesses almost essential to effectively fighting through the dungeons.

Those dungeons are right out of SMT games. They are some effective and sprawling puzzle dungeons. Each one has a trick. One had the player avoid camera’s that snap a photo and send the player back to the start, another is set on the back lot of a movie shoot. Each has its own tricks and themes and none are a pushover. Since the bulk of the player’s time is spent in the dungeons, they needed to be good and they are.

Going into the game, I was afraid that the theme and cast would be suffocating, but Atlus, who did the heavy lifting on this game, and the localization team did a wonderful job creating a group that is largely enjoyable. They don’t break far from anime tropes for characters: there’s a taciturn loner, an earnest yet slightly inept romantic interest, and a boozy female authority figure, but they are portrayed in such a way as to make them charming instead of grating. Touma, the player character’s best friend, really wants to be a Power Rangers like hero. He tries to live up to a heroic ideal in his real life. There isn’t much complicated about him, but he is generally positive and enjoyable. Other than protagonist Itsuki, the bland everyman that rallies the others around him, Tsubasa is the center of the game. It is her quest to become an Idol, despite her nervousness and fear of the spotlight that continually pushes things forward. It is what gets her and Itsuki drawn into this drama and her rise and success keeps bringing the team in conflict with the dark forces working behind the scenes. If he character didn’t work the whole thing would fall apart. Luckily, she is one of the games strength. TMS does a great job of building that character throughout, as she conceivably grows as a performer and a character. I don’t even have time to get into Barry Goodman, who might be the most scathing take on a Western anime fan I’ve ever seen.

Spending so much time with the characters helps disguise how small this game actually is. It is only six dungeons and one hub area. There are a handful of other areas, one screen each, but outside of the dungeons the game is actually tiny. It is like the game wants to pass itself off as a sprawling JRPG experience, but to do so it has to patch over its budget roots. It doesn’t make much of a difference while playing, but thinking back on it makes it clear how limited the game is. Maybe limited is the wrong word; focused us more appropriate.

If the battle system comes out of SMT, where does Fire Emblem fit in? In the Mirages, the spirits that help the party fight their evil counterparts. The Mirages are all slightly reimagined Fire Emblem characters, mostly from the first game or Awakening. They act like the Personas out of that series. The main plot is about the Fire Emblem characters getting stuck in the real world. It is nonsense, but it kind of works.

There are some problems with this game. By the end battles can become tedious as the increasingly complex attack sessions take longer and longer to play out. It feels like it goes on about one dungeon too long. Outside of each character’s trio of sidequests, there isn’t much else to do but fight through the dungeons. Still, I think I love this game. It is not subject matter I tend to like, but Tokyo Mirage Sessions makes it all feel refreshing. It is probably the best console JRPG since Persona 4. It is light, a piece of fluff, but also a fully realized experience that doesn’t get made all the often anymore.

I’ve written about Fire Emblem Fates’ other two paths already and felt like now, before the fall 3DS rush starts – Ace Attorney 6, Dragon Quest VII, River City Tokyo Rumble and Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse are all due before the end of September – was the best time to finally get to the third and final FE Fates path, Revelation. I sped through it only about a week or so. It does everything the middle path of Fates’ side choosing main game should do, yet I don’t know that I like it very much.

How Nintendo and Intelligent Systems differentiated the Birthright and Conquest paths was effective from a gameplay standpoint. The classes and weapons were all different and with a few exceptions so were all of the characters. They aren’t quite separate games, even ignoring the identical first five chapters, but they are very different experiences. Revelation takes those two sets and mashes them together. It doesn’t pare them down to an interesting mix of both casts; it is the entirety of both casts made available. That means that no one’s favorite character is left out, but it also means that you get more than twice as many characters as you could possibly use. It really compounds a problem that both of the first two paths had: the glut of royal characters. When each half of the cast gives you four royal siblings and map tend to allow 10-14 characters to be deployed, that only leaves up to five other characters to be deployed, assuming that you are using all of both of your families. Which is tempting to do, since those siblings tend to be some of your best characters. And that’s without even getting into the second generation.

Actually, let’s get into that second generation of characters. In Fire Emblem Awakening, the children of you characters coming back in time to stop a dreadful event was the entire conceit of the game. It gave an end goal to the supports, which had been a big draw in the GBA games and were gutted in the GC/Wii ones, with each pairing producing an offspring that could join your army. It worked in that game because that game was designed for it. They kept the mechanic in Fates, but it lacks the conceit. They come up with some half explained reason for the children, who haven’t been born yet, to grow up somewhere where time passes differently and they grow to adulthood in no time, but it is unsatisfying. It feels like it was kept because it was a popular feature and not because it has any place in the game. It feels like an afterthought; the child characters, as fun as some of them are, do not have a role to play in this story.

The cast is a big reason why Revelation only works as a second or third path. There are so many characters that few have a chance to make much of an impression. But holdover feelings from the first time through game give the player a reason to try and use them.

My hope was that the big cast would give reason for big maps. Let the player deploy twenty or more characters and fill the screen with enemies on a truly massive battle. That is not the path that Revelation takes. Instead, each and every single map is a gimmick map. I don’t mind gimmick maps, they can be a fun alternative to the normal ones. Elements like environmental hazards, fog of war or shifting terrain make for a good change of pace. In Revelation, they are the pace. There are no normal maps, except maybe the last one; every last one has some sort of twist. It isn’t fun, it is exhausting. I eventually had to switch over to classic mode, since there were too many variables for me to keep track of.

They are actually pretty finely crafted stages, for the most part. It is just that the rules continually change. Classic Mode, which I am glad exists for people who don’t want the same Fire Emblem experience that I want, feels like a cheat to me, but I also found it necessary. Losing the penalty for a character dying fundamentally changes how I play the game, shifting from my usual cautiously aggressive tactics to ones that are downright reckless.

The story is the story that both of the previous paths made obvious was out there. Both of those games danced around a central problem while solving ones that seemed much less pressing. This one has the player’s avatar deal directly with the mysterious entity that has been manipulating both countries. It doesn’t flesh out the conflict that greatly, keeping things more personal than political, but it works.

Fire Emblem Fates Revelation is a mixed bag. It is altogether too much of a good thing. Its solution to every problem is more. More characters, more stuff going on in the maps, more supports. Like eating too much candy, you kind of love it even as it makes you queasy. Fire Emblem Fates is a monumental trilogy that I loved even while I wished that they pared it down somewhat.

Beaten

Illusion of Gaia – see post here

Shin Nekketsu Kouha – see post here.

Bravely Second – see post here.

Ninja Smasher – This is a neat little metroidvania game for the 3DS I picked up last month. The central mechanic of the game is that every time you hit an enemy with your attack it allows you to jump again, meaning that you can fly through areas slashing enemies and leaping to the next one. It is fun, for a while. The game takes about three hours to complete, but it starts to lose its luster about an hour in. The levels aren’t that interesting and the bosses are just damage sponges. You get your four bucks worth, but that’s about it.

Pokémon Alpha Sapphire – I am on the record as loving the Pokémon series. Black & White, Black & White 2, X & Y: the three previous versions of Pokémon were all a ton of fun. The only generation of Pokémon that didn’t really do it for me was the third, Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald. I played them, but I usually gave up about halfway or so through the game. When the inevitable remake happened, I was eager to fully experience the game. But that just didn’t happen. I ended up skipping the games when they were first released, only getting it a half a year later during a surprise sale on the game. Then I played it. Pokémon Alpha Sapphire is likely the best rendition of the Pokémon formula. It does nearly everything well. Still, I found myself utterly disinterested in the experience. Part of it was the lack of newness; there are no new Pokémon in Alpha Sapphire, nothing this game does that other Pokémon games don’t also do. The bigger part is that I have never really enjoyed this setting. The routes are laid out in unintuitive and frustrating ways, there is too much surfing and an overreliance on field HM’s altogether. I know a lot of people that love this game, both the original and the remake. No matter how many times I try, I just can’t get into this particular version of a series that I like. Now that I’ve beaten the game, I don’t feel a particular need to do so.

Ongoing

Space MegaForce – I’ve played a couple of stages of this SNES shooter and it is fast. I haven’t played enough to form much more of an impression than that, but that is impressive enough so far.

Super Mario RPG – please understand.

Fire Emblem Fates Revelations – I’m pressing through this third path of Nintendo and Intelligent System’s excellent strategy game, but it isn’t really doing it for me early on. There are just too many gimmick maps. There is a teleporter map, a windy and a map filled with ice all to start things off. Those gimmick maps are fine, but they are best when they are used to offset regular stages. I hope there is more to this than just these bullshit stages because I really want a solid wrap up to this game’s story.

Monster Hunter Generations –

Maybe it is just that I had my fill of MH4U and wasn’t ready for more Monster Hunter, but so far I have been unable to really get into this game. There is a lot I like about it in theory, from its monster list to some quality of life changes made to this version from MH4U, but none of that has really helped me find the desire to sink my teeth into it and really play. Of course, my problems might all stem from forcing myself to change my weapon. In previous MH games I have used the hammer. I’d try out others; I tended to use a light bowgun quite a bit online, but primarily I stuck with the slow but powerful hammer. This time I wanted a different experience, so I’ve used the lance, gunlance, and sword & shield. None of those weapons feel as natural to me as the hammer does though. When I get back to this, likely after I finish Fire Emblem, I think I’ll switch back to my trusty favorite.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions –

I am still pushing through this game and still greatly enjoying it. It is a long game and I haven’t had the time I’ve wanted to get this game beaten. TMS is pretty perfectly paced throughout the first two thirds. Each new dungeon adds a new character or concept, but it doesn’t feel like those things were artificially kept from the player but that the abilities of the party are growing. That is one of Tokyo Mirage Sessions overriding themes; it is about growth. Each of you party member’s grows individually as an entertainer and they grow as a team. That growth is reflected in their ever increasing combat abilities. I hope the game is able to stick the landing.

Upcoming

Secret of Evermore – As soon as I clear out Super Mario RPG and Space Megaforce I am on to this.

Legend of the Mystical Ninja – I’ve got this downloaded to my WiiU, ready to go as soon I have time. This is a game I have played before, but only enough to know that I want the full experience.

Skyblazer – This is more wishful thinking that anything else, but if I get done with the four other SNES games on this list, Skyblazer is up next.

Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice – We appear to be missing out on anther Ace Attorney spin-off, but I am not going to complain about the Ace Attorney games we are getting. I can’t resist this series.

Dragon Quest VII – I got the PS1 version of this game three or four years ago, shortly before the 3DS remake was announced. I held off playing it, thinking this would come over. Then it didn’t. I held off until close to a year ago, but soon after I started it was announced that the 3DS game was getting an American release. I am so ready to play this damn game.