I wasn’t really planning on posting the non-vocal soundtrack since I think it’s kinda mediocre (and it’s 99% unlabeled in my OST rip :suicide:), but at the request of someone on SA I went through and got it more or less caught up:
Daitama Observatory
Showtime! - This is what plays during the audition
Danger! - Get used to this one, it plays basically anytime anything even remotely threatening or dangerous happens
I think I know only one other person who played this game, so I’m glad to see it get some love here. Just seeing this thread makes me want to play it again.
40 minutes is a generous underestimate. Last time I checked, P4 takes three hours to get to the point where you can dungeon-crawl at your own pace, unless you mash through the dialogue or something. TMS is a very welcome change of pace.
So this is probably going to be the longest update in the entire LP. Bear with me, I promise they won’t all be monsters like this.
Right, so where were we?
Ah yes, mysterious red ghosts, demon-possessed MC, weird blue portal. Got it.
I have to save her…!
Music: Illusory Daitama
So welcome to the first dungeon! One of the things I love about this game is how little it wastes your time. While I dearly love Persona 3 and 4, both of those games took somewhere in the neighborhood of ~3 hours to get you into proper gameplay and it’s good to see that Atlus has learned from them. (We are just over 20 minutes into the game, for reference)
You know Itsuki, I don’t want to assume anything, but given that we just went through a blue portal after being attacked by ghosts and demons, I’m gonna wager the answer to that one might be “no”.
And as if to confirm his suspicions, a mysterious girl appears right in front of him.
Huh?
She’s in danger… You have to hurry to the depths…
After delivering her warning, the girl disappears deeper into the labyrinth.
Who was that girl…? No… She can wait. I have to find Tsubasa.
Time to start the actual dungeon. Illusory Daitama is very straightforward; it’s basically a straight line that takes a handful of 90 degree turns. That said, it’s not like this is a one and done tutorial - simple as it is, there are a few things we’ll have to backtrack for much later in the game. Like, “40 hours from now” later in the game.
Anyway, before we can even take the first turn, Touma interrupts us with another Topic.
[quote]
hey, some weird stuff’s going down in daitama right now. where are you, is everything okay?
I think I’m still in Daitama… I went through this weird gate thing and ended up in some huge place I’ve never seen before…
oh crap. that’s not good.
You know this place?
i can’t explain right now man! itsuki, i need you to get out there NOW!
I don’t really get it… But Tsubasa got kidnapped by some kind of monsters. I’m not just leaving her behind.
hey, come on! itsuki![/quote]
Gonna go out on a limb here and say that Touma might not be telling us everything, but we’ve got bigger problems to deal with.
Like this. Tsubasa isn’t the only person stuck here, and we might be able to save some of the others too.
Around the corner, we come across our first elevator. This is the only real gimmick Illusory Daitama has, but it doesn’t mean much. Again, the path is more or less a straight line that just happens to go up or down every so often.
At the bottom of the elevator, we hear another scream. Maybe it’s time to go see what’s going on?
Oh uh…yeah. Good luck with that.
Guess I shoulda expected as much from a vessel we picked out specially.
One of the ghosts comes up behind her…
…And she gets possessed, complete with the weird marking on her cheek. At least we know what happened to Goujin? Maybe?
Won’t be long now till Tsubasa’s finished… Everything’s goin’ perfect.
No…! Tsubasa…
Give me… Your power…
Wha-?
Itsuki tries to run, but he pretty quickly runs out of room.
Ahhhh!
~so majestic~
Not the smoothest of landings, but Itsuki has read the script and knows that enemies can’t go down ledges, so he’s safe for now.
Anyway, nowhere to go but forward now. Even if we could somehow get up that ledge, the ghost is waiting for us and uh, we’ve seen how that worked out for the idol girl.
Another great quality of life thing! Anytime you’re about to enter a room that contains a boss/miniboss or some other notable plot fight, the game gives you a big warning screen so you can heal up or switch around your party.
No… Stop…
…! Tsubasa!
Whoa!
With nowhere else to go, Itsuki rears back to break down the door…
…And lands right in the middle of a cutscene.
This one seems a little less concerned with the whole “possession” thing and is going straight for the “kill all humans” bit of the routine.
Itsuki is understandably quite upset about this turn of events, but he’s got a more pressing problem.
To his credit, he does actually notice the ghost this time, but not quickly enough to do anything about it.
The ghost brings him in for a close-up, then blasts him away with a wave of purple energy.
Yeah, we definitely have bigger problems than Tsubasa right now.
Just as the ghost raises its blade, Itsuki does the whole glowing thing again, which causes it to turn away. It sure is convenient that this happened to Itsuki and not anyone else who got attacked.
The shiny bit has finally materialized as an orb of some kind. And what do you do with orbs?
Well you slam it in the ghost’s face, obviously. What did you think we did with it?
The orb absorbs the purple chains that were around the ghost and burns away the red cloak, finally revealing our mystery man.
Gods… What was I doing…?
Huh…? But why are you…
We don’t have time to talk! Go and rescue that girl!
Rrgh… But… what can I do to save her…?
And right on cue, Tsubasa starts to glow. Like Itsuki, this causes the ghost to recoil and saves her (at least for the moment).
That’s it…!
From here, the second verse is much the same as the first one.
Orb.
Face.
Release.
That doesn’t do anything about our friends, though. So let’s fix that.
Itsuki and Tsubasa give each other a nod, and then…
It’s time for a costume change. (You should really watch the video to see these in motion, it’s pretty great)
Suddenly, Itsuki looks like a real protagonist and Tsubasa is…er…some kind of magical girl/pegasus thing…? Jury’s still out on that one.
Incredible…!
Wait… I know that voice. Are you that blue ghost from before?
Yes. Somehow, it looks like I…became a blade.
This… can’t be real…
Eeek!
Be careful!
It’s all right. I’m here with you… Now, come on!
Music: Normal Battle
So welcome to combat, everybody! If you’ve ever played an SMT game in your life, you’re probably about 80% of the way there for this game, but I’ll hit the basics. At the top of the screen is the turn order, which you can see for both this turn and next. As far as I’m aware, turn order is determined almost entirely by a character’s speed stat, so don’t think you have to hold back lest you get pushed further back in the queue.
Once you pick a target, you can see which enemy you’ve selected in the turn queue, as well as that enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. Like in the recent Persona games, you don’t really know anything about an enemy until you try some attacks, but once you defeat them in battle it’ll be automatically filled out for next time. The session lineup isn’t super relevant now, but we’ll talk a lot more about that in the next two updates.
Also note that physical attacks have been broken up into four categories (technically five, but one’s enemy only). If you’re familiar with Fire Emblem, things like the weapon triangle are built right into the TMS system and knowing them gives you an immense advantage coming in.
One notable thing is that this game does not utilize the press-turn system or anything similar. Hitting weaknesses is good and encouraged, but only in the sense that they do more damage and let you kill enemies faster.
Aside from that, though, it’s your standard SMT combat. Hit weaknesses, use buffs, and don’t die. While this is definitely on the easy side as far as SMT games go, it can and will kick your shit in if you get complacent.
At any rate, there’s not much to say about these first enemies. Both the blobs and the troll are weak to Zio, and the troll is weak to lances so Tsubasa can stab him a couple times for good measure. Don’t be afraid to burn your MP, you’ve got plenty of it for this starting dungeon.
And in one last quick note, the game once again shows its commitment to its aesthetic. Combat actually takes place on a stage (complete with video boards and other monsters hanging out in the background), and when you win a battle it rains down confetti and the audience applauds.
Itsuki is our Lord, the everyman who’s just a little too balanced to be amazing but not really deficient in anything either. He uses swords and electricity to fairly good effect, but his magic is pretty rough and he doesn’t get the good physical electric attacks until fairly late in the game. Still, he’s the only character to get both Charge and Concentrate and he still makes a fine physical attacker, even if he doesn’t stack up to the other more focused units.
Tsubasa is a Pegasus Knight, giving her an unfortunate weakness to both bows and wind on top of the usual axe weakness. She is first and foremost your healer, but she has a very solid magic score that can fuel wind magic (and a fire spell or two if you know what you’re doing). I find that her strength leaves a lot to be desired, so while she can use lance skills, you’re probably going to have her casting most of the time.
Oh, and one last thing. Just to make sure you remember that this is a Fire Emblem game, levels are totally random. The variance isn’t high enough to reduce anyone to the point of unusability, but you can definitely have your MVP from one playthrough come up short on defense and turn out too squishy on another run.
Looks like we managed to take them out…
Much of all this is still unclear, but my name is Chrom. I can remember that much…
Chrom… thank you. I couldn’t have saved Tsubasa without you. I’m Itsuki - Itsuki Aoi.
Itsuki Aoi, huh…
Huh?
I should be the one thanking you. It was that light within you that freed me from the darkness.
…You have my gratitude. And it’s a pleasure to meet you, Itsuki.
…Of course! Likewise, Chrom!
[quote]
Chrom is the main lord of 2013’s Fire Emblem: Awakening. While he isn’t really the main character of the game (that’s the player-created character, Robin), he’s the crown prince of Ylisse and drives the first half or so of the plot. In both this game and Awakening, Chrom usually serves as a straight man to the wacky antics of the party which gives him a bit of a “boring” vibe, so if nothing else, he and Itsuki have plenty in common. For those of you more familiar with Smash 4, Chrom appears as part of Robin’s final smash, and his daughter, Lucina, is a playable character.[/quote]
Huh? Oh, yes! I’m Tsubasa Oribe, 18 years old!
I really am sorry, Tsubasa. I must have scared you quite a bit, didn’t I?
Well…actually, yes, that was really scary.
But if it wasn’t for you, who knows what would have happened to me back there, so… Thank you, Ms. Caeda.
Please, just call me Caeda… You’re a kindhearted girl, Tsubasa.
[quote]
Caeda hails from the first game of the series, 1990’s Fire Emblem: Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light (and it’s sequel (Mystery of the Emblem), remake (Shadow Dragon), and the remake of the sequel (New Mystery of the Emblem)). Caeda is the princess of Talys, a small archipelago nation where Marth flees after Altea is attacked. Like a lot of the characters from FE1, she’s mainly notable for being the originator of an archetype because as a peg knight, there really isn’t much that’s notable about her. What little character she got for being in an NES game mostly boils down to “nice and caring” and “disturbingly good at getting people to join your team”, the latter of which Atlus mostly ignores.[/quote]
I’m sorry, but I can’t even remember why I’m here in the first place.
Caeda… is your memory gone too?
Unfortunately, yes… I’ve been trying to recall, but…
I see… Itsuki, what should we do?
I say we get out as soon as we can. If we linger too long, we might find ourselves with unwanted company.
Chrom’s right. We can figure out the details after we get out of here alive.
And with that, we’ve finally finished what little tutorial the game is going to give us. Next time, we’ll be tackling the rest of the dungeon and start to really play around with the game’s systems!
I don’t know why the Chrom and Caeda images are squished, I blame the forums software. 
“Go, I’ll take care of them!” said Edgy Chrom, engaging the Red Robes in a staring contest.
I’m still a little iffy on the character design of the Personas, (are they called Personas in this game, or is it something else?) but I love the style of everything else. The crowd in the last update and the stage in this one are both excellent.
They’re called Mirages! It’s in the name. Personally (:v), I like the slightly Legacy of Kain-esque Chrom but not many others.
I didn’t get this game before because it’s pretty expensive, but this LP finally pushed me over the edge. Game’s really good and super colorful and stylish, even better than I expected, and took away most of this evening. Thanks, Artix!
Double update today, but one’s a short little mechanical thing.
So now that we have an actual party, it’s time to poke around in the menu a little bit. Right now it’s just Tsubasa and Itsuki, but this screen will get more and more crowded as we get more party members and supporting cast. If you let it go long enough, the characters will even go through some idle animations like Tsubasa looking down at Itsuki and smiling.
Anyway, Skills and Items are exactly what you think they are, so let’s dive into some of the more interesting stuff.
The Wardrobe screen is your equipment menu. One of the more interesting design decisions is how much this game simplifies dealing with equipment, opting for just a weapon, accessory, and costume.
Your weapon is far and away the most important bit here. Not only does it determine your attack power, it also determines what your weaknesses and resistances are, as well as dictating what skills you learn. This can lead to some very interesting situations where you stick with a weaker weapon because it makes you resist ice instead of being weak to it, or using something that screws with your resistances because it has a skill that you would otherwise never be able to learn.
Accessories, on the other hand, are a combination of stat boosts/special effects and armor. Because of how you unlock new weapons, they’re also the only thing you actually have to buy, so by endgame it’s not at all uncommon to drop three million yen on upgrades for your entire party.
Costumes are purely cosmetic and change how your character looks in battle. They’re mainly useful as something to dump your millions and millions of excess yen into near the end of the game.
The status screen really just lets you quickly check up on your stats if you really care, because the important information (read: your resistances) is already on the equipment screen.
It does have a quick bio though, if you’re absolutely dying to know what Tsubasa’s blood type is. :shrug:
One last thing of note - you can save at any time, anywhere, for any reason. It’s great and super player-friendly, but there are a few times I wish they’d have put a regular save point in before bosses or something, because it is incredibly easy to forget that you can save whenever you want and end up losing a couple hours of progress.
Last time, we got our personas mirages, so it’s time to tackle the rest of the dungeon. We can talk to Tsubasa on the way out, but…
Thank you for coming after me, Itsuki… I was so relieved…
Yeah. Let’s just move on.
Our ultimate destination is that purple-ish thing in the background. Again, you can’t really get lost or go backwards, but at least we have some side passages with goodies now.
But before we can get too far, we have one last field mechanic to intro. Now that we’re equipped for battle, enemies will begin spawning semi-randomly throughout the dungeon, and once an enemy notices you, it will charge right at you. You can despawn them by interacting with the environment in some way (opening a treasure box, going down a ledge/up a ladder, etc), but for the most part you’re gonna have to deal with them the old-fashioned way.
Smack 'em in the face with your sword and they’ll collapse on the ground, at which point you can either engage them at will or walk right past them. If you leave them long enough (or walk far enough away from them), they’ll disappear.
This is also the only way to get a preemptive strike on enemies. It’s not guaranteed by any stretch of the imagination, but it does seem more common if you can hit them before they notice you.
First strikes also aren’t a guarantee for getting to lay into the enemies with impunity - here, only Itsuki got a free turn. Again, I believe this is based on the character’s speed (and possibly their relative speed to the enemies), but I’m not 100% sure on that.
At any rate, two blobs go down quite easily and we learn our first skills!
If you’ve ever played SMTIV, the system in TMS is basically identical to Demon Whispering. You have 6 slots a piece for Commands, Session, and Passive skills, and learning the same skill multiple will upgrade it, making it cost less MP to use or increasing the base power of the move. You can also see what the weapon’s next skill is, but you can’t see the whole listing without going into the equip screen.
Tsubasa has something very important here, though. Elec-Lunge is our first session skill, and sessions are the real meat of the battle system. We’ll see how they work in just a sec.
Anyway, if we hang a right at this first junction, we’ll find a couple medicines.
At the next plaza, there’s a couple enemies floating around. Unlike some SMT games, getting in a fight with multiple enemies at once isn’t a thing, so you don’t have to worry about enemy reinforcements at the end of a fight or anything like that.
Back in battle, things have changed a little bit. As you can see, when we hit the blobs with Zio, Tsubasa’s Elec-Lunge is now part of the chain. If we carry out this attack…
Itsuki casts Zio like normal, but Tsubasa joins in with an attack of her own. This is a session, and this is how you will shatter this game over your knee. However, there are some very important rules that you have to remember about sessions:
There are other mechanics relating to sessions that will come into play later, but for now, that’s really everything you need to know. Unless you’re running into enemies with drain or reflect, there’s really no reason to not do a session whenever possible, and you can rack up ridiculous amounts of damage with it if you know what you’re doing.
Shortly thereafter, Itsuki picks up Lance-Slash, but he can’t do anything with it until Tsubasa gets an actual lance skill. Direct attacks can’t trigger sessions, after all.
Heading south from that large plaza, we find a couple Revival Beads. They’re handy to have around, but there’s an item which does the exact same thing and can be bought for 1500 yen, so they’re not really that useful.
On our way back, Tsubasa picks up Skewer, which means that Itsuki can now make use of Lance-Slash. Once she picks up Sword-Lunge, our small team will have complete combo potential with each other.
Past the plaza, we come across this wall. We can try attacking but it doesn’t do anything, and examining it simply says there’s nothing we can do here right now.
That said, there’s a treasure ball back there so we will eventually be able to get past it. It’s just going to take ~35 hours.
At the top of the next elevator, we get interrupted by Touma again.
[quote] ITSUKI! are you okay!?
Yeah, somehow. I found Tsubasa, too. We’re all right.
where even are you guys right now?
I have actually no idea.
gaahhh you dumbass
okay look. you guys gotta find the exit. got that? there should be a round building somewhere south of you. the exit’s near there, so get moving!
and BE CAREFUL. you guys better not die![/quote]
Yeah, yeah, we get it. You’d think Itsuki would mention the whole ghost-fusion thing but I guess that would require a bit too much explaining.
Oh no it’s an ambush!
Oh. :geno: Yeah, they don’t last long.
It’s called Performa. Chances are, it was harvested from a human…
Per…forma?
It’s a power that only you humans carry within… For beings like us, it provides sustenance and power.
So that host at the audition… was kidnapping people to steal their Performa…?
Wooow… Look at it sparkle!
Chuckle I sense Performa shining within you, too, Tsubasa.
A power carried by humans…
We’re just about there, you can actually see the exit from the red dome off to the left.
One last new enemy, the Caspar is weak to Elec/Wind/Ice and occasionally throws an Agi at you. Itsuki is weak to fire, but it should be trivial to kill them before they can do any serious damage.
Itsuki picks up Rakukaja, which has a weird combination of classic SMT and Persona functionality. It targets the entire party, but the effects don’t stack if you try to cast it multiple times.
Chakra Drops are one of the more handy items, because you don’t get a full heal when you level up. Outside of healing points (of which there is like…one. In the entire game), the only way to recover your MP is to leave the dungeon, so having a few Chakras on hand is good.
Our ultimate destination is now in sight. That green orb in the background is right next to where we need to go.
Itsuki picks up his final skill as we make the last turn. Strength Boost is one of those skills that we’ll dump as soon as we have a better option, because two points is not a big boost and Itsuki is fairly strength-biased to begin with. Note that the weapon now says “Full Inheritance”, which means there’s nothing else we can wring out of it outside of its qualities as a weapon itself.
One last set of goodies for the road. First Aid Kits are a low level full party heal, similar to Media.
Our final skill for this update is Sword-Lunge on Tsubasa. Again, Tsubasa’s strength isn’t much to write home about, but this does mean that both Itsuki and Tsubasa can combo off of anything the other person throws out. That’s not nothing, this early in the game.
And speaking of combos, note that even though Itsuki has a mere 5 MP, he can still contribute to the session. Part of why sessions are so hilariously broken is that unless a party member physically cannot contribute for some reason (dead, asleep, silenced, etc), their session arts have no cost. No matter how long the session goes, or which art they use, everything after the initial hit is completely free to cast.
A mysterious power envelopes Itsuki’s body…
And just like that, we’re topped off for the boss.
There is an elevator here at the end, but it goes down to another light wall. Again, we’ll be back for these in a loooooong time.
Next time, we fight the boss and finish up the Prologue. See you then!
I love that the character bio section also has their autograph and that the equipment screen is called wardrobe.
They really went the extra mile with the showbiz theme.
If nothing else this game sticks to it’s theme hard. The game oozes style.
I always like when games kind of have their own take on MP (like Earthbound’s PP for Psychic Points) and this one has EP
… You know in retrospect, that was probably fairly obvious.
It’s really interesting how this game includes FE aspects like the weapon triangle into a turn-based RPG. Not that I know much about Persona, but it seems like it was integrated pretty well. Though I’m surprised Medicine wasn’t renamed to Vulnerary. Or Revival Beads to something like Aum Beads.
Oooh man, the Session mechanic looks ridiculously broken. I can just imagine speccing to hit a particular boss weakness and killing it in one turn.
Gotta appreciate how Chrom retains his generically heroic personality despite the edgy makeover.
Also, the brokenness of the session mechanic seems awfully IntSys of Atlus.
Sessions are immensely satisfying. They often let you take out an enemy before they can even act, and if you plan it right, also damage some others, especially if you manage to start a Session with a hit-all attack. It’s basically Persona combat built entirely around All-Out Attacks.
I have one complaint about them, but we won’t hit the point where that becomes relevant in a while.
I find that sessions tend to be somewhat balanced when you enter an area for the first time (especially on initial encounters where you don’t know weaknesses yet), but then you gain a few levels and end up totally dominating random encounters. Then you hit the next tier of enemies, and repeat that. It’s a satisfying level of progression.
Bosses tend to not be so easily broken over the session mechanic (especially if you aren’t using a guide and guess at weaknesses), which is good.
By the way @Artix, the list in the middle of the update is broken.
Oh, the best part is that sessions automatically switch target once you kill your original one. When you come back to an area you vastly outlevel, three dudes just explode almost simultaneously, instantly ending most battles.
Damage and defence stats also strike a decent balance in that you can easily deal hundreds of damage to much weaker enemies, but even against stronger ones, you can deal decent damage if you get the first strike - no “NO DAMAGE” you might expect from Fire Emblem. Of course, they will hit you super hard as well. This setup reminds me of SMTIV somewhat. (But that game had literally no defence stat except elemental resistances.) I’m only three chapters in, I hope the later game doesn’t mess it up.
I’m really liking TMS, I didn’t think I would like it that much. I started an LP too. I’m trying to finish it before Persona 5 drops. The whole idol thing is kinda goofy, but it works, and the battle system is really good. I don’t think the session system is broken. The battle system in general is pretty balanced. The only thing I don’t like is that I can’t choose the MC’s stats when he lvls up. Like in other SMT games.
Bosses in this game are built with sessions in mind, so you’re not going to be wiping the floor with them on the first turn.
But DAMN if sessions aren’t satisfying. They’re probably the single best mechanic in the game, making each battle really fun.
Easy there, champ. Sessions do not automatically switch targets (not yet, anyway) and I’d appreciate it if we didn’t explain literally every nuance of the battle system the second it came into play.
