I love a good crossover, even if they’re often limited to fighting games and online events. It’s exciting to see developers being fans of each other and working together to interpret and merge each other’s stuff, culminating in an enthusiastic collaboration across the industry. With this in mind, Tokyo Mirage Sessions, a crossover between the Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei series, sounds like a pretty fantastic idea.
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore reviewDeveloper: AtlusPublisher: NintendoPlatform: SwitchAvailability Out January 17th on Switch
It focuses on the friends Aoi Itsuki and Tsubasa Oribe. Ever since Tsubasa’s sister Ayaha disappeared during a concert five years prior, the timid girl wants to become a singer to continue her sibling’s legacy as an entertainer. During her very first audition, Tsubasa is attacked by mirages, demons who are after the natural artistic ability within humans. To fight back, Tsubasa and Itsuki gain the power of Chrom and Caeda from the Fire Emblem series, who help them change into magical “carnage forms”. Unfortunately their new friends have lost all memory of who they are and where they’re from. The only thing that’s clear is that mirages regularly attack entertainers, so what better way than to join an entertainment agency to keep an eye on these occurrences?
It’s not the smoothest integration of a theme into its setting, but the entertainment industry gives Tokyo Mirage Sessions its own identity beyond being a crossover, in ways both good and bad. Let’s start with the good: Tsubasa and friends are training to become idols, Japanese all-around entertainers, and Tokyo Mirage Sessions makes great effort to showcase different facets of the job. Each chapter is dedicated to another aspect, whether that’s being a model, an actor or a show host. Chapters also often culminate in short anime music videos of your characters performing a new song. The round-based battles take place on a stage, a mass of adoring fans following your performance from the stands. Your characters whirl around acrobatically, draw their signatures in the air for every spell and cheer for each other. Each hero is wearing elaborate costumes that spell love for magical girl and boy design. If you complete side quests for the members of your party, they gain special attacks reminiscent of their signature performances. Each win is celebrated with applause and an amount of confetti I haven’t seen since Ace Attorney.
Without this stylish veneer however, combat is a familiar affair. Similar to the Persona games, themselves a sub-series of Shin Megami Tensei, offence is the best defence, and you have the best chances of winning if your opponent doesn’t even get the drop on you. If you can exploit an enemy’s weakness, for example by attacking them with a specific weapon or spell, you start a Session. If they have the right skill equipped, during a Session your other team members get to chain an attack immediately to yours, more often than not leading to a monster’s immediate demise. Battles are vibrant to watch without dragging on, and I loved every unnecessarily bombastic transformation and attack. If they still run too long for you, the Encore version now allows you to enable quick sessions and skip special attack sequences with the press of a button.
I also liked the dungeons. While the first one is pretty drab, the subsequent ones follow the style of the different chapters and each come with a different gameplay element. In one dungeon depicting a TV show set, for example, you run errands for a demonic production supervisor.