Toggle Background Color
The ol' pause screen is starting to fill up a bit, and we haven't even done the first proper dungeon! So let's do that.
Illusory 106
Ah yes, the demonic department store. A classic.
Aya... where are you...?
Itsuki, make sure you keep an eye on Tsubasa.
Got it. Chrom, I need your strength again.
And you will have it.
All right, Cain! Let's get this show on the road!
Well said! Let us storm the field with speed beyond speed!
So welcome to the first actual dungeon. TMS isn't afraid to throw you in the deep end right away, so let's just hit a couple quick things. As the info bar helpfully tell us, Tiki will occasionally send us topics while we're out dungeoneering to let us know we can forge new weapons or unlock new skills the next time we come back. It's not as handy as it sounds, especially for skills since it's usually very obvious when you can make new ones. You'll see how much I ignore her by the "Tiki: 8" in the top left corner at all times while we're dungeon crawling. 
Additionally, the circle thing off to our left is a warp point. The game is very good about giving you regular checkpoints in dungeons, and always puts one right before a boss or miniboss. It's just a real nice quality of life thing.
Immediately to our right is another one of those light walls. Again, nothing we can do here so let's get started.
Our first new enemy is this disembodied clown head. Nickelwise is weak to a whole host of stuff, including swords, axes, ice, light, and dark magic, almost none of which we can do anything with. Their sole resistance is fire, which means Itsuki is the only one who can deal with them in a timely manner. Thankfully, he's mostly content to chomp on someone for a low amount of physical damage.
And after the battle, we get introduced to another core part of the system. Each party member has a Stage Rank that increases as they take part in combat and sessions. Each stage rank unlocks a new skill (the vast majority of which are incredibly broken), and you need to have them at certain levels to unlock the party members' personal sidequests.
Just as an example? The skill that Itsuki just unlocked allows him to change targets if an enemy dies during a session. That his Rank 1 skill.
Tsubasa's is much less interesting, but no less handy. This unlocks the Traport skill, letting you leave the dungeon at any time for just 10 MP.
Oh, and I guess Touma picked up Sword-Blaze, but that's not really as important.
Now, you might be thinking "Okay, that sounds good but not like, holy shit broken good" and you'd be right! But there's another wrinkle to this system, and we'll use our myrmidon friend here to demonstrate. Like all sword users, he's weak to lances (and thunder but that's not really important here), and between Touma and Tsubasa, we can build quite a combo off of lances.
And sure enough, after a turn or two the myrmidon bites it. However, we still have part of a session to go. When an enemy is killed as part of a session (*including* as the opening attack!), you achieve an "Overkill", which causes every remaining attack in the session to ignore enemy resistances, including Nulls, Repels, and Drains. So if you know that an enemy absorbs fire but Touma is up next in your combo, as long as you can kill something before his turn comes up, it doesn't matter. His attack will hit them just like they were neutral.
This is the power of Itsuki's skill, and why it's so broken. And while we can only change targets once per session right now, you had better believe that he's got upgrades later on that let him change multiple times.
The main gimmick of Illusory 106 is these big dresses. You go in one side...
...And you come out the other.
On the far side we find a set of switches, and it should be pretty obvious what they do. Considering that we're on the doll's right side, the only one that's of any use to us is the right switch.
This gives us access to the third floor. This room is basically shaped like a sideways "8", with a dress on either side to let us go up and down as necessary.
On the third floor, we get introduced to what is probably my least favorite mechanic in the entire game. The purple enemies are called Savage Enemies, and they are motherfuckers of the highest caliber. For starters, you can't stun them with your sword, so unless you can get to some kind of environmental trigger (or another enemy), you're almost certainly going to get stuck fighting them. And that's really bad, as we will see later.
For now, we'll flip this to the middle switch and head down to 2F.
Along the way, Touma unlock his first skill. Estoma prevents enemies that are lower-levelled than Itsuki from spawning for a while, and I'm pretty sure I have literally never used it across multiple playthroughs.
On 2F, I spend a comical amount of time trying to get around this asshole, but unfortunately we have to fight this one. Let's...just get this over with.
So yeah, not only do Savage Enemies usually get a surprise attack on you, they hit like a freight train. They are always somewhere between 2 and 5 levels above your party, with skills and attacks that you usually won't see until the next dungeon (or at least much later in the current one). Running away is a crapshoot that wastes your turn more often than not, but standing your ground usually requires burning your good healing items (and in some cases your SP) to even the playing field.
That's not to say that you can't (or even shouldn't) fight them - you will get a ton of experience and rare drops if you prove victorious. But if you're actively fighting them, you're probably going in to specifically hunt down savage enemies. For the most part, encounters with them end after a character or two fails to run away, everyone's hurting, and at least one person is dead.
Good thing we bought those curries!
Anyway, before we were interrupted by our purple friend, we meet our first one-way wall. If you approach from the other side, it's just a big slab of iron, but hitting the back of it will destroy the barrier.
On the other side of 2F there's another wall, but the red dress is already in place for us to go behind it and break it. Really, I don't even know why this one is here.
Huh? Who's that...?
Ah! Over there!
Anybody...! Please...! Stop these monsters!
We have to help him!
Oh, it's just three myrmidons. The way he was screaming, you'd think we might have an actual challenge. 
Touma picks up Strength Boost after the fight, so at least it wasn't a total waste of our time.
Yatsufusa Hatanaka
Th-Thank you so much, you three!
You know this guy, Touma?
This is Yatsufusa Hatanaka... Everyone in the industry knows him. He's one of the best producers around. He's the one that set up the live concert today, too... I-It's an honor to meet you, Mr. Hatanaka!
Ahaha, well, rumors always blow my reputation out of proportion... I don't know if I'm THAT great. But... just what is going on? There was some commotion in the 106, and suddenly I was running for my life...
Um... how should we explain...?
You tell him where the exit is...
You'll be able to get out of this place if you follow those directions.
A-All right... I understand.
You would think that finding someone who's such a big shot here would call for a bit more caution, like escorting him out, but you do you game.
Anyway, shortly thereafter we get an update from Maiko and Kiria.
quote:
Hey, is everyone okay? I'm at the hospital now with Kiria. Don't worry, she's going to be fine.
The wounds aren't anything life threatening but she might be out of it for a while. I'll contact you again soon.
Well that's good to hear. With Hatanaka out of trouble, if we raid the room he was hiding out in, we can grab a Chakra Drop and a Traport stone. Neither of which are great but it's hardly worth complaining over.
And one last treasure for the road. We're pretty close to the next teleporter, but Itsuki is out of MP so we might as well put that Traport stone to use and regroup.
Back in the Bloom Garden, we can turn in those Stage Rank performas to unlock our new skills. Note that they require prestige stars as well, so sometimes we'll have to choose between new skills and new weapons.
We'll also take the opportunity to grab a new lance for Tsubasa. Still nothing new for Touma yet, but that'll change soon. For now, we're gonna call it here and next time we'll be taking on the miniboss of Illusory 106.