athenian200
Circumspect
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2010
I've played this game recently, and it was very interesting. It feels a lot like a traditional JRPG, but it seems to require more complex strategies in order to beat. It's the game that tided me over until BoTW came out, actually.
Rather than traditional protagonists on a quest, you actually play as aspiring entertainers that rely on the abilities of beings called "Mirages" in order to fight in certain places. So half the game is played in the real world, and the other half is played in these special places called Idolaspheres.
It has the Fire Emblem system of weapon weaknesses, and it's important to raise your whole party evenly in order to take advantage of sessions (note the title of the game) that you should be trying to trigger as often as possible by targeting enemy weaknesses. So the game punishes you a bit if you use an attack that an enemy isn't weak against, by simply making it a single attack rather than a long string of attacks like you'll need to beat enemies. If you try to raise some party members at the expense of others, the game will get progressively more difficult as it assumes you're taking advantage of longer sessions. It's also worth noting that your accessories in this game effectively double as your armor, and you need to constantly gather materials for new weapons and level them up in order to gain new skills.
The game can be very difficult, especially if you play on Normal or Hard, but I find that it's the kind of difficulty I deal with well. It doesn't require good reflexes or even a lot of creativity, so much as it involves paying careful attention to patterns in battle, managing your party and inventory carefully, and thinking about specific strategies and parties that might work well against particular enemies. This is the kind of game where you might actually need buffs, debuffs, and status ailments in order to put you over the edge, whereas in most JRPGs they're just nice to have.
I personally think that it's a very good game with a really interesting and creative storyline, perhaps even better than a lot of the Final Fantasy games I've played over the years. It makes good use of the Gamepad, treating it like an in-game phone of some kind that you use to chat with your party members. It's just a shame that it came out near the end of the Wii U's lifespan, and that not a lot of people will get to enjoy it. A game like this earlier in the system's life might have helped it more.
Your thoughts?
Rather than traditional protagonists on a quest, you actually play as aspiring entertainers that rely on the abilities of beings called "Mirages" in order to fight in certain places. So half the game is played in the real world, and the other half is played in these special places called Idolaspheres.
It has the Fire Emblem system of weapon weaknesses, and it's important to raise your whole party evenly in order to take advantage of sessions (note the title of the game) that you should be trying to trigger as often as possible by targeting enemy weaknesses. So the game punishes you a bit if you use an attack that an enemy isn't weak against, by simply making it a single attack rather than a long string of attacks like you'll need to beat enemies. If you try to raise some party members at the expense of others, the game will get progressively more difficult as it assumes you're taking advantage of longer sessions. It's also worth noting that your accessories in this game effectively double as your armor, and you need to constantly gather materials for new weapons and level them up in order to gain new skills.
The game can be very difficult, especially if you play on Normal or Hard, but I find that it's the kind of difficulty I deal with well. It doesn't require good reflexes or even a lot of creativity, so much as it involves paying careful attention to patterns in battle, managing your party and inventory carefully, and thinking about specific strategies and parties that might work well against particular enemies. This is the kind of game where you might actually need buffs, debuffs, and status ailments in order to put you over the edge, whereas in most JRPGs they're just nice to have.
I personally think that it's a very good game with a really interesting and creative storyline, perhaps even better than a lot of the Final Fantasy games I've played over the years. It makes good use of the Gamepad, treating it like an in-game phone of some kind that you use to chat with your party members. It's just a shame that it came out near the end of the Wii U's lifespan, and that not a lot of people will get to enjoy it. A game like this earlier in the system's life might have helped it more.
Your thoughts?
