Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE Encore Trailer Thoughts

My thoughts on what has been shown about Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE Encore

Maiko, Barry, And Tiki:
Everyone seems to be letting their expectations run wild with this and its probably the trailer's fault for being so vague. After looking over the literal 7 seconds shown my expectations are pretty grounded. My theory is that these characters are purely session based. Their session skills are different from everyone else's, Maiko and Barry both session from "武", which I would have to guess is from any physical based attack, and Tiki sessions from "魔" which would be any magic attack. This would make them fit into a session as easily as possible, and sessions get pretty jank when you add bows and axes. I don't think they have any mirages or fun skills or anything. they probably won't significantly change the game or my speedrun route either. It's even possible they're post game only which would be funny.

Maiko's costume is badass, Barry's is lmao, and Tiki's is respectable.

This is kind of nuts for sessions having 10 on the first round. Mamori's duo arts use Tiki and Barry, who before were optimal because for the next round only Mamori would be missing, but now both characters will be missing. So I think the max session length assuming the hard cap of 2 duo arts is a thing would be 26.

Removal of the gamepad:
The store page has a screenshot of gameplay and the new dungeon https://www.nintendo.com/content/dam/noa/en_US/games/switch/t/tokyo-mirage-sessions-fe-encore-switch/screenshot-gallery/Switch_TokyoMirageSessionsFE-Encore_04.jpg

It looks pretty simple, minus brings up the minimap and plus brings up the topic menu. Also during battle you can press plus to open the status screen https://www.nintendo.co.jp/switch/asa4a/img/cal_img08.jpg

I'm just excited to not have to hold a heavy ass bowling ball for 10 hours to speedrun this game.

Quality of life changes:
I'm hoping for this game to have instant load times. If it does it will cut out like an hour of the speedrun which would be fantastic.

Quick Session button now shows up during sessions. I'm guessing this just doubles the animation speed. It probably saves a disgusting amount of time but I can't really give an estimate. I'm happy Dark Yashiro won't be a pain in the ass to fight though.

Also the game will not run at half the framerate during Dark Yashiro, I guarantee it. I'll miss the crunch but it's probably for the best.

Most Wii U games ran at 720p so this will likely get a resolution increase. The UI doesn't look tiny so they were probably smart and increased text / ui size, unlike what literally every other game company does by making the text unreadably small.

This is probably a super nerdy thing but the Wii U only output limited range rgb, so having this on the switch which supports full range is kind of a big deal. The game gets chroma sub-sampled to death when you try to stream it anyways so idk if you would even notice on a twitch stream but it will look better on nice tvs.

New Content:
The trailer confirms a new song, new story elements, and there's a screenshot of a new idolasphere. You can kinda make out the name for the song as LUEUR on a poster, which is french for glow I think?

Apparently according to this article the new song is called "She is..." so idk what's on the poster.
https://topics.nintendo.co.jp/c/article/a136e920-c9fd-11e9-b641-063b7ac45a6d.html

I like the aesthetic of the new dungeon but I have no idea what to expect, it could just be a tiny thing like Area of Memories and it could even be postgame and not required. There's probably a new duo art for the new song, anything kiria does is magic so it probably won't be overly helpful. The new song PV looks like it's rendered in a different way, it's an interesting look but it will definitely stand out vs the old cutscenes. Also Tsubasa has glasses now. I don't know if this is just always on or its like a costume you can equip but it's cute.

Also found a screenshot of a three houses costume for Mamori, so maybe there will just be a bunch of new costumes for everyone. https://www.nintendo.co.jp/switch/asa4a/img/cal_img09.jpg

Boxart:
It's basically the same but orange. toi8's art has a cool aesthetic so I'm still a fan. The one difference is that they swapped out Kiria's art for her new song's costume. I honestly think they just didn't want Kiria's trashy outfit on display and idk why nintendo okayed that outfit in the first place

Stuff I would do if I had full creative control over the port:
Merge charge/concentrate. Itsuki and Tsubasa use both elements, and you get some goofy shit like itsuki using a thunder strike and then ad libbing back chorus so charge doesn't activate. Also if you use charge, magical attacks during sessions won't get the multiplier and vice versa. It makes trying to plan out sessions for optimal damage a pain when it's supposed to just be automatic and fun. My route straight up doesn't get open audition for Kiria just to force Tsubasa to use lunge ex and it's dumb.

Remove force deploys (Itsuki, Yashiro on the dark yashiro fight, side stories, etc).
This game is all about using the crazy mechanics in fun ways to barely scrape through tough fights. Especially because you can swap out party members on the fly and Mamori's specials give her an extra turn. However, always having Itsuki in your party really limits your options. Dark Yashiro could have some fun stuff but you're forced to use someone weak to fire and then another sword unit. This combined with the charge/concentrate problem really makes magic useless in this game considering he's the wall you build your entire team comp around.

Change all the performa requirements for end game weapons
Theres a crazy amount of skills that would really help out during all the boss refights, but the problem is a lot of them need performa from enemies that only appear in the final room of the game before excellus, so you don't really get to use them. Megidolaon for example is crazy op at 210 attack compared to 120 for all the other dyne spells.

Mamori could just be like completely redesigned and no one would notice. She's supposed to be an armor unit but she doesn't get busted stats in exchange for being weak to fire and swords and armorslayer. You could either double down on being a tank class where you draw aggro by making her not weak to everything and not die in two hits, or you could focus on making her an axe unit by giving her more session skills, more stats, and giving her less reasons to die randomly (like with shield of devotion)

On localization changes:
It sounds like the game is going to be a single build which means that they have to pick either the jp version or the international version. Based on the teen rating they're probably going to base it off of the international version which is funny. I honestly don't care, let japan bitch about it Atlus will probably listen to them lol.

Summary: Excited for new content, having it on the switch will make speedruns more enjoyable than they already were. I only have to wait 4 months so I'm very happy.