Back in 2013, Nintendo revealed a Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem game. A lot of gamers wondered how both franchises would collide and what kind of game it would be. Now, years later, we finally got the answer thanks to Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. A traditional Japanese Role Playing Game with a unique setting. Is this the crossover we’ve all been waiting for? Or should we forget this product as fast as possible, find out in our review.
Time to save Tokyo
Combining the worlds of Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem isn’t an easy task, so you’ll need a story. The story of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is a traditional Japanese story filled with interesting twists. We could describe all the details but if we did that, this review would take ages to read. The story is huge and will take you a couple of hours to complete. It’s voice cast with the original Japanese voices and dubbed in English. It’s a little strange at first but since everything takes place in Tokyo, it does make sense. After a while , those Japanese voices can start to become annoying but it’s nothing to worry about, the story itself is unique and fun to follow.
Tokyo is being tormented with so-called Mirages, creatures from another dimension called the Idolsphere. The Mirages are stealing the Performa of the people of Tokyo. Without this energy, people won’t be able to fulfill their biggest dreams. Needless to say, the city needs a set of heroes to fight off those annoying Mirages, enter Itsuki Aoi and his friends.
Aoi fights off the Mirages in the name of Fortuna Entertainment, a casting bureau that fights Mirages when it’s not looking for new talents in Tokyo. Aio and his friends get help from an unexpected place. Not all of the Mirages are bad; the good ones will team up with Fortuna to fight off the evil Mirages. It’s no big surprise to say that the good Mirages are the memorable Fire Emblem characters. Chrom, Tharja, Tiki and others will team up with the locals to fight off evil.
Kill them with music
In order to fight this evil, the characters need to fuse together and form a ‘Carnage form’. In this form, the Fire Emblem character will lend its powers and abilities to its owner. This results in the iconic Fire Emblem classes as Pegasus Knight, Lord, Thief and even more.
It’s interesting to see these traditional classes being used in another form of fights. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is a traditional JRPG that feels more like the traditional Final Fantasy games than the Fire Emblem games. The story is interesting enough to keep things going but the battles are something entirely different. You have to like it but if you like those endless menus, you’ll love this game without a doubt.
Traditional fights
Let’s talk a bit more about those fights first. So, as said before, the fights are traditional JRPG fights, meaning you’ll select the action (attack or defense) and see how it works out. After your move, it’s up to the enemies to attack. You can select a normal attack, magic attacks or all sort of lower/raising your stats or those of the enemies moves. Sounds like nothing you didn’t use in other games but that’s where the Session Attacks appear.
If you play as a team of three, you’ll be able to unlock a Session Attack while using magic. During this attack, the other two characters will jump to the rescue and add their powers to your attack. This means your simple attack gets a lot more powerful. It’s an interesting mechanism to take down the harder enemies but keep in mind it works the other way around as well. Enemies are able to perform these Session Attacks as well so you’ll need to be prepared for the worst at all times. Keep in mind that you’ll need to unlock these Session Attacks before you can use them, but unlocking those is certainly worth the struggle since you’ll get a lot of power in return.
Besides this, you can also use Special Attacks. These attacks are the best of the game and inflict a lot of power. They are very powerful but not too powerful since you’ll need to wait before you can use them. You can only use them if you SP meter is full, it take a while to refill it and that’s a shame to be honest. During a Special Attack, the character transforms into a true superstar and performs in a video clip or live performance. These attacks are amazing to look at and manage to bring the colorful world of the story into the battles. It’s amazing but a shame you’re not able to use them that much.
Explore some dungeons
Besides the regular overworld of Tokyo, you’ll also enter some dungeons. The dungeons reminded us of those found in The Legend of Zelda franchise and offer fun environmental puzzles. The puzzles are never too hard to solve so they offer the right feeling of satisfaction when you manage to solve them. The difficulty in the dungeons comes from the random encounters. This is the biggest difference with the regular world where you’ll see monsters running around, so you’re able to stay out of combat if you want to. Dungeons use a random encounter system so you never know when or where the enemy will attack.
It’s an old system and it comes with some downsides. The biggest one is the lack of autosaving. If you want to save your progress, you’ll need to do so manually in the menu. If you forget to save and die in the dungeon, you’ll need to restart from where you saved last. It’s a bit annoying since the game isn’t really that easy to master. Even on the normal difficulty level, it’s not an easy game to complete due to the Savage Mirages.
These monsters are easily seven levels higher than your team; so defeating them isn’t easy. If you manage to bring them down you’ll get big rewards in a lot of experience points or powerful weapons. But since these monsters are so powerful, you’ll need some preparing first, something you can’t always do when you’re inside of a dungeon. Getting killed by a Savage Mirage at the end of a dungeon doesn’t always feel fair, so be sure to save at crucial moments to spare yourself a lot of backtracking.
Conclusion:
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE resulted in a very interesting crossover. The game looks completely different and doesn’t look like a Shin Megami Tensei or Fire Emblem game at the first glance. The moment you start playing it however, the pieces start to fall together. It’s a very interesting yet traditional JRPG with a great setting. The Tokyo and J-Pop setting truly fit the game and delivers a different kind of atmosphere we’re used to seeing in our games. The random encounters and saving system feel a little outdated but aside of that, there’re a lot of fun moments in the game. The story is worth remembering and the gameplay itself offers enough variation. If you’re into the Japanese culture and traditional RPG games, don’t hesitate to pick this one up in stores.
