Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE

I always liked that change to behonest.

Why do you think a few outfits being changed have anything to with this game's failure? It has zero to do with that. Nothing. Zip. Nada. By the same token censorship will have no affect on its western performance. It would flop no matter what, and we'd be having the same general conversation. No dub will hurt its sales more than anything else.

If that was all they did in the west as well I would have been fine with it but the west is getting censorship like this, where apparently no one can show any skin below the neck◊.

In Japan dont underestimate their reaction to censorship of fanservice, death threats got sent to a station over the fact that they censored a pair of panties recently.

edited 22nd Jun '16 11:24:22 PM by Memers

Well, the one-two of "no dub" and "heavily censored" don't interact well, since the sorts who don't mind one do mind the other, and those who don't mind the former pay enough attention pre-release to know about the latter.

I know otaku are far more powerful than nerds have any right to be in Japan

but I really truly doubt putting pants on a girl is what killed this game's sales. Dragon Quest 8 was censored in Japan when it was re-released and it still probably killed the country's productivity for a week.

edited 22nd Jun '16 11:24:46 PM by Hashil

Those people who bought Dragon Quest VIII probably arnt the ones who would buy an Idol game.

Honestly I think that was part of it. Is there even all that much overlap with the idol and RPG player bases? Who even are this game's audience?

Death threats and the like, while serious issues that need to be dealt with, involve a few dozen people at most. Even if there were hundreds, that's still statistically invisible compared to the number of people who were conceptually interested but were then turned off by what it was (or even the number of people that did but it). Same reason why censorship did all of nothing to stop Fates from doing amazing numbers in America. Nobody cares about that stuff.

A few grumpy people on the internet do not represent the general public's (lack of) interest in this or any other game. They make themselves loud on the internet. Lots of groups do. That doesn't make them big or meaningful. It just means they're heard.

Seeing how Hyperdimension Neptunia Producing Perfection exists and did well for a short game, there was major overlap of Idols and RPG fans in Japan.

However that audience would take censorship personally.

EDIT: Rise and Lisa were also hugely popular in Japan as well and Persona 4 Dancing All Night got made.

They have done a The Idolmaster DLC for the Tales Series for every entry since Graces as well and is supposed to be the most popular DLC costumes.

edited 22nd Jun '16 11:36:42 PM by Memers

04./00. [PSV] Kami Jigen Idol Neptune PP # <SLG> (Compile Heart) {2013.06.20} (¥6.279) - 29.933 / NEW

Are you talking about this game? I have no idea what it is, but those numbers aren't telling me that idols and JRPGs overlap well. Persona did well sure, but that has a very dedicated fanbase. And those are Vita games.

This also isn't an idol game, so that's an issue. I'm not familiar with them, but from what I understand they're generally rhythm/simulation games. Not sure why fans of those would want to play a hardcore JRPG.

My point was there is audience crossover as Idols pop up quite a bit in more hardcore JRP Gs. Hyperdevotion Noire Goddess Blackheart has an idol character based on Miku, Neptunia mkII the characters get wrapped up on a concert and later the M Cs produce this.

There are idols in Final Fantasy X 2, Persona 2, Persona 4, Tales Series DLC, Phantasy Star Online 2, Atelier Iris 3's Cat Girl Idol, I literally could go on and on.

Atlus going full on in making an Idol RPG is not the least surprising, its being paired with Fire Emblem and Nintendo that killed it.

edited 23rd Jun '16 12:11:11 AM by Memers

More than any of that, it's that it was born from what was initially promised as a crossover between Fire Emblem - a medieval fantasy RPG about war with a mostly serious atmosphere - and Shin Megami Tensei - a notoriously dark and "mature" series of RPGs that regularly involve gods, demons, and humans waging genocidal wars and stripping one another of their free will.

Imagine a crossover between Neptunia and Senran Kagura, but scratch the fanservice both series are known for, stick it on the worst selling console on the market, and make it dark, gritty, and full of violence and gore. Do you see how that would massively alienate fans of both franchises? That's more or less what happened here.

edited 23rd Jun '16 12:25:53 AM by Hashil

I seriously don't think that the changing of a few character's outfits would deter people from buying this game if they weren't already going to in the West. Like with Fates, there's that vocal few that are going to demonize the Treehouse for all of the changes but honestly it probably won't matter too much in terms of sales(though this game isn't going to sell nearly as much, being a bit more niche). I'm guessing that people are probably more likely to not buy the game based on the premise, not because some character's outfit isn't skimpy enough.

It's not just a few outfits, it's nearly all of them as well as the removal of the free DLC, costumes, a bunch of nonsensical story changes etc.

And the removal of those features matters little to the average consumer who is looking at the game on the shelf. Honestly, I see more people who don't care about the removal of certain outfits and are more unsure about the whole idol thing.

Honestly, this is the same situation as with Fates. Vocal Minority gets all up in arms about something that doesn't really matter to the gameplay and remains bitter about the game.

If there was a dub yeah probably.

Best said, this game was never gonna do great, but they really hurt it with the 4kids-tier localization scaring off the few who wouldn't already be alienated by the premise. It could've hit cult classic status if they respected the source material more, given how the sorts who don't mind undubbed idol games think.

So it really is just "Look How Awesome Idols Are: The Game?" That's disappointing, considering the game everyone THOUGHT would be that... wasn't.

The thing about Fire Emblem Fates is that it had a large amount of mainstream appeal after the success of Awakening and its advertisement in Smash. As disappointing as it is to say this, most of that audience will either not care or not even know about the large amount of censorship that that game suffered.

However, this game is decidedly niche, and the niche that it appeals to is the one that will definitely care about censorship, amongst the myriad problems that the game has already faced. Anybody saying that this game will even come close to matching the sales of Fates is frankly delusional.

Nobody said it was going to match Fates's sales. But I see that we're all in agreement that sales wise this was a bad game conceptually for the platform it was on.

Yeah.

It had a lot of good things that could have helped it.

In hindsight, I even think going with the Urban Fantasy idea is good, as that's a staple of the Shin Megami Tensei series. Using the Fire Emblem characters as Persona style beings that transform the characters into Job classes (at least to me) wasn't a bad idea either.

But...well, despite that, the game was not what people were expecting, and deciding to play the idol concept straight (and lacking any darker concepts when darker concepts are a big part of both series, though more SMT then FE) was a huge ass mistake.

I want to see them try this again, and learn from their mistakes, because I've said for a long time that I wanted to play a JRPG on my console while eating breakfast or dinner or something, but it looks like the lesson that people will learn from this game is audiences don't want JRPG's' which is typical business fare.

Ah well. I suppose I just need to decide if I'm going to get a hard-copy version or just download it. I have the money for the latter, but I prefer the former (plus I can use the time to actually save up some cash, and finish Xenoblade Chronicles X).

This game could've been a cult classic considering its good gameplay but honestly all that it's managed to do is convince me to abandon Nintendo in the future in favor of companies that actually treat their core audience with respect. I can only hope that Etrian Odyssey V is left alone.

Why would you think Etrian Odyssey would be affected by anything? Nintendo has nothing to do that.

It's worth mentioning that this might have actually been Atlus not Nintendo. Criticisms of the dialogue and story translations would probably go towards the Treehouse, but what I've heard of isn't as bad as people make it out to be.

Yep, it was Atlus. Though, I don't expect anyone to stop blaming Nintendo, since they're the bigger of the two companies, especially coming off of XCX and Fates.

edited 23rd Jun '16 11:43:38 AM by strawberryflavored

Well, at least I now know who to blame but now these changes make even less then they did before (which is impressive). I desperately want to know what's going on behind the scenes here.

Also, I wouldn't say XCX was that big of a deal. There were only two changes made to that and one of them was perfectly reasonable (even if I've seen much younger kids were much skimpier clothing IRL). Fates, however, isn't even remotely forgivable and I'm not even talking about removing the ability to pet people.