Nice! Yeah the censorship seems pretty minor, mainly just outfits and stuff. But the game was obviously designed for a bit of fanservice so the changes seem weird to me.
I may pick it up in the future, but I'm still working through other stuff so I can hold off for a bit 
Last night after a long day at work I sat down and got through the opening sequences before sleep overcame me and I had to save and stop playing.
I was really happy with what I played, however. The gameplay is smooth and the presentation is very slick. I can't think of a lot of recent games to have a more interesting and contemporary while intuitive and functional UI - it's very much a stand out feature of the game and should be recognized as an achievement in that field in my opinion.
The story subject matter (j-pop and idol culture) is something I had no interest in, and very little knowledge of, so most of the content is very strange to me - in a good way. A fresh and unique view at a culture I have a lot of other general interest in was fun and exciting.
Speaking of content, despite the censorship the girls are very sexualized still. The first female character shown is introduced with a feet to bust camera pan, which then pauses for a moment at the breasts then fades out to a camera angle used for the dialog showing the character waist up. The Fire Emblem based spirit character that fights for that character has large outlined breasts designed into her armor, and my fiance who was watching me play the opening of the game was surprised saying "omg are her boobs hanging out" and I had to explain it's the armor design not pale breasts exposed lol. Even during the first "transformation" cut scene there is quite a bit of voyeuristic poses for the girls as they change outfits in a flashy anime sequence. I don't have a problem with it, I enjoy le bewbs as much as the next guy if not more, but I can only imagine what this game was like before it was censored and I am only about an hour in. The story is surprisingly relationship focused, and the game initially felt like something I haven't play on a Nintendo system in years which was fun and refreshing. The story was not the focus, and was only about 15 minutes of the total time I spent with the game (About an hour.) The game quickly transitioned from small social area to explore, to a brief story scene, to dropping you in is plainly a dungeon. A map on the touch screen exposes itself as you explore the grid like dungeon.
The dungeon design, initially at least, so so damn gamey I love it. It's not trying to recreate a realistic environment that this event takes place in, but rather it un-apologetically presents a stereotypical dungeon and tosses the player into the maze littered with enemies to battle. The dungeon I started on here was flat separated by elevators - I love games with flat levels and elevators, yay.
Clear thresholds of progress are always fun.
Initiating battle is really fun and interactive, and keeps exploration interesting as you need to be ready to attack the field enemies before instigating the battle scene which plays out as a very traditional turn based RPG. There is a cool combo system that allows characters to interact with one another in battle to perform additional damage without using the combined character's turn, and the animations for the various attacks and skills are snappy and well crafted.
Battles played out very smoothly with tight menu controls and again, the UI design in this game is master class - a testimony to how important a well designed menu system is, and how far it can go to make a game enjoyable to play. Silky transitions between camera shots and menu screens are adorned by stars and wipes that really makes this game feel current and modern.
The transitions between gameplay and anime scenes however is starkly abrupt, unfortunately. With such a polished and well conceptualized cohesive style for the user experience as a whole, its a shame that they couldn't creatively blend the seams between the polygonal 3d art style segments and the beautifully rendered 2D hand drawn visual scenes.
I had bast playing it, and played it longer than I normally would have thanks to the ability to save anywhere with multiple save slots, it was just fun running around killing stuff being dazzled by the presentation and smoothness of gameplay.
Topic: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE thread (Read 832 times)
