Local Fuss

Most of any recent Nintendo game localization has had some controvesy one way or another. The big recent fuss is Fire Emblem Fates that came out last month. Now Fire Emblem is this big Nintendo RPG franchise that suddenly found an audience because it has dating sim elements. The game has this petting feature where you can use the touch screen to pet your potential partner when you are alone. Yes it's as creepy as it sounds and Nintendo decided to removed it somewhat for the English version.

Now removing it is one thing but someone from the localisation team had the nerve to say content change is all part of the localization process. I couldn't disagree more with that statement.

While I don't expect everything in the original Japanese version to be translated word-for word, I do expect the content to remain the same. Unfortunately in most cases, content change usually means content removed. Paying for a game that is late to be localized is not ideal but paying for a game that is localized late with content removed is a double-whammy. Thankfully only Yakuza 3 comes to mind when speaking of such.

Unfortunatelty this is the price to pay for playing foreign-made games.

Fatal Frame V removed the risque bonus costumes for the English version as expected but Nintendo/Tecmo made up for it by replacing them with new costumes. It's a fair trade as Nintendo could have simply remove the costume without any new addition like what happened for Crimson Butterfly Remake.

Sexual Awakening

Here's my perspective of the Fire Emblem series as a relative outsider - it only became popular after IS incorporated dating sim elements into the game. This proves that nothing sells a product better than a little sex appeal. Of course, it may not be true but ever since Awakening made the series a mainstream success, every time it make headlines is concerning sexual elements like censored images and gay marriages.

I wanted to play the Fire Emblem series as I developed a fondness for SRPG on handheld systems. I'm still pretty noob when it comes to RPG so real-time combat in RPG is always daunting to me. In SRPG, you take turns to fight and move the players around on the grid a bit like a chess game.

To prepare myself for Awakening, I played the last Fire Emblem game on the Wii system - Radiant Dawn. It's pretty hardcore and old school, I was playing for hours and made little progress since the early chapters as I keep failing to survive. I would love to finish that game but I'm not sure if I can without resorting to Casual mode.

When I downloaded the demo for Awakening, I was immediately  blown away by the production value of the game. Radiant Dawn on the Wii wasn't a very good looking game by any means, in fact it looked like a Gamecube game (Hello Star Fox Zero!). Speaking of the Gamecube, its amazing how games these days still get referred to as Gamecube standards, shows you how ahead of the curve that system was at the time. Anyway back to Awakening, it's hard to believe Radiant Dawn and Awakening were released back to back on two vastly different system.

IS went all out when making Awakening as they realised the series was slowly declining and that this might very well be the last Fire Emblem game. They certainly didn't held back on the production value from what I seen from the demo so far. Now if only I can finish PxZ so I can get started on this now that my copy has arrived.