It’s that time of the week again, time to see how much progress I made in Tokyo Mirage Sessions. I expected to spend the majority of my time this week in chapter 5’s dungeons, but I still ended up getting some side quests done. So, without any further ado, let’s go over some numbers. My current play time is 35 hours and 20 minutes, Itsuki is level 51, and I’m currently in the intermission between chapters 5 and 6.

The premise of chapter 5 is that a huge entertainment festival, called “Enter-Kingdom” is taking over all of Tokyo. Everyone in the entertainment world, including everyone in my party, is taking parts in various events throughout the city. Of course, this means that there’s mirage activity, all focusing on an arena called the “Cosmic Egg”. The Cosmic Egg is being protected by a barrier created by large amounts of performa being channeled in from some of the earlier dungeons. This means that we’re revisiting old dungeons.

The first one we have to go to is the first major dungeon in the game, the one with those large mannequins that we have to crawl through to access different levels. Although we’re in a completely new part of the dungeon, the gimmick is the same. We need to manipulate the two mannequins to get to the bottom floor where the source of the performa is. When we make it to the bottom, we’re greeted by a mirage who believes we’re new cast members for some show. He needs us to arrange the mannequins in a specific position before he’ll let us pass. This means a bunch of running around and rearranging before we can finally get through. Of course, we have to deal with a boss fight afterwards, but it’s not too bad.

But enough of dungeons for a little while, I unlocked some side quests! I started with Touma’s final quest. He has an audition coming up to have a lead role in that Power Rangers show. Unfortunately, he sees that one kid who keeps popping in his quests has gotten himself in trouble, so we have to go rescue him. Maiko tells him that he doesn’t have time and should just leave it to the rest of the group, but he doesn’t listen and goes on ahead.

We end up in the first major dungeon again, this time heading to the first boss room. There we find Able, Cain’s rival. After once again trying to tell Touma to just go to his audition, and once again him refusing, we fight Able to save that kid. After the fight, Able has calmed down and actually decides to be the kid’s mirage. Touma is sure that he won’t make it in time for the audition, but Cain turns into a motorcycle and gets him there on time. This game is weird.

Next up, I did a quest for Mamori. It seems that her microwaving show is going through a change. She’s going to have a big sister and will perform skits, while still teaching people who to microwave food. She asks Itsuki who to help her train for this, since she’s an only child and doesn’t know what having a sibling is like. I go with Ellie, because she’s an actress. Itsuki says a bunch of nonsense about why she was chosen, but really, I just went with her because of her profession.

We head off to the lesson studio, where we meet with Ellie. Throughout the practice, Mamori asks Itsuki for advice. I’m not totally sure how critical it is to tell her the right things, but everything seemed to go very smoothly. Afterwards, we get a cutscene of the show. Apparently, Ellie has been cast as the sister. Everything goes well, and the quest is over. Not a very exciting quest, but one where all I really needed to do was watch it unfold.

And finally, I unlocked Yashiro’s first side quest. He asks you to come by the Fortuna office, because his energy is running low. It turns out, he hasn’t eaten in days. Apparently, his personal assistant didn’t agree with him coming to work for Fortuna and quit, and he simply doesn’t know how or when to get food. We take him to the cafe and get him fed.

Yashiro has put his entire focus on perfecting his craft, and views everything else to be a waste of time. This is ridiculous though, because having real world experiences, like, I don’t know, eating, would come in handy for acting. He has Itsuki try some food and describe it to him, much like what we had to do with Tiki and her donuts. Somehow, this leads to him being on guest on Mamori’s show and describing the food in an even more over the top manor. This game is weird.

But hey, back to the dungeons! This time, we’re going to that dungeon with all the TV screens. We have to do a simple puzzle that’s similar to what we did previously, only instead of only going to one room, we have to go to all but in a specific order. It’s easy to get lost, but remembering that the Gamepad can display a map goes a long way. After getting through that, we fight another boss and eliminate the Performa.

Now we have to go to the dungeon with all the NPCs we interacted with. This time, there’s a show about to start staring a Mirage who claims to be Yashiro. Once again, I have to run around to different rooms taking care of the NPCs requests.  The requests are all pretty simple, like fighting a small group of monsters or changing the lantern lights again. Afterwards, we get to go see the show. Of course, the real Yashiro points out that he’s a fake, and then we fight. And with that out of the way, we can get to the Cosmic Egg.

Once we arrive, we find the producer that we helped all the way back in the very first dungeon. It turns out that he is working with Gharnef, the mirage behind everything, including killing Yahsiro’s father. He’s already set into motion the events that could destroy the Earth. He disappears into the Idolosphere, but not before sending out one last boss fight. This fight was tricky, as Itsuki was weak to his attacks, but it only took me two tries to beat him.

And that’s chapter 5. After finishing, I unlocked some more sidequests, but that’ll wait til next week. It seems like I’m just about done with the game, but we’ll see how long it takes for me to wrap everything up.