Fire Emblem Echoes = Potential hope for Nintendo?

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“Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia” is the next “Fire Emblem” game coming to the 3DS in late April for Japan and a month later for the rest of the world. “Fire Emblem Echoes” is a remake of “Fire Emblem Gaiden” (the 1992 Famicom game), and it centers around the protagonists Alm and Celica (both of whom will join Marth, Roy, Ike, Robin and Lucina as Amiibos upon release). Corrin is also slated to be released as an Amiibo sometime in the near future, just a head’s up. Other than that, the box art of Echoes looks absolutely fantastic, and I have no doubt that the gameplay will also be top-notch for a Strategy RPG, and combined with the typical “Fire Emblem” difficulty. So it should be a solid game.

FEE reminds me of Radiant Historia (you should play that game if you haven’t, as it’s really good).

However, as we all know, Nintendo put some heavy-handed censorship into its predecessor, “Fire Emblem Fates” and heavily edited the dialogue in-game as well when it was ported out of Japan.

Talk about quality dialogues…

Here are more examples of bad and low quality dialogues:

They tried to copy the [Greatest Dialogue Ever] moment from Super Robot Wars.

Not only did they (Treehouse) change the dialogue, they had to add stuff to it.

I’ll be honest. I really was looking forward to Fates, but after hearing and seeing the butchering that they did to the final product, I had to stay away from it. So where does that leave us with Echoes? Considering that it’s likely to be localized by the same people who localized Fates, my hopes are not high right now. “They just removed the petting mini-game and replaced it with something else, plus the dialogue isn’t that important, why are you so upset still?!”

Well, try to imagine this. You go to a car dealership, and they’re selling you this brand-new, state-of-the-art blue sports car that can pick up satellite radio, play CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray and uses iPads. Simply put, you can plug in pretty much whatever you want in-order to play music. The AC and heater can keep you ice-cold in the summer and toasty warm in the winter and the seats are super comfortable. Obviously, you want this car, and you have the money to buy it. So you go in, purchase the car and when you’re given the keys to it… The car is now pink. And the AC and heater aren’t as good as they were. Oh, and you have an 8-track tape player, and the radio is analog and can barely pick up AM radio stations.

Why are you upset? The car still runs. It still gets you to where you want to go. Oh, you’re upset that you spent good money for a car, but when you got the car the stuff that it was advertised with was changed and/or removed? Get over it, you’re just being entitled. You’re lucky you were given a car anyway. As the dealer didn’t have to sell you a car if he didn’t want to.

Naturally, in that situation, you would have demanded a refund or boycotted the store all together and tried to keep others from getting tricked like you were. That’s how I and others feel about “Fire Emblem Fates“. While the base game is the same, too much was removed or changed for me, personally, to put down the money to purchase it. And, if you’re like me, you live on a tight budget, and you can’t just throw money out whenever you feel like it.

Funny enough, the censorship just makes this scene look even dirtier.

I really hope Nintendo doesn’t do to Echoes what it did to Fates, but considering the censorship of Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE, “Xenoblade Chronicles X”, “Bravely Default”, “Bravely Second,” and “Fatal Frame 5”, things aren’t exactly looking too bright. But why is all of this important? Well, all of that, plus how Nintendo nearly instantly zapped AM2R and pulled the plug on the Wii U, has left Nintendo’s reputation among gamers pretty much in the gutter. Potentially to the point that some gamers may hope that the Switch fails simply out of spite due to how poorly Nintendo has done things in the past few years.

That’s not good for the community. Nintendo’s a staple of gaming, even if they have some of the most horrendous business practices this side of Ubisoft and EA, you still know that the products they sell are solid game-play-wise. However, if Nintendo keeps doing what it’s done for the past few years, then there won’t be hope for them. And I really don’t want that to happen. Even so, at least “Fire Emblem Echoes” looks a “bit” more promosing when it comes to censorship and localization (based on what I’ve seen so far).

More Nintendo censorship can be found in this video.

And with that said, what’s your take on this matter? Does the censorship bother you? Does it not? Do you care? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section down below! And let’s hope that Echoes doesn’t get butchered like Fates was.

Credit:
Robin Ek – Credit

***Disclaimer***
This is a personal opinion of the writer, and it doesn’t necessarily represent the other writers (nor The Gaming Ground´s) opinions.