Topic: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE - 2016 Wii U GOTY by default

[broodwars]

I'm fine with having them cut the Hot Springs DLC. DLC is nothing mare then another way to alter and distort the original piece of work. If Hot Springs were meant to be a part of the game's artistic vision then they should have been included in the game itself. You can't draw a mustache on the Mona Lisa and call it art you uncultured savages.

So by that same practice, I guess the extra characters & stages in Smash Bros. & Mario Kart (as well as 99% of the content in Splatoon) is also "like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa." After all, it's DLC that couldn't be "part of the game's artistic vision" since it "wasn't included in the game itself." 

[Order.RSS]

DJ MasterSeal is a bit grating but this is actually a pretty good video for explaining the game and how exactly it works. Somewhat similar to the Xenoblade Chronicles X survival guides.

"Grating" is pretty generous haha! Yikes are these lines bad, almost purposefully so? "You know that DJ MasterSeal likes to SLAY" it's like someone's uncle trying to pose as young and hip on Snapchat or something hahaha. Maybe it's not so bad after all they're not dubbing it in English. But yeah, looks good and the combat system doesn't seem toooooo complicated from this trailer so I didn't mind suffering through that awful voiceover haha.

[TOPHATANT123]

Yeah I didn't want to be too harsh, the narrator did as best he could, it was just the script he was given was atrociously bad.

[Khushrenada]

I'm fine with having them cut the Hot Springs DLC. DLC is nothing mare then another way to alter and distort the original piece of work. If Hot Springs were meant to be a part of the game's artistic vision then they should have been included in the game itself. You can't draw a mustache on the Mona Lisa and call it art you uncultured savages.

I wouldn't call it art either. More like an improvement or genius masterwork. Interestingly, those would also be the correct terms when referring to the Hot Springs DLC.




Genius masterwork.

[Evan_B]

http://youtu.be/mp9mzmq5Oas

Oribe Tsubasa a cute. A CUTE, I SAY.

[Enner]

The NA and EU reviews are in and the thumbs are up. Can't wait to get my copy! I hope my hold for the special edition at Gamestop is ready.

[Enner]

The Gamestop I went to had plenty of the Stupid Editions of this game in stock. In face, so much more than the regular edition that they won't be able to fulfill preorders for the regular edition of the game!

As for the game itself...


This game gets me. I'm only 2 and a half hours in, but I'm really happy playing the game so far. Only minor quibbles so far:

1.  the graphical fidelity is clean, but modest
2. the menu button is on Y button as opposed to the expected X button.

Other than that...


Session attacks are going to be so fun to learn!

Oh, and those who felt as if they suffered through Xenoblade Chronicles X's opening lectures will be happy to know that this game kicks you in to the business in record time for a JRPG.

Ah, lastly I greatly appreciate how the dialog sequences have the familiar features you'd expect from a visual novel.

[broodwars]

I'm currently at the first boss, and so far I'm digging it...with one exception: for a game that focuses SO MUCH on music, I'm finding the music in this game kind of...shitty, especially compared to the Persona series that this game draws so much obvious inspiration from.  Also, there really is no justifiable reason why the devs didn't allow off-screen play.

There also seems to be a fair amount of dialogue that the localizers just didn't care enough to give subtitles to.

[Enner]

Just don't let Syrenne have her ear catch the Persona comparison. She's adamant on the SMT-ness of the collaboration. Sadly, few will understand the difference (myself included).

The music of Persona 3 and 4 delve heavily in to what Japan things of hip hop, rap, and maybe jazz. Tokyo Mirage Sessions' songs goes right to J-Pop and other things treble. As someone who let himself get eaten up by Love Live! School Idol Festival, TMS#FE's songs are my jam. (Fitting since Kiria is voiced by an actress who is on of the main nine characters of Love Live.) If you didn't know you disliked the more populous side of J-Pop, TMS#FE will make sure of it.

Of course, maybe the music is kinda bad, and I am unaware. The BGM of my first few hours of the game has been only pleasant, with the battle music delivering the expected beats.

[broodwars]

I like the Vocal song Reincarnation well enough, but all the other music I've heard so far just sounds so....generic, and I can definitely see myself muting it after a few hours. I'm fine with good J-Pop, but so much of modern J-Pop just sounds like remixes of the same tune.

[broodwars]

As for the difference between Shin Megami Tensei and the modern incarnations of the Persona series, I'd put it like this: Shin Megami Tensei is what you'd get if you took a Persona game; drained it of all personality and style; threw any story and characterization in the shredder; and then set the game in a post-apocalyptic world. If I'm being too subtle here, I vehemently dislike the other Shin Megami Tensei games (having played SMT 4, Devil Summoner 2, and Digital Devil Saga).

The Persona games took the SMT battle system, and they added a great sense of "style" and attitude to the experience, along with a strong focus on story and character relationships. They threw away the whole "demon negotiation" aspect of typical SMT because it was stupid, and they streamlined the game's systems to make them more approachable and less-inclined to just annihilate the player (it is by far the most popular franchise Atlus owns). Whereas the SMT series focuses primarily on dungeon-crawling, the Persona games split the experience between managing your character's daily social life to min-max the battle experience and actual dungeon exploration. Frankly, there's also just a tonal difference between the franchises, with Persona having a more optimistic, upbeat tone compared to SMT's dark & stoic tone.

[ejamer]

...  There also seems to be a fair amount of dialogue that the localizers just didn't care enough to give subtitles to.

That's hardly a fair complaint - I mean, the localization team was already very busy. They had to prioritize what changes could be made.


(I'll keep beating dead horses as long as Nintendo keeps killing them.  It's not a joke though - localization resources are limited so there are always choices made about where their effort goes.)


Making a bunch of pointless changes means less time for useful changes. Deciding what is/isn't important might be a matter of opinion - but providing English translations so people know what is being said is clearly more important to me than changing character costumes to be more modest.

[broodwars]

Made it up to the 2nd half of the 2nd dungeon last night before I just had to go to sleep for the night morning. The music's definitely improved from the 1st dungeon, and the combat's vintage Persona (if a touch on the extremely easy side). While it's nice that you can teleport back to your base at almost any time;heal up; and fuse new Persona create new Unities, it's annoying to then have to go back to the map; reselect the dungeon area; walk to the dungeon door; and then have to walk all the way back to where you were. The mid-dungeon teleporters help, but it still makes me groan every time I get a notification that I can make a new Unity or one of my party's weapons is maxed out. It's definitely a case where I wish they just created a temporary warp point there in the dungeon, as other games like Darksiders 2 do to get around this very monotony.

I'm a little concerned how quickly I'm unlocking Unities. Either this game's withholding the full list (possibly for FE-style class-ups) or there's a very limited number of skills and weapons in this game).

I also gave one of the DLC dungeons a look, and yeah...enemy levels skyrocket quickly, but I can very easily see those dungeons becoming game-breaking later on.

[Enner]

There are Master Seals, more party members, and eventually back up sessions. I'm hopeful that there will be more numbers to grow.

[broodwars]

I've been told by Shaymin that you only see Unities listed that you have at least 1 of the components for, so that explains the short lists right now.

[Ian Sane]

So I've finished Chapter 1 and did my first side quest.  So far this game is great!  It has been pretty easy thus far (I haven't died once) but I've heard it gets harder.  I feel like I'm quite overpowered as by the time I got to the second dungeon boss I was effortlessly destroying the regular enemies with just a couple sessions and they hardly even had a chance to do damage to me.  I keep going out of the dungeon whenever I get new Unities so that involves a lot of returning to the dungeon and thus grinding some more.  Typically I would only bail from a dungeon if I needed to heal so this approach was causing me to play more battles than I typically would in an RPG, thus putting me at a higher level.

I really like the gameplay with the sessions and exploiting the weaknesses of the enemies.  If this is similar to a Persona game then I may need to try that series out.  There are a couple quirks that I needed to figure out.  First of all you pretty much should be using EP at all times.  But I didn't know how to replenish that other than with items so I was thrown off.  The pop machines work like inns.  Once I got that I understood the gameplay a lot better.  I figured a pop machine would dispense items to heal with.  Everything has some typical RPG equivalent but it isn't obvious at first. 

The story is pretty stupid but I like the main characters.  I would have preferred dubbed dialog but when the alternative was not getting the game at all this is an acceptable tradeoff.  I agree with others though that I feel like I'm missing something with the stuff that isn't translated, like the dialog in battles.  The game is also super Japanese and doesn't explain things in a North American context.  Like a profile will say the character is in "3rd Year".  I don't know what that is.  Is that Grade 12?  A more thorough translation might have addressed that.  The use of Yen also took some time to get used to since I have no idea of the conversion rate so if some item is 7000 yen is that a lot?  Once I got an idea of what other items cost and how much money I earn in battles it was fine to adjust but it isn't intuitive for me.

I think so far this would be in the conversation for GOTY even if there was a fuller crop of Wii U titles.  It seems like someone's labour of love, which is unfortunate for a game that didn't sell well in Japan, will not sell well here, cannot be ported to a more popular competing platform because of the Fire Emblem connection, and will probably have issues with re-releases due to being a joint work of Atlus and Nintendo.  This is too good of a game for a dying platform and us Wii U owners should be grateful for it.  If you like RPGs and you own a Wii U you should buy it.

[TOPHATANT123]

Typically people just knock off 2 zeros to get a rough approximation, eg 7000 Yen = $70

In the UK Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE opened at #16 on the charts, which sounds bad but comparatively it did quite well for it's self when you consider Atlus's own Odin Sphere Leifthrasir debuted at #23 on PS4, and the Wii U's other Nintendo X Sega collaboration this week Mario & Sonic debuted at #32.


http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1239577

[Shaymin]

And I'd wager TMS had the smallest shipment, too.

[broodwars]

If you like the combat system and style, Ian, you'll find the transition to something like Persona 4 or 5 pretty smooth. However, the modern Persona games have a considerable scheduling component to your time outside dungeons: in order to boost the levels your fused Personas are created at, you have to spend your limited time outside dungeons strengthening bonds with NPCs and your other party members. It can be a little stressful trying to min-max your limited time between when certain characters are or aren't available. I only mention this because one of the more relaxing things about TMS is that you can pretty much do what you want whenever you want to do it, so if you're expecting that in the Persona series...don't.

[broodwars]

OK, after unlocking Kiria's first (?) Ad-Lib attack "The Labyrinth", I'm kind of miffed that that song didn't end up on the soundtrack CD. It's better than at least 3 of the songs that DID make the CD. The attack itself is pretty damn awesome, too, though oddly enough it seems to trigger less often than Touma's.

[broodwars]

Reached Chapter 3 after spending quite a few hours knocking out requests and character side quests during the Intermission (incidentally, the person who designed that request for 3 Maca Leaves when the damn things have like a 1% drop rate off an uncommon enemy in the 3rd dungeon can go **** himself). Couple brief observations:

- I despised the sheer monotony of the 2nd story dungeon, but I really liked the 3rd story dungeon with its emphasis on photography. It also had pretty good BGM.

- I find Nintendo's insane demand to censor the 3rd dungeon (and Tsubasa's outfit at the end of that dungeon) hilarious considering one of Tsuabasa's Diva outfits is a pair of short-shorts & a sports bra and her Amrita Girl (FMV) outfit is LITERALLY a bikini! Why even BOTHER censoring swimsuits out of the game in ONE instance while keeping them in everywhere else?

- Kiria's...umm..."reaction" at the start of her 2nd sidequest is hilarious. 

[TOPHATANT123]

Tidbits from the development staff.
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/tokyo-mirage-sessions-fe-team-talks-atlus-localiza/1100-6441341/

When I started out, games were created by just a handful of people. This one is on an HD device, which brings the number of development staff to over one hundred. Toward the second half of the development phase, I remember we had to convert conference rooms into office space. There was so much heat generated by PCs and people that the air conditioning could not keep up. The fact that it was hot even in wintertime is now a fond memory.

[Ian Sane]

Doing chapter 2 right now.  I got Kiria's first side mission shortly after starting it and it's pretty funny to halt everything and do that mission, which looks to take place over at LEAST a day, while the city is in darkness and people need to be saved and all that.  I guess that is no different than accumulating multiple days with overnight inn stays while the princess needs to be saved in other games.  Somehow in this setting it strikes me as silly, maybe because there aren't inns or any real day/night switch unless dictated by the story.

Nintendo's censoring is so scatterbrained.  I had a character scream "****" which if I was a parent would upset me more than a girl of legal age in a bikini.  This was in the voice acting as well as on screen.  I can't wrap my head around the thought pattern for which material to edit.  It's like whoever made the call just butted in at a few points but didn't play the whole game and the people putting in the edits only did so at the very specific examples that their boss pointed out.  So if Mr. Fussy noticed this one specific scene that shows too much skin they fixed that scene and ONLY that scene.  Instead of barrage of censorship it feels more like the game got as much in under the radar as they could.  It might just be that Nintendo's content police suck at their job and miss tons of stuff.

[Enner]

It's not about the bikini, it's about how it's used. Context matters!

I have yet to get to Chapter 2. Hopefully I'll get to it on Friday.

As for a teenager saying "****" in a T-rated game, that sound about right.

[Oedo]

This game is amazing. I'm not as far into it as I would like to be yet (hoping to change that in the next few days), but so far it has more than lived up to the hype I had for it.