One of Nintendo’s most mysterious projects that’s in the works for Wii U, at least for the next week or so, is Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, an eccentric crossover between Nintendo’s Fire Emblem games and Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei games. Fortunately, Nintendo Treehouse Live drew back the veil on the nutty eccentricity of the game’s turn-based combat, and while it’s initially intimidating, it quickly looks like a fun, creative time for RPG fans, once you start wrapping your head around the weirdness.
As Nintendo previously revealed, battles in Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE unfold in the style of a J-Pop concert. How the combat works is, characters assume Persona-like ‘Carnage Forms’, which take after characters and classes from the Fire Emblem series, and then take on enemies called ‘Mirages’, which can be encountered in dungeons and swiped at to temporarily incapacitate, allowing players to engage them by then touching them. As players attack, if they successfully strike an enemy weak point (dictated by the Fire Emblem series weapon triangle with physical attacks and the Shin Megami Tensei magic spectrum with spells), they can chain successive attacks and passive skills with other players, so long as they line up with the previous attack in some affinity. This is called a ‘Session’, and is the key to gaining an advantage in combat.
Nintendo also detailed a bit of the game’s progression, which has players using successful Sessions to rile up a concert-like crowd in order to earn ‘Star Rankings’, which can then be used to unlock better weapons and skills that can be crafted with the aid of a character called Tiki in a hub area called Boom Palace. As players make use of progressively better weapons and skills, they’ll unlock more weapons and skills to craft with Tiki, with player progression being tied to the rhythm-like style of chaining skills and doing well with crowds. This makes for much more instant gratification than the simple system of leveling up (which still seems to be present in Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE), and players can even grind to speedily develop their characters in an area called The Arena, even if it wasn’t shown in the E3 demo. Similar to Pokemon, characters can only retain a certain amount of special skills too, so craft your strategies carefully when developing your three-person party!
If you can follow the strange, yet compelling battle and progression mechanics, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE arrives in the West very soon, and will hit both North America and Europe on June 24th, late next week, and exclusively for Wii U.
Keep dazzling Eggplante for all major news and updates on Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE.