PLATFORM Wii U BATTLE SYSTEM INTERACTION ORIGINALITY STORY MUSIC & SOUND VISUALS CHALLENGE Moderate COMPLETION TIME 40-60 Hours OVERALL + Fun and clever battle system + Skill progression and leveling entertaining - Story is a whole lot of nothing - Characters are annoying and vapid Click here for scoring definitions

   Since the Wii U gets little else, any RPG that makes it to the system is going to be unique in some way. Announced way back when Nintendo was trying to drum up interest in the console, the game that would eventually become Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE stirred up quite a bit of interest, beginning as an idea to cross Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem. Three years later and Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is less of an amalgam of those two franchises and instead a game that forges its own path. For better and for worse, it is a game that succeeds where it needs to and falls flat in areas that keep it from being great.

   Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE begins with a young Tsubasa Oribe watching a concert of her popstar sister. Suddenly, her sister, along with the audience minus Tsubasa, disappears. Five years later and Tsubasa, along with her friend Itsuki, attend a concert where a similar event occurs. This time, two guardian angels, in the form of Fire Emblem characters, called Mirages, appear. They come from the Idolasphere, a dimension filled with mostly mindless Mirages that were responsible for kidnapping Tsubasa's sister. Upon the discovery that they are in fact Mirage Masters, the two are recruited by Fortuna Entertainment, a representation company that acts as a front for the recruitment of Mirage Masters to fight against the Mirage threat. The two are put on the fast track to stardom all while trying to discover why the Mirages are targeting idols.

   This is done in turn-based fashion. Those looking for a Fire Emblem-esque game will need to look elsewhere, as this game is Shin Megami Tensei through and through, with occasional references to the former series aside. This is never more apparent than during battles, where the ability names and weakness/resistance system are lifted straight from Shin Megami Tensei. Players control up to three characters at a time and a useful counter keeps track of the turn order for allies and enemies alike. This is fairly boilerplate, but what separates Tokyo Mirage Sessions from other Shin Megami Tensei games are Session attacks. Characters have three different types of skills throughout the game, one of these being Session skills. When a character exploits a weakness, generally elemental or one of the four weapons types, a different character will immediately follow up the attack if they have the matching Session skill. Depending on the quality of that attack, this can also lead to another character following up with another Session attack. This will continue until everyone in the party has participated or no unused character has a relevant Session.

The Bloom Palace serves, somewhat irritatingly, as the only place to upgrade weapons and learn passive skills.

   Battling is quite entertaining for a large portion of the game. Early on, Sessions actually make the battles feel more succinct, having to only input a few commands to clear random battles and still providing the feeling that the whole party participates in every fight. This feeling only solidifies as characters begin unlocking abilities that allow them to participate in Sessions while on the bench. However, the further along one progresses in the game, the more lengthy and dull the Sessions become. Once the entire seven-person party gets in on a Session, it can take between ten and fifteen seconds before the player has any input on the fight again. Throw in some higher health totals to account for the seven attacks per Session and it starts to drag the game down quite a bit. Compounding this even further are the combination attacks, which can be optionally triggered during Sessions and provide powerful abilities all while continuing the chain further.

   Still, combined with well-paced character progression the dungeon-crawling elements of the game move along at quite a clip. Characters learn skills from their equipped weapons, called Carnages, which unlock from battling. While each Carnage only has four abilities that are quickly unlocked, after a certain point in the game Carnages can be reset at a higher power level to either relearn the available moves or to reinforce existing ones, increasing the abilities' power or decreasing their EP cost. Characters will also increase their performance ranking throughout the game, giving them access to passive abilities, some more useful than others. The multiple means by which characters grow all work well on their own and give a solid feeling of progress, but similar to the combat, they come with a caveat.

   A holographic pop idol named Tiki is the only one who can perform the rituals required for weapon improvement and gaining passive skills. Tiki cannot exist outside her home, the Bloom Palace, which is attached to the character's base of operations. This means that anytime the an upgrade is desired the player has to exit the dungeon — traveling through several loading screens on the way — to get to the Bloom Palace. It is an incredibly tedious process exacerbated by the Wii U controller constantly sending text messages that rituals are ready to be performed while vainly searching for the next waypoint. Fortunately, none of the dungeons in the game involve endless randomized corridors, instead opting for a unique theme and gimmick, each intriguing if simplistic.

Fortunately, you'll be seeing a lot of this screen.

   The rest of the game will be the point of contention for most. One's tolerance or enjoyment of idol culture and broad fiction stereotypes will decide this game's fate in the long run. Needless to say, Tokyo Mirage Sessions' story and characters are all middling at best and awful at worst. Despite a central mystery that seems like it would get far more national attention than it does, the story of this game does a whole lot of nothing until the last two chapters, where a plot dump finally brings in more explicit Fire Emblem recognition. The setup for the six chapters isn't that far removed from a modern Persona game, where someone gets kidnapped and the heroes must go to rescue them. Modern Persona, however, has a likeable cast of characters to carry its duller moments, something this game needed and sorely lacked. Those characters could also react appropriately to situations and give the events some dramatic weight.

   Characters in this game seem more concerned with how each kidnapping will affect their careers than anything else. Barring the fact they are all burgeoning prima donnas, its difficult to recall any characteristics about them outside of their immediate pop stardom and whatever corporate-led direction they are being shuffled towards. And why should they care about anything else? With the exception of the eventual world-ending calamity that shows up for the third act, any problem they encounter is on par with an episode of a Disney Channel sitcom, a minor inconvenience to be solved in thirty minutes or a side quest to teach Tsubasa how to overcome her fear of shaking hands with her adoring public. These side quests should be done, as they unlock further passive skills and combination attacks for party members, but don't plan on becoming emotionally invested in the young girl who is famous for hosting a show about microwaving food.

   It is somewhat ironic that in a game that literally features musical numbers that the music is so utterly forgetable. Even with big, sweeping cutscenese dedicated to them, the songs never register above bland radio fare. The score is present, though it is difficult to remember even the main battle theme. The game is visually interesting and looks great for the Wii U, though many of the environments are fairly static. It is a colorful game and is anabashed about that fact, as well as about the hilariously overdesigned battle costumes of its characters.

   Despite all this, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE doesn't feel like a waste of time. It can feel a bit on the easy side for a lot of the game, though the available Hard mode should provide a challenge for those seeking it. In spite of expectations, on the whole it is an enjoyable experience that manages to stand apart from a lot of its contemporaries, even when it cribs heavily from said contemporaries. It has its flaws and its entire premise will have more mileage with some than others, but fans of the genre will find something to like here.