Game Info Platform Wii U Publisher Nintendo Developer Atlus Release Date Jun 24, 2016

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE deserves its turn in the spotlight. Tokyo Mirage Sessions takes its characters' craft to heart. Every fight is a stage, every attack a performance, and the entire thing is paced so well that the act never truly wears thin. It trades on dungeons and combat in the style of the Shin Megami Tensei series (complete with shadowy demonic enemies bent on consuming our world) while borrowing a heap of fantasy lore from classic Fire Emblem games, then draws both into the gleaming world of pop stardom in present-day Tokyo. This mashup might seem absurd, but the end result is absurdly good. In spite of some of its source material, Tokyo Mirage Sessions feels as much like a magical girl anime (think upbeat teens with jeweled transformation lockets and overly sincere catchphrases) as anything else — particularly in the beginning. Just to set the stage, the main character is recruited by a talent agency alongside a group of wannabe singers, models and actors. They struggle to improve themselves and land increasingly better gigs, broadening their skills and their public visibility.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions feels as much like a magical girl anime as anything else At the same time they're also Mirage Masters, fighters imbued with the power of heroic spirits like Fire Emblem's own Chrom, Caeda, Tharja et al. to fight the evil mirages trying to steal the energy of the innocent, performance arts-loving populace of Tokyo. The characters even occasionally get their own glittery, spectacular transformation scenes when they enter a battle. It's like a co-ed version of Sailor Moon for the Love Live! age, and that is absolutely something I'm on board with. Combat in Tokyo Mirage Sessions will be familiar enough to anyone who's played a Shin Megami Tensei or Persona game in recent years. You have all the usual options, but more incentive than ever to use character skills rather than just straightforward attacks. That's because skills (typically elemental spells for your magic users and weapon-based actions for your fighters) can cause Sessions — chained attacks carried out by each member of your party for no cost. You get multiple hits for the price of one, and on top of that, Sessions dramatically increase the amount of loot you'll get at the end of the encounter. There's no reason not to aim for a Session every single time, because they're as useful to execute as they are exciting to watch. Sessions start out simply, limited to the three members of your party and triggered when you exploit an enemy's weakness or use a special attack. Around the point when that started feeling like old news, my party members began unlocking a passive ability that allowed them to participate in Sessions even when they weren't part of the active party. Session chains became longer and longer, did more and more damage, and earned exponentially more loot. When even that started to lose its novelty, the game introduced Duo Arts, randomly triggered performances between two characters (often reprising a duet they had in one of their side stories) that allowed for the session chain to continue even further. These animations are short enough that I never felt like they were dragging the pace down, even as the combos grew. Most of Tokyo Mirage Sessions' combat takes place in tiered dungeons connected to principal areas of the map like Shibuya and Harajuku. You'll run through clearing them level by level, swinging your sword to gain the upper hand in the mirage encounters that appear along the way. Each dungeon has a theme reflecting its place in the story, and each also has a core puzzle element that must be solved in order to progress. This is where my biggest gripe with the game comes in — dungeons are puzzles that feel like massive obstacles even after you've solved them. Even understanding the mechanisms for Tokyo Mirage Sessions' dungeons seldom saves you from the work of grappling with them. Some of the pain of this is alleviated by warp pads and shortcuts that can be opened up, but there are some dungeons that remained as frustrating on my third visit as they were the first time through. And you will visit and revisit those dungeons, particularly if you're completing side stories for each main character in the cast. And honestly, those side stories forgive every moment of irritation the dungeons might inflict.

Spoilers, but the answer is friendship. The answer is always friendship.