What a weird game this one is! Wow.
OK, so Nintendo announced that they were going to do a Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem mashup game a couple of years ago... but what was made is more like a new Atlus JRPG heavily inspired by Persona, only without the Social Link and School micromanagement, and more streamlined to dungeon combat. With a very heavy layer of weird Japanese Idol stuff added on top.
After Persona 4 Dancing all Night, the Pop Idol stuff, and the themes involved, seems like a carry through... It's a little strange to me that Atlus has been so into that sorta thing lately, but there's a sort of fun, and joyous tone to it all, and once I managed to hold back my cringe reflex, I found myself having a really good time.
TMS' menus have a real bright and colorful style to them, that reminds me of Persona 3 and 4 in a positive way, with its stylistic transitions and clean looking UI. Just with a more candy coated color scheme, and more sparkles. haha. The "Mirages" take the place of a Persona game's "Personas", as the justification on why modern teenagers are using magic, and are in the form of Fire Emblem heroes. They're cheesy as hell, dressed up in their gaudy Fire Emblem costumes, and look completely obnoxious until they transform into weapons (hilariously called "Carnage"), but still talk in weapon form like in the Soul Eater anime or something!
Fire Emblem influences might not be as strong as Persona influences, but they're definitely there. The Mirages are Fire Emblem characters, obviously. The "Carnage" weapons you use and get skills from seem to have mostly Fire Emblem weapon references. The combat system uses the Fire Emblem weapon and magic triangles for it's resistances and weaknesses. Lance bests Sword, Sword beats Axe, Axe beats Lance, you know... When leveling up, I noticed that the characters stats seem to mirror Fire Emblem stats. A lot of the music and sound effects in the game also borrow from Fire Emblem, for things like the little chime you hear when you level up, and stuff like that.
The combat system is totally an Atlus JRPG combat system, and the dungeons remind me of Persona dungeons. This combat system is pretty cool in what I've played so far... There's lots of nice little helping touches, like if I select a sword abilility, and there's an enemy that I've already found out is weak to sword abilities, that enemy will have an exclamation point show up on him to let me know he's weak to the ability I've selected. If you attack an enemy's weakness, a teammate might be able to get in on the attack with one of their own skills in what's called a "Session". So if I select that enemy I'd see the ! on him showing he's weak to the ability I've selected, and then I'll see my team member raise up his or her hand and say something to encourage the attack, indicating that they can do a "Session" if I attack with that ability. You can modify auto attack behavior of allies, and toggle that on and off on a button press.... Enemies randomly spawn as you take steps in the dungeon, but there's no random encounters, instead if you get attacked first they get an advantage at the start of the fight, but if you manage to hit them with your sword first, the enemy goes down, you can either start the fight with an advantage or avoid fighting altogether.
Anyway, I've only played like 5 hours so far, but the combat system seems totally legit in this one.
There was a lot of fuss about the localization. I will say that it's sorta a shit job, to be honest. All the voiced dialogue is in Japanese with subtitles, but the characters are very expressive. I watch anime and foreign films enough that I can read subtitles at light speed, and sadly understand a little bit of Japanese even (I might watch too much anime), but I can see the Japanese voices being a problem for a lot of people who aren't as big of weirdos as I am. Combat dialogue isn't anything that important, with characters saying simple lines in heavy repetition, and I can understand some of it, but what I can't understand irritates me a little since there's no subtitles on the combat dialogue.... Some minor stuff, needed adjustment in the UI as well. For example, most Western gamers read from left to right, so the battle indicator bar thingy at the top needed to flow from left to right, but it goes from right to left. Character status pictures are on the right side, instead of the left... stuff like that shows that the localization wasn't done with care.
The censorship added to the poor localization is just kinda stupid. A few sexy outfits were modified, and characters were aged up a tad... but there's enough sketchy outfits still included in the game that frankly if someone walked in on me playing this thing I'd feel horrified. You're going to have a black cloud covering some boobies in a cut scene, but not when it goes back to the game? Oh, let's censor a fairly normal looking dress, but leave the outfit with boobs popping out from just being covered by a little ribbon. The censored stuff is just nonsense. Its like removing the character creation boob slider from Xenoblade Chronicles X sort of complete, unnecessary, nonsense that doesn't even help remove the trashiness the game has in it all over the place because Japan. My opinion on the censorship, is that it doesn't effect anything I care about. I wanted to show my support for new Atlus RPGs being released out west, more than I wanted to show displeasure with censorship, so I bought the game.
I'm having fun with this one so far. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who likes JRPGs and owns a Wii U.
OK, so Nintendo announced that they were going to do a Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem mashup game a couple of years ago... but what was made is more like a new Atlus JRPG heavily inspired by Persona, only without the Social Link and School micromanagement, and more streamlined to dungeon combat. With a very heavy layer of weird Japanese Idol stuff added on top.
After Persona 4 Dancing all Night, the Pop Idol stuff, and the themes involved, seems like a carry through... It's a little strange to me that Atlus has been so into that sorta thing lately, but there's a sort of fun, and joyous tone to it all, and once I managed to hold back my cringe reflex, I found myself having a really good time.
TMS' menus have a real bright and colorful style to them, that reminds me of Persona 3 and 4 in a positive way, with its stylistic transitions and clean looking UI. Just with a more candy coated color scheme, and more sparkles. haha. The "Mirages" take the place of a Persona game's "Personas", as the justification on why modern teenagers are using magic, and are in the form of Fire Emblem heroes. They're cheesy as hell, dressed up in their gaudy Fire Emblem costumes, and look completely obnoxious until they transform into weapons (hilariously called "Carnage"), but still talk in weapon form like in the Soul Eater anime or something!
Fire Emblem influences might not be as strong as Persona influences, but they're definitely there. The Mirages are Fire Emblem characters, obviously. The "Carnage" weapons you use and get skills from seem to have mostly Fire Emblem weapon references. The combat system uses the Fire Emblem weapon and magic triangles for it's resistances and weaknesses. Lance bests Sword, Sword beats Axe, Axe beats Lance, you know... When leveling up, I noticed that the characters stats seem to mirror Fire Emblem stats. A lot of the music and sound effects in the game also borrow from Fire Emblem, for things like the little chime you hear when you level up, and stuff like that.
The combat system is totally an Atlus JRPG combat system, and the dungeons remind me of Persona dungeons. This combat system is pretty cool in what I've played so far... There's lots of nice little helping touches, like if I select a sword abilility, and there's an enemy that I've already found out is weak to sword abilities, that enemy will have an exclamation point show up on him to let me know he's weak to the ability I've selected. If you attack an enemy's weakness, a teammate might be able to get in on the attack with one of their own skills in what's called a "Session". So if I select that enemy I'd see the ! on him showing he's weak to the ability I've selected, and then I'll see my team member raise up his or her hand and say something to encourage the attack, indicating that they can do a "Session" if I attack with that ability. You can modify auto attack behavior of allies, and toggle that on and off on a button press.... Enemies randomly spawn as you take steps in the dungeon, but there's no random encounters, instead if you get attacked first they get an advantage at the start of the fight, but if you manage to hit them with your sword first, the enemy goes down, you can either start the fight with an advantage or avoid fighting altogether.
Anyway, I've only played like 5 hours so far, but the combat system seems totally legit in this one.
There was a lot of fuss about the localization. I will say that it's sorta a shit job, to be honest. All the voiced dialogue is in Japanese with subtitles, but the characters are very expressive. I watch anime and foreign films enough that I can read subtitles at light speed, and sadly understand a little bit of Japanese even (I might watch too much anime), but I can see the Japanese voices being a problem for a lot of people who aren't as big of weirdos as I am. Combat dialogue isn't anything that important, with characters saying simple lines in heavy repetition, and I can understand some of it, but what I can't understand irritates me a little since there's no subtitles on the combat dialogue.... Some minor stuff, needed adjustment in the UI as well. For example, most Western gamers read from left to right, so the battle indicator bar thingy at the top needed to flow from left to right, but it goes from right to left. Character status pictures are on the right side, instead of the left... stuff like that shows that the localization wasn't done with care.
The censorship added to the poor localization is just kinda stupid. A few sexy outfits were modified, and characters were aged up a tad... but there's enough sketchy outfits still included in the game that frankly if someone walked in on me playing this thing I'd feel horrified. You're going to have a black cloud covering some boobies in a cut scene, but not when it goes back to the game? Oh, let's censor a fairly normal looking dress, but leave the outfit with boobs popping out from just being covered by a little ribbon. The censored stuff is just nonsense. Its like removing the character creation boob slider from Xenoblade Chronicles X sort of complete, unnecessary, nonsense that doesn't even help remove the trashiness the game has in it all over the place because Japan. My opinion on the censorship, is that it doesn't effect anything I care about. I wanted to show my support for new Atlus RPGs being released out west, more than I wanted to show displeasure with censorship, so I bought the game.
I'm having fun with this one so far. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who likes JRPGs and owns a Wii U.
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