Topic: Bravely Second

@Spoony_Tech: I hear you man. between titles like fire emblem fates, bravely second, final fantasy explorers and legend lf legacy, there is just too much RPG goodness and less time to actually dig it properly. oh, and super mystery dungeon also XD

@VoltageX: I'm also anticipating an EO V announcement this year and am hopeful for a NA release and I can't forget SMT IV as well as 2 Dragon Quests. I could see myself picking up a minimum of 8 3ds games this year. I also have interests in Prime Hunters, Hyrule Warrior's, and the already release Paper Jam. O.o

This is going to be a pretty incredible year for Japanese games across multiple platforms. 3DS and PS4 are the standouts, in this regard.

Zero Time Dilemma, Hyrule Warriors Legends, SMT IV Final, DQ VII, DQ VIII, and what EO game Atlus drops this year will likely be my big focuses on the 3DS this year.

Why would you include Hyrule Warriors Legends on a list of games that will most likely be incredible? The game runs at a horrid framerate and nothing but a downgrade.

I, for one, am looking forward to getting Hyrule Warriors Legends because I never played the Wii U version. How do you know it plays at a horrible framerate? the game isn't even out yet.

@Chaoz: Framerate looks great on the New 3DS version. Very fast, responsive, and visually impressive.

Of course, performance-wise, it's a downgrade: they're porting an HD home console game to a portable platform. It actually looks really good so far, though, and the additional content makes it even better.

@Pokefanmum82 He's probably thinking about the reports concerning the Japanese demo of the game that it ran terribly on old 3DS systems (as opposed to New Nintendo 3DS systems). If you look at footage, there's a really stark contrast between the game's performance on a New 3DS and an original model 3DS. It's unknown whether this is going to represent the game's performance on original 3DS models by launch.

I have the second special edition pre-ordered also, can't wait!

@Ralizah I agree the second half was really bad (Just my opinion), I mean I get the whole alternate reality idea...so I just skipped through most of those. As for the music what do you replaced it?? I thought it had original music like the first?

I agree, this year is overloaded, much less the other's prior to this.

@scubydo: Revo isn't doing the music for the second game. They switched to someone else. If you listen to the game's music on youtube, the epic Attack on Titan-esque, trumpet heavy music has been replaced by standard JRPG tunes. The music isn't bad, but it sucks in comparison to the original.

I believe the second game also takes place in the same world, so there's going to be a lot of the same in-game environments, and the story doesn't seem terribly stimulating. I mean, BD might have had a horribly paced second half, but when the story was good, it was amazing.

Demo confirms the Tomahawk was replaced with a cowboy outfit. http://imgur.com/a/BOWse

Native American characters are being whitewashed and turned into cowgirls. How very progressive of them.

They're not "representing" anyone though are they. This game is not set in America and they are not native americans being shown. The native american head-dress and feathers thing is a general cultural icon that everyone can recognise just like the stereotypical pirates, vikings, samurai etc etc. It says absolutely nothing about it's original source except that people have an immediate sense of roughly what it means. It's so insulting how "well-meaning" progressive westners always treat other cultures like fragile children who can never handle anything.
If they really cared about actually offending people or not, it'd be pretty easy to go and randomly poll 100 native americans and ask them if they had any problem with headdresses being used as an icon a fantasy game. That'd be an ok approach. Much better than letting middle class white folks tell you what they need.

So this is all Square-Enix's doing just for clarification, as it was with Bravely Default. If this is how they want to present their game to me then I am OK with it, I see nothing to be angry or upset about and this is their product that they made with their money and so they (obviously) reserve the right to alter their product as they please. So in other words I fail to see the issue, again.

From my siblings' description of the class, I think the change is more for the sake of making sense. A tomahawk is a type of axe, right? And why would a gunslinger class be based on Native Americans?

Token representation of an entire culture? Errr....what? Where does it say that? It's not even got anything to do with Native Americans in the actual game! That's something you're entirely projecting onto it. Nothing about that is inherent in the image.
Same for your weird assertion of "this is all you need to be a Native American". Where are you getting this stuff? You're essentially just making up things and saying "we need to be careful in case people actually think the crazy stuff I've just made up". Well you can just invent ad-hoc "meaning" for pretty much anything by that same method: I hereby decide that because fireworks came from China, whenever anyone uses fireworks, they need to be really careful because they are representing the entire culture of China in those explosions. And any Chinese people who see them will interpret this as "this is what you need to be Chinese". We should all realize that coloured explosions are a lot more complex than we thought. And then a year later some genius "activist" will write an article on Polygon about how "since fireworks are from China, should we maybe all just use red fireworks only?". Seriously, you can do this with almost anything.

Gonna deviate from the censorship topic: Has anyone received a demo code from the UK store? I'm tempted to pre-order the game then cancel it once I receive the demo, but I'm worried that I won't be able to cancel it or that the code only applies to early pre-orders. If anyone pre-orders the game now and receives a code, could you let me know?

That's not what stereotype means at all. You're getting that meaning from the fact that that's how stereotypes are often used. But that's not part of the definition in any dictionary you'll find. None of them specify that the meaning of a stereotype is only valid as summarising a whole culture. It's entirely in keeping with the definitions in most dictionaries that you can stereotype at a smaller level. For example, you could say someone was using a stereotype of how people from a certain place speak or as the wikipedia article says, you can stereotype a certain way people do something. You might happen to be doing that with the implication that it represents their entire culture, but that's not necessary at all.
In this case, they're clearly saying nothing about native americans. Like when Pokemon clearly borrowed a sterotype of Paris for Lumiose City. That wasn't saying anything about France beyond that they know people have a vague familiarity with it and therefore it can be borrowed to envoke an immediate sense of understanding with the audience.

So has anyone noticed the box art for this game has two versions? There's the regular one with Magnolia and an alternate one that looks a lot darker. I've only seen the alternate one advertised with the collector's edition but no one ever seems to mention it. I dig the alternate art but I'm not sure if I have to get the collectors edition to have it. I'd rather not spend thirty bucks on something like that. Does anybody know anything about this?

Really tempted to get this now. I was massively turned off the original but this has got quite good reviews. And they can't do that time loop thing again, right?

My Collector's Edition arrived today and I didn't expect it to be so big and beautiful. If there's one thing I'm disappointed with it though, it's the soundtrack CD which seems to be just a small 10 song mini album. Otherwise it's really good. I didn't have much time with the game yet but just to let everyone know, the game spoils the ending of Bravely Default in the opening video. I advice everyone to play BD before moving onto BS. If your eyes can handle 3D, I also advice to play the game with 3D on (mine is max) since the Bravely series looks incredible when the 3D effect is on. I tend to stop and wait for the zoom out every time I arrive in a new place and sometimes it takes me like 5 minutes before I can continue because I just love to watch the scenery.