Light spoilers further down.
So, I bought and played TMS#FE this past June and returned to it these past weeks, reaching the endgame on my lunatic playthrough. I had been vocal, including on this forum, about how I dont like the direction the game took with the Fire Emblem brand, with it being an idol game and featuring a limited crossover with generally weak and forgettable FE characters. But I picked the game up anyway out of a mix of morbid curiosity and boredom. Import impressions described it as a strong JRPG and that was something I wanted even if I had misgivings about the way the game positioned itself and where the positive feedback may or may not be coming from (i.e. how much was just to excuse the art direction, idol theme, FE crossover by other means than just embracing them).
In any case, I think both a) those import impressions were correct and the game is a strong JRPG with respect to combat, dungeons, and boss battles and b) that the game was too idols are amazing for me, despite toying with some darker themes it ultimately rejected, and the FE crossover was extremely weak. It is a game Im glad I bought and that I like a lot, but not unreservedly so. The stories, characters, art, etc. all leave much to be desired, while the meat of the game is strong.
But perhaps what I like most about the game is that it is what finally drove me to trying out the wider Shin Megami Tensei super-series, for lack of a better term. Namely, I played Persona 4 (twice), Persona 3 (once), and a bit of Nocturne this past summer. Taken from another post of mine (slightly edited), here are my thoughts on Persona in short:
So, towards the point of this thread, suddenly I find myself greatly anticipating Persona 5. And this brings me back to TMS#FE. Clearly, Persona 4 came out in a very different time, being a PS2 game in 2008 as opposed to a PS3/4 game in 2016, and I find myself thinking what I would and would not like the Persona team to do similarly to the team that made TMS#FE.
What I wish theyd take:
-Dungeons: This was probably the weakest area of the Persona games for me, and the dungeons were extremely minimalist and dungeon crawly. Persona 4 had some light puzzle design in the game dungeon but that is pretty much it. TMS dungeons had light puzzle themes running throughout its dungeons and I found these engaging and, with the warp system, they didnt bog anything down either.
-Boss design: Persona has a neat battle system where the enemies you encounter changes up the way it plays from battle to battle due to the weakness, knocking down, and all-out attack mechanics. The thing is, as mentioned above, these mechanics dont translate well to the bosses, which tend to just be buff, debuff, attack and heal affairs, losing much of the flair Persona battles otherwise have. In TMS: the session system keeps the weakness system in play and beyond that the bosses use reinforcements, and changing attack patterns and weaknesses very well.
What I hope they avoid:
-Endgame: I really hope that Persona 5 takes after Persona 4s endgame instead of TMS#FE. In particular I mean that I hope that there is a secret dungeon to go with any secret boss. The normal boss of TMS is reached around level 62 or so for the main character in my experience. I ground him up to 64 for my hard clear. The secret boss is, as far as Ive read, level 99. Now, the enemies in the last dungeon are ~60 and after a while you stop getting experience from them and this means that you are left grinding on savage enemies or the arena, both of which are problematic. Because you cannot switch out the main character and savage enemies seem to be tied to your level, it is easy for them to outstrip the rest of your party too far in level for anything but Ellies instant kill moves. I found this deeply problematic on lunatic. As to the arena, advanced has low returns for characters in the mid-high 60s, even lower past that and legendary is capped by a set of level 99 enemies, which was not nice to figure out getting through the rest of it in my low 70s. The solution to this is the DLC, which I ended up getting when my main character was 70 and the savage enemies had a turn over. The thing is that it is an incredibly cheap and boring way to grind with there just being weak enemies who drop auto-level items. You also need to go to an alternate enemy mode to grind out mastery while doing this and yet another to encounter savages to gather detritus. The game is just begging for a secret dungeon that has an enemy set that can level you from mid-60s to 99 for the extra boss more organically and as is the endgame just isnt very rewarding and doesnt take the right sort of effort. Im sort of regretting doing it at all, especially on my lunatic run but a) Im way too overleveled for the normal lunatic boss now and b) Ive already sunk a lot of time into it.
-Weaker characterization, more zany, fluffier support system: I used to like Fire Emblem supports. Part of that was me being a kid when I played the older games and part of that is that they are just a lot crappier now, by which I mean they are more just acting out of tropes and types and there is less humanity in them than there used to be. I feel that the same criticism can be leveled at the side quests in TMS#FE. I vaguely liked the characters because I liked using them in battle, but the side quest material did nothing for me. I wish it had.
As to the hopes: Persona 4 has already rocketed itself to being one of my favorite games. Better dungeons and bosses would have it made it even better. I dont know how much Atlus teams look at eachother or what Atluss general history between Persona 4 and now has been, but I hope Persona 5 has stronger gameplay in these regards.
As to these fears, for a lack of a better termthey arent so substantial--, I think they do have some merit with the changed nature of gaming these past 8 years. As to the first, higher budgets and production values as well as the normalization of DLC have made that kind of approach very of the times, and the more content rich approach increasingly archaic in all but the most expansive of games. TMS#FE had a similarly small setting to Persona, which should work against this, too. As to the latter, I personally trust Personas character and art direction, but a lot of JRPGs have been regressing at least some distance towards this sort of lowest-common denominator, please the otaku style of character direction this past decade. Thats something I really dont want to happen with this game.
As to evidence there might be some cross-pollination, I havent read/watched much of the Persona 5 content that has come out and dont plan to, but there is the super hero outfits that the team will be wearing in battle.
TL; DR: So what does GAF think Persona 5 should, shouldnt, and, if you want to be more predicative, will take from or share with TMS#FE?
PS: This is my first thread. Hopefully it is interesting.
So, I bought and played TMS#FE this past June and returned to it these past weeks, reaching the endgame on my lunatic playthrough. I had been vocal, including on this forum, about how I dont like the direction the game took with the Fire Emblem brand, with it being an idol game and featuring a limited crossover with generally weak and forgettable FE characters. But I picked the game up anyway out of a mix of morbid curiosity and boredom. Import impressions described it as a strong JRPG and that was something I wanted even if I had misgivings about the way the game positioned itself and where the positive feedback may or may not be coming from (i.e. how much was just to excuse the art direction, idol theme, FE crossover by other means than just embracing them).
In any case, I think both a) those import impressions were correct and the game is a strong JRPG with respect to combat, dungeons, and boss battles and b) that the game was too idols are amazing for me, despite toying with some darker themes it ultimately rejected, and the FE crossover was extremely weak. It is a game Im glad I bought and that I like a lot, but not unreservedly so. The stories, characters, art, etc. all leave much to be desired, while the meat of the game is strong.
But perhaps what I like most about the game is that it is what finally drove me to trying out the wider Shin Megami Tensei super-series, for lack of a better term. Namely, I played Persona 4 (twice), Persona 3 (once), and a bit of Nocturne this past summer. Taken from another post of mine (slightly edited), here are my thoughts on Persona in short:
MoonFrog said:
So, towards the point of this thread, suddenly I find myself greatly anticipating Persona 5. And this brings me back to TMS#FE. Clearly, Persona 4 came out in a very different time, being a PS2 game in 2008 as opposed to a PS3/4 game in 2016, and I find myself thinking what I would and would not like the Persona team to do similarly to the team that made TMS#FE.
What I wish theyd take:
-Dungeons: This was probably the weakest area of the Persona games for me, and the dungeons were extremely minimalist and dungeon crawly. Persona 4 had some light puzzle design in the game dungeon but that is pretty much it. TMS dungeons had light puzzle themes running throughout its dungeons and I found these engaging and, with the warp system, they didnt bog anything down either.
-Boss design: Persona has a neat battle system where the enemies you encounter changes up the way it plays from battle to battle due to the weakness, knocking down, and all-out attack mechanics. The thing is, as mentioned above, these mechanics dont translate well to the bosses, which tend to just be buff, debuff, attack and heal affairs, losing much of the flair Persona battles otherwise have. In TMS: the session system keeps the weakness system in play and beyond that the bosses use reinforcements, and changing attack patterns and weaknesses very well.
What I hope they avoid:
-Endgame: I really hope that Persona 5 takes after Persona 4s endgame instead of TMS#FE. In particular I mean that I hope that there is a secret dungeon to go with any secret boss. The normal boss of TMS is reached around level 62 or so for the main character in my experience. I ground him up to 64 for my hard clear. The secret boss is, as far as Ive read, level 99. Now, the enemies in the last dungeon are ~60 and after a while you stop getting experience from them and this means that you are left grinding on savage enemies or the arena, both of which are problematic. Because you cannot switch out the main character and savage enemies seem to be tied to your level, it is easy for them to outstrip the rest of your party too far in level for anything but Ellies instant kill moves. I found this deeply problematic on lunatic. As to the arena, advanced has low returns for characters in the mid-high 60s, even lower past that and legendary is capped by a set of level 99 enemies, which was not nice to figure out getting through the rest of it in my low 70s. The solution to this is the DLC, which I ended up getting when my main character was 70 and the savage enemies had a turn over. The thing is that it is an incredibly cheap and boring way to grind with there just being weak enemies who drop auto-level items. You also need to go to an alternate enemy mode to grind out mastery while doing this and yet another to encounter savages to gather detritus. The game is just begging for a secret dungeon that has an enemy set that can level you from mid-60s to 99 for the extra boss more organically and as is the endgame just isnt very rewarding and doesnt take the right sort of effort. Im sort of regretting doing it at all, especially on my lunatic run but a) Im way too overleveled for the normal lunatic boss now and b) Ive already sunk a lot of time into it.
-Weaker characterization, more zany, fluffier support system: I used to like Fire Emblem supports. Part of that was me being a kid when I played the older games and part of that is that they are just a lot crappier now, by which I mean they are more just acting out of tropes and types and there is less humanity in them than there used to be. I feel that the same criticism can be leveled at the side quests in TMS#FE. I vaguely liked the characters because I liked using them in battle, but the side quest material did nothing for me. I wish it had.
As to the hopes: Persona 4 has already rocketed itself to being one of my favorite games. Better dungeons and bosses would have it made it even better. I dont know how much Atlus teams look at eachother or what Atluss general history between Persona 4 and now has been, but I hope Persona 5 has stronger gameplay in these regards.
As to these fears, for a lack of a better termthey arent so substantial--, I think they do have some merit with the changed nature of gaming these past 8 years. As to the first, higher budgets and production values as well as the normalization of DLC have made that kind of approach very of the times, and the more content rich approach increasingly archaic in all but the most expansive of games. TMS#FE had a similarly small setting to Persona, which should work against this, too. As to the latter, I personally trust Personas character and art direction, but a lot of JRPGs have been regressing at least some distance towards this sort of lowest-common denominator, please the otaku style of character direction this past decade. Thats something I really dont want to happen with this game.
As to evidence there might be some cross-pollination, I havent read/watched much of the Persona 5 content that has come out and dont plan to, but there is the super hero outfits that the team will be wearing in battle.
TL; DR: So what does GAF think Persona 5 should, shouldnt, and, if you want to be more predicative, will take from or share with TMS#FE?
PS: This is my first thread. Hopefully it is interesting.
(idols can go away...or they can stay, but I'd hope they'd be done better).