I love Fire Emblem. I like Persona. I hate this game. There were two (2) things I enjoyed about it.

1. Laughing at it while playing with a friend

2. Larabel is in the cafe and Anna is in the shop, that's a cute detail

It's a shame that most of the discussion around Tokyo Mirage are superfans of the respective series this game is a crossover of complaining about what their expectations were and not giving any credit for the end product we actually received. Tokyo Mirage Sessions is a very solid RPG, albeit very flawed as well.

The turn based combat is fantastic, allowing nuance in the customization of character skills and how they combo off each other's abilities and a slew of challenging boss battles. Another fantastic attribute to the title is the overall aesthetics. From the menu design to the pause screen, the bright and vibrant presentation has an overwhelming allure.

Unfortunately the monotony of the chapter based story structure wanes on you and the game becomes far too formulaic. A copy paste flow to each act makes the gameply loop far too predictable and the story is too lackluster to warrant the repetition.

The game Megaten fans claim to hate, over reasons that apparently stem from the fact this game is a nothing game as opposed to “BUT MA THEMES” that Megaten fans are so obsessed with.

This game is a nonsensical fever dream that honestly better represents Persona than Fire Emblem. It doesn’t even properly represent Shin Megami Tensei, for that matter. If anyone thought Layton and Phoenix Wright was a bad crossover concept, then they’re dead wrong because it works much better than mixing gold (Fire Emblem) and sewage (Shin Megami Tensei) together. Even if the new Fire Emblem games tried to bridge the gap between Fire Emblem and SMT by virtue of them being much worse than the older entries, even FATES has better characters than SMT AND GK2, what with them having support conversations and personalities that don’t center on a specific theme most of the time. Personality is the key word here, and SMT desPISES it. Because this game is meant to be campy and fun, we have a bunch of Persona characters sporting Fire Emblem characters as Personas, the demons who represent your inner being, because dumb-dumbedy dumb, I guess. This game gets a lot of flack for misrepresenting Solacin Megadumpster-ami Tastesworsethanthesmellofadurianfruit-ensei, by completely going against the tone and philosophical theming that is so crucial to it.

And to that, I say? Good job! I can’t believe it. I’m sure SMT fans know how it feels when their favorite franchise is disrespected by a piece of media that’s supposed to respect it, but it’s just one spinoff game, and not a plethora of games like with poor Fire Emblem. I’m not saying they deserve to have this game exist, I’m saying that Fire Emblem is far less respected than SMT, even though the former is infinitely superior in every capacity. FE13 is less Fire Emblem than SMTV is SMT. If even this game hated SMT so much to the point of making it feel more like Persona than SMT, they should’ve sold the game as a Persona/Fake Fire Emblem crossover, not a SMT/Fake Fire Emblem spinoff, because it’s all in the tone. It’s far more fun and welcoming, and its premise is kinda too stupid to hate, even though it’s still disrespectful to Fire Emblem, turning Marth into a Persona thinking that it’s cool. The funny thing is: barely anyone bought this game, primarily because it has no value. There’s not much to say here, because Tokyo Mirage Sessions is an empty, solace cashgrab that failed at being even that, because everyone and their mother knows SMT and Fire Emblem are straight opposites, and cannot work whatsoever in a crossover. I really do wonder why this game was ported over to Switch considering it sold even less in Japan’s opening week compared to its Wii U counterpart...

Just an incredible waste of potential.

So much could be done with a Fire Emblem/Shin Megami Tensei crossover... and they went with this. I don't remember idols being in either of those franchises, but go on.

Its one redeeming factor is its fantastic battle system. I legit cannot knock it. It's top notch and I'd love to see it implemented in more games... just not with any of the wrappings that came with this one.

Not to be that guy but this game really should've been billed as Persona x Fire Emblem. We could've had a game where you do demon negotiation with Hector or something but instead its just watered down persona with the shadow dragon cast. I don't mind the story revolving around idols but it's not particularly interesting and again seems more like a persona plot beat. Isn't persona more popular? WTF was the marketing team thinking. Anyway had to stop playing because the emulator kept crashing but from what I saw the dungeons were alright and the gameplay was tight if nothing else.

I couldn't really get myself to care about what was going on in this game.

Maybe it was the character writing or the worldbuilding it was doing, but nothing gripped me enough to keep me going. I didn't find the characters particularly interesting, which... kind of matters to me as a Fire Emblem fan. Felt very flat.

I'll have to give this game another chance. I'll probably play the Switch port at some point.

This game is basically persona except without any social sim aspects, and the personas are fire emblem characters for some reason. Theres a reasonable amount of fun antics that go on in this game that make it worth playing, but if that concept and idol stuff isn't your thing, you def won't have a good time with this one. It certainly isn't the shin megami tensei and fire emblem crossover most fans would expect, and I can understand the distain some people have for this. As someone who had no prior experience with SMT or fire emblem before playing this and likes idols, I had a good time. Like most other atlus RPGs, the last act draws on way longer than it has any right to. This is still probably the best RPG you can get on the wii U, if that means literally anything.