Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore is a game filled with colourful characters. Your merry band of seven run the full gamut of JRPG personalities, all the way from shy and retiring to brooding and moody, each worming their way into your heart with their issues, drives and dreams. Your journey through the strange and unusual world of Idols and J-Pop will see each of them grow and mature, eventually becoming a tight knit group of fighting fit mercenaries, albeit a bit more bright and bubbly than the usual role playing fare. Your party only has room for three however, so you’re going to have to make some concessions, though even those that do not make the first team will contribute through the session system of course. Unlike our Tier List, in which we ranked the absolute power of each member, today we’re writing about our top 5 party members. Where this differs is in taking the whole game into account, from availability to relative power, to determine our absolute best 5 party members.
5. Mamori
Mamori is the sixth party member to join your group, and we’re almost positive that you will have reacted to her combat role just like us: Expectations were subverted, tiny girl became massive axe tank, shocking! It’s not something that has never ever been done before, but given everything that came before her late-ish joining time, we really weren’t expecting it. She joins and immediately shows her skills, providing a new avenue for sessions with her axe whilst simultaneously taking hits like an aggro-training pro.
This tanking ability is the main reason she makes it into our Top 5. Her being able to take huge boss attacks in place of her team mates is supremely useful, even more so as the game reaches it’s latter portions, and she’ll at the very least always be there as a ‘backup’ option should your main team take too much damage. We’d argue that her skills aren’t strictly necessary on lower difficulty levels, nor really that important until you reach the late game, but her abilities certainly place her above the two missing from our list.
Party Member Strengths
- Passive regularly activates.
- Your best option for tanking hard bosses.
- Axe abilities are useful in the mid game.
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4. Touma
Touma is the third character to join your group, diving in and lending a helping hand to Itsuki and Tsubasa in the first Idolasphere. His joining heralds the first big hitter taking their place in the group, a title that he holds on to all the way through the early and mid game. His lance attacks will prove invaluable in both dealing big chunks of damage, and starting new chains of session attacks. He also brings some good buffs and the ability to hit the fire weakness.
Why then, does he find himself only fourth in our list? Well, apart from the obvious ‘issue’ of the big three below, in our experience he does start to fall off. Lance attacks are useful sure, but we noticed that they’re just not quite as necessary as other weapons, especially in the late game. His buffs too are not exclusive to him, nor is the fire element to his attacks, so he occupies a strange middle ground: Good damage and great availability, but limited utility and not quite enough throughput to outperform others. Great comic relief, a worthy early game character, but one that is ultimately outclassed as the game grows late.
Party Member Strengths
- High lance damage.
- Good session skills, especially early.
- Can learn some good buffs.
3. Yashiro
The final cast member to join is one of the best: Yashiro. Once he’s done flirting with your group, and Fire Emblem fans have been teased with the prospect of Navarre for long enough, he’ll finally take his place on your team. In doing so, he’ll also immediately cast a rather large, damage based shadow over everyone else. His sword attacks will deal huge amounts of damage, often putting Itsuki to shame and frequently critical hitting.
Such huge damage is almost the entire reason why he makes his way into the top 3, yet it’s also why he doesn’t climb any higher. Whilst his numbers are truly exceptional, that’s really all he tends to bring to the fray. He significantly lacks in supporting abilities, and this combined with his late joining time means he can’t be considered any higher than this.
Party Members Strengths
- Super high physical damage.
- His physical damage is like, really high.
- Uses his sword to inflict non-magical damage in an impressive fashion.
2. Itsuki
Itsuki is effectively the player character in Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore, although he’s not exactly a silent protagonist. As such, he was always going to be some form of Swiss army knife in battle, able to turn his hand to almost anything. Yet, where other games might feature a jack of all trades in the ‘but thou must’ slot, Itsuki can excel in almost any role. Should you wish you build him as a physical powerhouse you can do so, likewise a spell slinging caster, albeit restricted in element. He can even function as a buff and heal bot, should you wish.
It’s this adaptability that has him in our number two slot. We tend to prefer the physical version of Itsuki if we’re honest, despite his weapon type clashing with Yashiro, but we’ve had him take up the reigns as a magic user to great effect. In the end it’s hard to go wrong with the lad. The only real downside is the locking of some truly epic spells to new game plus.
Party Member Strengths
- High physical or magical damage.
- Learns great party buffs.
- You’re kind of stuck with him…
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1. Kiria
Kiria is the fourth character to join your team and, in our opinion at least, she is by far the best. We’ve been at pains to describe other cast members and how much they bring to the party, yet with Kiria everything is rather one dimensional; she’s great at casting really powerful spells at your enemies. That might not sound enough, but look: She’s really, really, really good at throwing powerful spells at your opponents, and she can almost always hit their weak spot and triggering a session.
When other cast members join they tend to bring a new way to trigger sessions, or a new weapon type to tackle certain enemies, yet in our experience Kiria is already doing this, consistently, no matter where we found ourselves in the game. Even when you do stumble upon an enemy who’s weakness she cannot exploit, she has non elemental, almighty skills to fall back on to continue dealing damage. In the end, no matter what we write you’ll settle on the three that chime with you as the player for your main team, but when we’re all completely honest with each other and look at things objectively, Kiria is by far the best.
Terrible at dressing up like a dinosaur however…
Party Member Strengths
- Super high magic damage.
- Useful debuffs.
- Powerhouse throughout the game.
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Categories: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore, Top 5
Really, I feel like it’s better to shuffle party members in and out as needed than to say “Only these three should be used”. Need to down some flyers? Use Ellie. Need to take some strong physical hits? Use Counter on Yashiro. Need to set up a heat riser on the party? Touma, Tsubasa or Mamori all cover two of the three Kaja buffs with their special performances, so whoever’s next can cover the final one with a kaja-stone.
Hi Ekimmak, good to hear from another fan of this game! Your point is very true, especially since you’re free to switch whenever you want, albeit with some combat downtime. This does make it hard to ‘rank’ the members so to speak. One thing though is that we struggled to justify having Tsubasa in the main team once healing items upgrade from the shop, which is a shame. Love her Persona Q outfit however.
Anyone reading, check out Ekimmak’s YouTube channel, they have some great TMS#FE videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/ekimmak/