This is exactly what I was going to say. Good to know there are other people with similar views.

I was seriously considering getting that new Fire Emblem 3DS and a copy of Birthright, but I'm just tired of Nintendo making changes like these.

@turambar: haha don't worry I don't. I don't why it is still that way either, but that's America for you. Probably some weird holdover from the Puritans.

You had to remind me. Truly no greater crime has been committed against US Fire Emblem fans than this.

Well maybe that's not true, but it's definitely the one that galls me personally the most.

That's not the kind of violence I'm talking about, nor am I actually talking about violence in games really. I'm talking about people seeing, say, a Mortal Kombat fatality, and cheering. It is the praise of violence, particularly violence that is designed to be as gratuitous and gory as possible, that is astounding, not the violence unto itself.

Was Mystery of the Emblem actually good? I was too busy feeling burned by Shadow Dragon, and what little I played of the fan translation didn't make me feel that much better about it. Just something about the clay blobs animating compared to actual sprites or polygons.

The face thing was creepy and no one talked about the actual gameplay stuff of Fates, which is legitimately great.. Creepy people who are loud minority are harming the game the most. I guess since you don't like the new direction Fire Emblem took, no one should like it?

Funny you should put it that way. The new gameplay mechanics that Fates brings to the game that Awakening lacked was actually the My Castle stuff. In other words, mechanics that do seem to be focusing more on the character relationship / quasi-dating sim aspect of things.

As a fan of old FE games, I was actually annoyed more at Awakening's resurrection of FE8's over world than anything else, but at least I get a version of Fates that is devoid of that.

Path of Radiance was my first FE game and I was 13 when it came out so I didn't know that they took out a difficulty mode at the time. Same goes for Radiant Dawn's changes. I was upset at some of Awakening's translation at the time of its release, but not having a new Fire Emblem come over in about 5 years made me more forgiving. I just don't like content getting cut for no reason. I would've been upset about those changes to PoR and RD had I known about them too. Enough to not buy them? Who could say? I was 13 and 15 when those games came out and I would probably just want to get that new Fire Emblem. Now if they were split up weird, cutting content, and were released in 2016? Then yeah maybe I wouldn't buy them.

You mean the direction of making it more "creepy" that it already took? I'm not sure if FE Fates sold well in Japan, but if it did it's going to continue this "creepy" direction you seem to dislike. The reason no one is talking about the gameplay of Fates is because it's not that different than Awakening. It's the same reason people don't talk in depth about Call of Duty's gameplay besides it's few change ups which is what people are talking about with Fates.

There's a billion gameplay mechanic changes before even touching the MyCastle. I would bet most people don't even know that weapon durability is out.

There's no world map in any Fates game. Mission structure is strictly menu, with Birthright having an extra option for random battles.

@jesushammer: You're trolling me if you're seriously saying there's no noticeable difference in gameplay between Awakening and Fates. But that's what I expect from you so I forgive you this time.

@taesoawful: The weapon durability bit isn't actually that new. FE4, arguably my favorite in the entire franchise, already did something similar to it. Given how common place weapons beyond just iron and steel were in Awakening, this doesn't really change much. Or more accurately, while it is a change, it's a change that started in Awakening.

Changing the over world map to a menu also doesn't really get rid of the core divide between the two styles of play though: the ability to grind versus exp as a finite resource.

(There's also no need to be an ass, especially when as contentious as this thread has been, everything other than maybe my calling Mike bullshit at the start of it all has been civil.)

It's as noticeable as the changes in a Call of Duty game. Advanced Warfare is a very different game from Ghosts and BLOPS3 is very different from Advanced Warfare. The point I was making is it's still a Fire Emblem game. The gameplay hasn't changed so much that we need to talk about how good it is. It's like going depth about how Call of Duty is a great playing shooter. Everyone knows that already, but people are more interested in the new features and tweaks to the gameplay.

@turambar: I do like how they changed the pair up mechanic in Fates and I am interested in how they designed the AI and maps to use it against you.

@kogx: Having played a lot of Super Robot Wars games, another turn based tactics game, I'm always a bit wary of mechanics that allows the enemy to take advantage of pairing up mechanics as well. (Actually, attack stance is mechanically identical to how SRW's pairing system works offensively.) It's often easy to cause enemies to end up acting too defensively, and thus making fights a bit of a slog. That said, combat is inherently faster in FE than SRW with enemies being much more fragile, so we'll see how it turns out.

Just for reference for anyone saying fates isn't that different from awakening mechanically:

Dual Guard/Stance, Dual Strike/Attack Stance

A+ supports (eh)

Different seals

Weapon changes (durability, new weapon triangle, hidden weapons/debuffs)

Changes in how child stats are influenced

Those are the most notable I can think of. It's cool to be on the side of the touch game, but to say that it's the only major addition from awakening is awfully disingenuous. Granted not all are new to the series as a whole, but come on now.

Losing those two aspects is a big plus for me. The drugging thing is CRAZY to be in a Nintendo game. It seems like the plot of a Hentai game.

Also don't need to pet anyone's face.

That's the thing. Seems shallow and unnecessary.

@mezza: The My Castle stuff simply stands out far more than any of those at first glance. The rest are combat mechanic changes that only long time fans such as us will notice. It's kind of the same way Dynasty Warrior games or Super Robot Wars games have evolved: not that visible to anyone not already neck deep.

The fact that Nintendo spent as much time showing off My Castle as it did all the other changes combined (IIRC, it got its own entire content feature video) kind of shows where they are putting more emphasis on trying to market.

@jesushammer: Fair enough. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this point. After replaying it recently, I can't help but think the Path of Radiance difficulty change is the worst of them, mostly because I don't think it's all that hard on hard. Still my favorite in the series though.

@Turambar (on mobile so I can only @ one person): New Mystery of the Emblem is a way more interesting game than Shadow Dragon. I played it before the fan translation was entirely finished, so I can't speak to the quality of that, but in terms of stuff like map design and difficulty I found it a lot better than its predecessor. Still has the DS Fire Emblem look and some of the mechanical quirks, but it's worth looking at.

Those are exactly what I said they were. Tweaks to the gameplay that everyone already knows. The game is still about moving units and attacking, just like Call of Duty is still about shooting dudes. They have big tweaks to the formula, but it remains mostly the same. My Castle is a totally new addition is eaisly the biggest change in the game which is why people are talking about it more than tweaks to gameplay and old features returning.

@turambar: I didn't say that my castle isn't the part that stands out the most. It's the least self-explanatory so of course it gets attention and explanation. Its also an easier to show off in a broad strokes demo along with some basic gameplay. A bunch of stats and base info on mechanics wouldn't make for a good demo. My point was that trying to play off my castle as the change of all changes from awakening to fates is pretty weak. Not to mention, the portion removed is only part of my castle to my understanding. There is still plenty more to do in it.

It goes both ways with the whole authorial intent thing. Pandering and coldly exploitative moves are a negative whether you're talking about removing or adding content.

@mezza: My point is that most Awakening fans won't really care that much about the combat changes. Sure, I'll scrutinize the child stat changes, but I've also been practicing eugenics since FE4, and am well aware most don't play the game at all like me. A large mechanical addition is going to be more exciting than a number of meaningful but still small mechanical changes.

And yeah, the face touching is only a small part of My Castle. Don't think this has been disputed anywhere. (I think this entire line is pretty much tangential to the original topic of the thread.)

It doesn't matter if the things taken out don't appeal to you. The fact of the matter is NoA wants to shield your innocent, precious American eyes from the dangers of something "too Japanese." Things are attempted to be made inaccessible to all of us because we live in America. Personally the things they're censoring look pretty stupid to me but if that's what is in the game, so be it. Let me see the dumb face petting mini-game in all its unnecessary glory. Be confident. It's a little more than removing a breast slider this time around and that ultimately worries me about things being removed in the future from other games. It's a principle that's very difficult to support because I'm unsure where it begins and ends. As someone who merely only played Awakening and liked it a lot, I hadn't planned on getting Fates on release, but it's important to speak up about questionable practices. Censorship is not great. Maybe the things being removed are bad things about the game, but leave the intended product as is. Yes I know it's NINTENDO altering a NINTENDO game so there's no unfairness in that regard, but it's a matter of having a spine and just releasing it as is. No I don't think the things being censored are a deal breaker at all, but it's still a worrisome practice.

Like @mike I've played the Japanese version, and the feature they removed is both pointless and idiotic. It also felt like a fucking chore to sit there mindlessly rubbing a characters face for like a full minute just to get some support points, so I decided not to engage with the system at all really early on. Personally I just wish they'd never spent the resources developing the system in the first place (they had to generate higher quality models for the face of every playable character, and I'm pretty sure they don't appear anywhere else in the game). As for the support conversation, that sounds exactly like the kind of thing localization exists for, I'm sure Japanese people can see the humor in the original version, but it doesn't translate over here, and if they can rewrite the scene to work better for people outside of Japan than they should.

So in theory I agree with the changes, what's concerning to me is the precedent. I don't want them to feel like they can't bring stuff over here because its too offensive, their art should be allowed to offend us. If I could trust them to make informed decisions about what to change maybe I would feel differently, but after removing the boob slider from Xenoblade I'm not sure they have any idea what's actually offensive. A boob slider gets like a 1.5/10 on the creepiness scale.

So I guess in the end I agree with the spirit of the outrage, because if we don't get upset over the face rubbing and boob slider now, then that will just enable them to do more and more stuff like this in the future, and maybe next time it will be something that matters a lot more (like in the days of the Super Nintendo when games weren't allowed to have any religious references). But considering how fucking terrible the feature they removed is, I have a lot of trouble joining in on that fight right now.

Sound like good changes to me, alot of Japanese media i would be into gets ruined by creepy shit.

In case you wanted to know what they've replaced the face rubbing with, here it is courtesy of a Polygon livestream. The other "big" reveal from this stream is that, unfortunately, it seems like there's no dual audio option like there was in Awakening.

Ya know, I like it when games come over with all their original content... but it doesn't seem like anything of value was lost.

Now that I'm actually disappointed to hear.

I really hope duel audio is in the game, when I heard that the Polygon stream did not see the duel audio option (I didn't watch it myself to avoid any spoilers) I am very disappointing with the knowledge that there is no choice for hearing the Japanese voices.

What is really strange about that for me is that there is 250 MB of data more then the Japanese version of the game. If it is not the other language then what else could it be?

Seems fine to me. The important parts of it (the detailed models and relationship boost) are there. This is pretty much what I figured it would end up being. An argument could still be made that we should be receiving an unaltered game, but skipping the tedious and somewhat odd part actually sounds like an improvement. For me at least.

The dual audio thing is weird though. I figured it would be in after we got word of the file size. I dont usually switch the languages around but for those who do like to its pretty important. Fingers crossed that by some chance it is actually in there somewhere.