Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore - Review

We’ve been through this before. A Wii U game that went unappreciated being done up and released on the Switch to take advantage of the much bigger audience. Tokyo Mirage Sessions would’ve been high on a lot of RPG fans wish lists to bring to the Switch. After the success of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, it's a great time to have a game that is a crossover of the Fire Emblem franchise with the popular JRPG Shin Megami Tensei franchise. Even several years after the original release, a turn-based JRPG set around evil fighting Pop Idols is still a weird concept. So how does this version hold up?

Friends and classmates Itsuki Aoi and Tsubasa Oribe suddenly get caught up in the Tokyo Pop Idol world and fighting the dangerous Mirages that seem to prey on the city. Along with their friend Touma Akagi, they discover they have the ability to summon good Mirages of their own. Working alongside them, they can access Idolspheres. This is where the Mirages dwell as they consume people’s ‘performa’ and corrupt them. It turns out there’s a talent agency that specialises in dealing with Mirages, the Fortuna Entertainment agency. The agency also contains its own gateway to this other dimension where the Mirages exist, the friendly ones happen to also be Fire Emblem characters. While they come from a few different games from FE history, the most notable are Chrom and others from Fire Emblem: Awakening. For story reasons, none of the Mirages can remember much from before they had also been corrupted (before you rescue them).

Conveniently it was Tsubasa’s dream to become an Idol, which is exactly what she’ll have to do as part of being a Mirage Master. You control Itsuki, who doesn’t have the same ambitions as he works to find his place while supporting and building up his friends. Over the 35 or more hours, your roster of friends/coworkers grows as you’re tasked with taking on any Mirage threat as Tsubasa’s star continues to rise.

Ok, so there is an overarching story in relation to the Mirages having lost their memories and the increase of Idolspheres appearing. For the majority of the game there never feels like much focus on this until the last dungeon. Up to that point the story seems more focused on Tsubasa’s rise in stardom as she grows and builds the confidence needed to take on the end of dungeon Mirages. Now there are other Idols/performers that make up this group, including the already popular Idol Kiria and aspiring Actress Eleanora who also desire to overcome obstacles with Itsuki’s help. The story works better as a slice of life game where the stakes aren’t world threatening. Over the course of the game the characters grow, Itsuki kind of floats between roles to help others shine. Then it all gets serious, dumping a lot on you late game instead of giving the story more focus throughout.

Being a game that focuses on the Pop Idol industry you begin to wonder, does it address the amount of pressure and expectations put upon Idols? The exploitation, or even just that it’s a cut throat industry? The answer is not really, in some ways it even seems to encourage some questionable practices. Unfortunately to go into them would also spoil story moments, but if you’re familiar with some of Altus’ history with outdated values you won’t be shocked here. Outside of the iffy story moments the game goes all in on the Idol world, the music, the presentation and the dancing. It’s something that’s very Japanese, if you remove the whole Mirage Master element from proceedings it is still a fairly tame look at the industry. It is unfortunate that the story often does many of the characters a disservice, not because of the character but because of what the story asks/demands of them.

All of TMS takes place around Tokyo, most locations contain an Idolshere which acts as the games dungeons. The dungeons are often are themed in some way around the boss/mirage and the pop idol industry. One of the early notable ones being one themed on a corrupted photographer. The obstacle throughout is that there’s cameras positioned around the dungeon that will teleport you back to the beginning of the floor if you step in its path. It’s annoying, but in the great scheme of things it’s minor compared to some of the others. Thankfully enemies are visible as you wander around because the puzzles within the dungeon are frustrating. If you got pulled into random encounters every few steps it would risk pushing the dungeons over the threshold of tolerable. You can even stun the enemies so you can avoid them or get in an extra hit.

The combat is really the highlight of the game. From starting off fairly basic in earlier levels, it only gets better as the game builds upon it. Like both Shin Megami/Persona and Fire Emblem games there’s resistances and weaknesses to all the different forms of weapons and elemental attacks. If you hit an enemy with an attack they’re weak to, you can start a chain of attacks called Sessions. Although it’s not that simple, your team needs to learn attacks that compliment the original attack. You can potentially hit some weaknesses that don’t start session, but most will and the more your team grows you’ll have built up quite a variety of attacks/skills. The Fire Emblem weapon triangle also applies in this mashup of games, there’s at least one character for each weapon too so you can always play smartly and keep the upper hand.

To build up your pool of skills/magic and session attacks you’ll need to craft weapons through the act of Carnage unity, turning performa and items enemies drop into increasingly powerful weapons. Using that weapon gains mastery experience, unlocking the skills hidden within it. Once you’ve mastered it then it’s time to upgrade. There is also Radiant Unity which are extra skills you can use in and out of battle, or just health and EP upgrades. These are important to craft as they can really help get you out of some dire situations or open up the combat more with more opportunities for session attacks. The absolute highlight of the game is when you’ve built up the team enough to be able to leap into a fight where you can trigger a session with everyone landing a blow. This can set off a random special attack which restarts the session all over as you obliterate a group of imposing looking monsters.

Along with the main story between the chapters, you also have access to side stories which focus on each member of the team as well as some Fortuna members. These small quests range from conversations that go across several scenes, right up to hopping back into Idolspheres to collect items or fight enemies. A lot of the side stories give individuals more fleshing out when characters like Touma aren’t given that focus in the main story. It also gives more of a look into the mundane parts of Idol life, when you’re not performing on the big stage. When these stories work it is a great distraction, spending time with these characters supporting each other and striving to be the best they can be. At the same time it’s a shame that the side stories never give them an actual opportunity to grow, you just do a quest until you get the performa that ends that part of the story. Sometimes the dialogue around it make it worth it and others it will feel hollow like you’ve completed an extra chore.

The side stories are also where unfortunately some of the creepier elements of the game show. Whether it’s some of the more questionable elements of the pop idol machine, almost anything to do with Barry and Mamori, or really anything where it’s obvious characters have been ‘aged up’ to hand wave away some even grosser elements. It’s annoying that this content isn’t avoidable. There will be people that like this, hell there’s people who gripe about censorship. If you’re not a fan of ‘fan service’ and quite young girls with big boobs then this game could rub you the wrong way. There is a good game despite these elements, especially because the gameplay isn’t built around it, but it is still there and it’s ingrained in the story. Barry Goodman’s character is a real standout to some of the grosser moments. It starts off iffy and ratchets right up to full blown embarrassment that you had to experience it. Barry’s obsession with a very much younger Idol who sees him as an ‘uncle’ figure, never really calls out his inappropriate behaviour and even encourages it. They could easily have used Barry as an example of the creepier side of Idol worship, a riff on obsessed fans. Instead they lean into the creepy without any consequence.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions looked great on the Wii U and it looks great on the Switch, regardless of the mode you play it in. The game is filled with bright colours, and most locations are filled with different brightly coloured silhouettes to represent people. There are moments where it felt like there was a slight bit of slow down, but overall the game runs well. The loading times are much better than the original which is a godsend, given how much you’re having to run between areas. As for what is added in the Encore edition, there’s a few things I can’t really say anything about other than there’s some extra costumes from other games like Persona 5, Nintendo have already posted all the key info regardless. The means of obtaining them is an addition to the original game. If you’ve played the original version there isn’t much you’re missing out on unless you really care what your character wears.

There is only the Japanese vocal track, which possibly comes down to the amount of singing they’d need to also redub. Most of the time it’s alright, there’s subtitles to read regardless. Until you’re in battle that is, there’s dialogue spoken during the fights that go without any subtitles. It’s something that happens with games without an English dub, but for a rerelease/update there’s no reason it couldn’t have been added. The further into the game, the more noticeable it is as they’re still saying sentences during battle where non Japanese speakers will have no idea. With that complaint aside I can now praise how good the rest of the sound is! For a game based around Pop Idols there is a decent amount of pop songs throughout to get caught in your head. If you’re checking out this game there’s a high chance you’re at least a little bit into Japanese pop music, and this game delivers. When one of your team isn’t delivering a catchy ditty the music can’t maintain that high standard. The rest of the music is like Persona if you were phoning it in. It’s not bad, but it’s once you finish playing it’s not going to get stuck in your head. Perfectly passable.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions looked great on the Wii U and it looks great on the Switch, regardless of the mode you play it in. The game is filled with bright colours, and most locations are filled with different brightly coloured silhouettes to represent people. There are moments where it felt like there was a slight bit of slow down, but overall the game runs well. The loading times are much better than the original which is a godsend, given how much you’re having to run between areas. As for what is added in the Encore edition, there’s a few things I can’t really say anything about other than there’s some extra costumes from other games like Persona 5, Nintendo have already posted all the key info regardless. The means of obtaining them is an addition to the original game. It also includes all the DLC which added some small dungeons built around providing your team a fast way of leveling up. Be warned that using the dungeon for level grinding can quickly make your team overpowered if you want to have a challenge. There’s also some quality of life improvements that can speed up Session attacks, which would be a trudge to have to sit through when the counter climbs.