Nintendo Apologises For Tokyo Mirage Sessions Censorship Misinformation, Offers Refunds

Honestly, that wording is weird. It can easily suggest that the content is added to, making it seem like it's a layer on top of the base Japanese game.

SuspiciousVampireCar.jpeg

I’d rather they took the completely unnecessary and out of place swearing out.

I guess that uncensored English version for the Wii U floating around on the interwebs is still going to be the definitive release, then...

Fire Emblem: Mirage Seasons: Sony Edition

Eh, I don't care for censorship but sexuality isn't a selling point with this game for me so I'm still getting it. It seems like such a small factor and definitely shouldn't be a make it or break it issue but then again people like to say one thing on the internet but their actions say something else. Most of the people you see here saying they aren't going to get it because of this are either

a.) Lying
b.) Weren't going to get the game anyway

Why? What is the point then?

When it is the original maker re-releasing it is it censorshiop or an artistic choice?!

Their decision and people can buy the game or not based on that.

Sad. It goes without saying, but the people interested in this game clearly don't want a censored version. I wish Nintendo would do the right thing and release it as originally intended.

Meh I'll still get the game, if I want to see hot booby shots and clevich in anime characters then I'll just watch anime instead.

Bummer. Obviously a full version with an option to censor would be better.

did you know?
if you want to see anime boobs, you can find them online FOR FREE ?
and if you're really feeling adventurous, you can find human ones, too!

Yeah, I expected as much. What a wasted opportunity to make things right with the Switch re-release!

@thehappychocobo Were you even going to buy it if it wasn't censored? I don't really understand this whole crusade people have these days against it. Yeah sure it sucks. But it's been happening since the NES lol. But all of a sudden all the internets are all up in arms over less boobies or a less gory scene.

It's extremely hard to believe people that wanted a game and were going to buy it are just flat out not going to because some there are less anime tiddies.

A shame. Oh well, there's plenty else to play on Switch instead.

$60 dollars for a censored Wiiu port? Go kick rocks Nintendo, what happened to not censoring your games?

Still better than Persona 5 Scramble

Censorship is not ok, when it's in regards to a message or voice. But its boobs. It's a game. You want a game with boobs? Theres plenty. If your game relies on boobs to be good, then it's probably not a good game to begin with. Anyway, I'll be picking this up, and using the internet to fill my other needs. Like god intended.

"It's not that the anime boobs are important, but it's about sending a message."

hogwash. nobody who says that even believes that themselves.

Just for the record:
1) The censorship extended to narrative elements. It's not just "anime boobs" being covered up.
2) When it comes to visual censorship, the bigger problem for me is just how poorly it was implemented.

For example:

Who the heck wears a wedding dress that looks like a body suit?! Might as well put her in a burka!

@m8e3point1415 you like to make things so simplistic life is far more interesting I do feel sad for your life there.

Those whom are against Censorship should be their choice to buy it or not. If you want to be the Morality Police you should look at one in the mirror before being the morality here. There is enough sex and sexing of the female body on the internet and magazines and clothing but you seems to only latch on this. This is the reason such comments seems offwack here.

Gameplay > Titillation. If you’re that bothered by the censorship of some pretend flesh in a video game rather than how it plays you’re in the wrong hobby.

Bam! What you get is no different from Wii U.

@Retron

I suppose it exists but Nintendo this gen has shown they really aren't fussed about the content in games, certainly third party games anyway.

Maybe over time they decided they preferred the Western version over the Japanese version and that is their right as they made the game.

Like I said people can buy it or not. I won't be but just because I have never had any interest in that genre of games not because of any of this stuff.

@RR529 That's not the issue here it's Censorship of any kind benefits no one. These games you buy or don't buy that is a choice you make.

@RadioHedgeFund That's not the only real reason behind this they want to be your Moral Police. That's the truth they don't want to admit to. It's the fact they are afraid of titillation will make them a Real MAN.

Lmfao sending a message. All of you extreme censorship nutjobs are as bad as the people complaining everything is cause of SJWs. Why don't we just calm down here. If you don't like it fine, but don't act like its some extreme wrong that's horrible and shouldn't be bought period. Especially if the devs don't give a hoot. Then you're just not playing a game you wanted to play...just because you're upset for them?

And do you honestly think there is a large enough group of people not buying censored games to make it a difference? If Nintendo or Sony want to censor parts of a game for different countries...then they are going to do it haha. Both of them really don't give a dang what consumers think because most people are going to buy anyways.

At the end of the day if you want to buy something or not then it's your money who cares. You can do whatever you want. But don't make it out to be like people who DO buy the game are bad people or wrong cause they want to play the game. It reminds me of religions who shun others and treat them bad just cause they don't believe in their religion.

I have to agree that the wedding dress looks stupid, and the original doesn't look at all like something that needs to be censored.

I can't see how a perfectly normal looking dress could be a bigger problem that the Hot Springs DLC in Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold, which Atlus did localize and absolutely no one complained.

@m8e3point1415 Aren’t you the attention seeker since you could quite easily hit the ignore button? You wouldn’t have seen any of Charlie’s comments in that case and wouldn’t have made that point. Congratulations on being both hypocritical and coming across like a patronising git.

@SBandy
I imagine that it's for parity, using the most recent build, and because the Japanese had some preference for several of the costumes that replaced the bikinis iirc. For all we know, the new stuff could be more in line with the Japanese version, but I wouldn't be surprised either way.

@Ralizah

I mean I agree, it does look dumb. I'm not condoning censorship, I'm just saying that it isn't such an extremely big deal that the game is unplayable. Gameplay is unaffected and the developers worked hard on it, I wouldn't refuse to buy the game over minor changes. If the game had some kind of weird petting mechanic that some Japanese games have, and it was axed due to censorship I could at least understand the outrage. I personally am not interested in that sort of thing though, so it'd be no skin off my back.

@m8e3point1415 are we talking pages ripped from a book changed?

@Manah
That bit was further into the game than a lot of the complainers would ever get and also DLC, to be fair.
If the leak regarding the localization changes is true, Atlus didn't do any of the changes on their own, but rather because of Treehouse (probably Nich Maragos as he's credited in the game for localization or something) requesting them.

According to the original article, the localization was done by Atlus? Does this mean Atlus decided on the changes for the western release for that version and Nintendo agreed with them? Is Atlas also in charge of the development of this release?

I wasn't sure about this game when it was first shown because it looked really inappropriate, but that year's Treehouse Live @ E3 convinced me of how fun it was.

I understand that artists should be able to create whatever they want, but truth be told, inappropriate content makes video games sell worse.

Not only did they censor the Western version but now also the original Japanese version?? Incredible... Not surprising to see others defend this pointless censorship

I won't be buying it though neither bought the WiiU version until modders do Nintendo's work.

@Spudtendo The game will definitely not be unplayable and, if you don't care, you should absolutely grab it. The censorship, as unfortunate as it is, doesn't make the game a "bad" experience. I just think the decision to maintain the censorship in the localized Wii U version for the Switch port is a huge shame.

@BarefootBowser well, I say that if a society feels its wrong to show skin, which is perfectly natural, and it's not even boobs, no actual +18 stuff, but violence or strong language is perfectly fine, then I will tell you there is something wrong with values of a society and it is a major problem whether you admit it or not

@CharlieGirl This right here. Censored game? No problem. Google has your back. Though, real ones are far better than the 13 year old girls with giant balloon boobs that are the staple of anime (which was a mistake)

@YessMasster “whether you admit it or not” is a great way to shut down and ignore other sides to the argument.

@BarefootBowser Priorities!! 🤣

I understand being upset about censorship, but the idea of preserving the artist's original intention just for the sake of it? Nah. Sometimes you just have to admit that the artist made the wrong call.

@Retron Censorship of meaningful things, like knowledge, sucks. There are enough uncensored anime boobies online that there’s literally no reason to get worked up about “censorship.”

Straight from a must buy to no chance in a hailstorm in under .00005 seconds!

Was not paying $60 to re-play another WiiU rehash anyway.

@Ralizah I'm against censor ship but Samus wears a blue body suit and she's still pretty hot, that white suit isn't that bad, saying she should be in a burka because her suit makes her look as sexy as Samus is just unnecessary exaggeration. I shouldn't compare her to Samus but that's like saying Zero suit Samus or those plug-suits in mecha animes and shows shouldn't exist. Another example can be Tracer and Widow maker from Overwatch with the skin tight suits.

@Big-Pepsi Right? Plug suits are the equivalent to a full body swimsuit at the beach or a swim tourney.

I Thought Nintendo Weren't Censoring Games

Shouldn't have said anything and let it release.

@Big-Pepsi ...a wedding dress shouldn't look like a piece of clothing designed to protect your body while wearing a suit of mechanical armor.

Just my opinion, of course.

What the likes of @Mr_Muscle and @BarefootBowser seem to be failing to understand is that, when a society condones the censorship of "unimportant" things, it will inevitably lead to the censorship of important things.
Those governments that censor real-life violence and harrass the press? They probably started out by censoring things that were on the same level as anime tiddies.

Anime boobs and skimpy outfits always feels like a weird hill to fight on in regards to censorship.

Because, I get it. It's inherently not a good feeling knowing content of any medium has been altered due to puritanical standards. At the same time, it feels a bit dishonest to argue purely on priciple over something that's essentially low stakes in this case.

It sends a stronger message to own what you're trying to defend on a more substantial, personal level. You wanna see titilating content, wear it on your sleeve (note: this doesnt mean you're immune to criticism).

Well, I consider that money saved. Too bad, but there are enough other upconing jrpg in the next months. I'm wondering how it will sell in Japan.

@Quantaur I'm pretty sure it is just laziness on Atlus site. Nintendo is relatively relaxed regarding censorship this days. And it would have been some work making a 'complete' edition containing the original and the modified content. While some people like me will skip it due to the censorship, most people who wanted to buy it, would have done so regardless. And since it did not sell well in the first place, it make sense for Atlus to make a low effort port.

@BarefootBowser
The difference is that these people are complaining in relevant spaces as opposed to going elsewhere and taking the attention away from more pressing issues in outlets that give them more widespread exposure to screech about a bikini being changed to a stupid looking 90's sitcom getup.

All this censoring, I'm still waiting for that full on nudity game. No interest in this crap.

So... we're basically going to rehash the ENTIRE nonsensical discussion that we've already had several years ago, the very one linked to in the article here?

And sadly, nothing has changed, and the pro-censorship people, largely consisting of the usual, still non-the-wiser suspects, simply keep on pandering their myopic views and short-sighted narrative without knowing the full extent of the actual changes made, which go FAR beyond just some sketchy underage anime titillation/adoration.

People, please get yourselves actually informed on what's going on here, and THEN comment on or cheer for censored versions of this game, instead of displaying the rather despicable habit of simply accusing all defenders of the original version and/or this patch of having some kind of disgusting tendency to see children in ways they're not supposed to be seen.

There's an ENTIRE story line changed, various assets and conversations are changed to a point that they don't make any sense anymore and/or feel like disconnected parts that have nothing to do with the original game and/or its original intent.

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is what the more sensical, non-pedophilic portion of us censorship protestors are so against.

I personally don't really care either way about the presence of or lack of anime boobs in my games, but please don't rip out story parts and/or any other rather intrinsically necessary part of a game, that is needed to convey the ORIGINAL intent of the game and the issues it wants to address, and then I'll be just fine with mosaiced or smoke-covered boobs...

@TheLightSpirit well you are not wrong, but there are still a lot of games on the switch which are not censored. One of the reasons my ps4 collects dust at the moment. And regarding people who call other names, well just use the ignore list. There are enough nice people here on both side of the argument, which can hold a discussion.

Or, put another way, "Port of low-selling game that used lowest-cost-possible localization budget 4 years ago not being re-localized. Fanbase surprised."

I absolutely adore this game overall. One of my favorite RPGs overall. But anyone who thought they were going to re-localize a game they never bothered fully localizing the first time around just to port it to a system people actually own is dreaming.

Whilst not immensely disappointed on the reduced skin, the biggest annoyance is the chapter where they change the entire outfit from a swimsuit to casual clothes. The cutscenes felt so forced and nonsensical because they had to take out something integral to the entire chapter’s story-arc. Honestly I’d only buy this when on sale for the shelf as unlikely to play again; even though I did enjoy it.

At least there’s always Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition. Just finished Torna today and now excited to play the original again.

Something I'm not sure the anti-censorship crowd may not realise, is marketing towards regional demographics requires this. Different cultures have different social norms. The vocal group may be for the game in its original context, but most western consumers will not buy a game designed to appeal to japanese consumers. Realistically, games that are notamended to appeal to the majority won't sell as well. Look at Earthbound for example. So many things were changed to make it palatable and people loved it. If those things weren't changed, it may not have been purchased let alone appreciated.

@Seanmyster6 Censorship from a place of government/authoritative power doesnt really require a sliding scale with irrelevant hits. They'll usually shoot for whatever's a direct threat to their reign (or whatever will help them maintain power).

If there's no checks and balances or civil rights, they'll just go for it straight away. If there are, they'll usually chip away at it with actual political correctness and/or casting doubt on the system.

I think the path from apathy over the censorship of anime boobs to real-life acts of violence is a long and winding one. Ironically though, the recent uprising of a certain fringe political group has been partially attributed to many of the types who might get upset over censorship like this.

@Seanmyster6 Ah yes, the slippery slope fallacy. Not a solid foundation for an argument.

@Joker13z Well, I really REALLY wanted to play the Bravely Default games, but i didn't because they were censored (changes where extremely dumb IMO). Same with Criminal Girls. Those are two series i've been interested since they were announced. I've been doing the same for a long time. Unless the game is a master piece, i won't buy it if it's censored.

Doesn't affect my purchase decision.

@Big-Pepsi D. Va too

@XBontendo I agree with most of your post, but this is not a game which will appeal to a typical western gamer. This game is clearly targeted at an audience which likes anime/jrpg. I really doubt that the more vocal people praising the changes, would have bought it anyway. Earthbound however, appeals to a wider audience even without the localization changes.

Yup, classic Nintendo, doing what they do best...making weird decisions.

Remember all the folks that got mad and affected sales of Mortal Kombat on SNES?
No? Me neither.

I do understand that they had to do something with that one chapter because the entire concept has no direct context in the West. The practice it's a commentary on doesn't really exist here, at least in the same context, so it did require editing to make sense. What they did with it, however, was just bizarre, and theming the thing in "Fresh" culture hearkening back to when Sonic was cool is twice as bizarre. I almost wonder if it's a stealth middle finger to the localization requirements.

@XBontendo While true, this is a game available only in Japanese language entirely about J-Pop idols in Tokyo. There's no change they can make to this to make it appeal to "Western consumers" by modifying some assets and story dialogue. You're either interested in a game about Tokyo celebrities or you're not. Nothing can "un-weeb" this masterpiece.

Earthbound was set in the US, and simply had to have the slightly skewed Japanisms out of it.

From someone who doesn't like censorship, this is disappointing.

It won't detract me from getting the game when it comes out.

I skipped the Wii U version due to lack of Off-TV capabilities, so it will be nice to play the game this time around.

@HobbitGamer
I do. They got the Genesis version instead and passed around the blood code.

@m8e3point1415 now that's a good laugh...twitter....

1. It didn't sell last time with the censorship
2. It's a niche product
3. Said niche involves the "anti censorship" crowd
4. It goes against the good will Nintendo have built up the last two years

3. Is suspect as the US Constitution does indicate or say "Freedom of Expression" so that violates any Censorship even if you hate it.
4. Yeah this will not affect Nintendo as much but will get boos for it but will affect the Game Software Developer whom will get flack for it. They should leave as it and let the buyers who as you said are niche gamers and I for one like JPRPG games because it is Japanese product not a USA or EU or other based games.

@BarefootBowser Well yeah. Unless they go out and do something about it or direct their moaning somewhere to someone that will, it doesn't matter what their motive is.

Thank you for this

Almost no outlets talk about censorship and it's ridiculous

It's even more ridiculous that they're keeping the censorship in this one, they didn't learn their lesson with the sales of the other one? I mean, freaking hell

>Fire Emblem fans are not happy about this game
>SMT fans are not happy about this game
>Anime and JRPG fans might be interested...
>Except that Anime and JRPG fans have known censorship for years, and and they absolutely loathe it

Who the hell is left to buy your game? Who?

IIRC there's a chapter in the game that's actually a criticism of the creepy Japanese gravure industry. Except they mostly censored everything in that chapter. Bikini were completely changed to random clothes, bikini pics on walls were given pants, the boss was made less creepy. It absolutely affected the game and it's message

Then there's the more ridiculous things like censoring a wedding dress... Are you making this game for the Amish?

Ridiculous through and through and I'll sooner pirate my Wii U to play the uncensored version than give 'em money for this crap

And yeah, this one is far from just being about "the tiddies" the pro censorship people claims. So really, stop, you're embarrassing yourselves

@HobbitGamer
MK on SNES sold less than the (kinda) uncensored Genesis version, hurt Nintendo's reputation when it came to having adult themes in games (blood was the central gimmick of MK, everyone with a brain would notice that blood and fatalities were gone), and paved the way for Sony promoting themselves to adult gamers with the PS.
Bad example

@m8e3point1415 Put this way the US Constitution does give the Freedom of Expression so games fall into that and whether one wants Censorship or not has to no right to make anything Censor for that reason. And as other mentioned it's the buyers to buy or not just like me. If you make light of Censorship more buyers will buy it just the opposite result. Just like Book banning what did that do-more people bought the book.

Really not surprised the censorship will stay.

As far as I understood, back with the original game the censorship was done purely to keep the ESRB and PEGI in the Teen and 12+ range (which is the age range Nintendo targets for games related to the Fire Emblem franchise).
Not sure why the japanese game will be censored too this time around, but I guess porting one version was quicker then porting two.

It can be annoying, especially since the censorship ended up damaging part of the story too this time around, but as long as Nintendo will keep trying to please the age rating system and its crazily strict rules, then we can unfortunately only expect more cuts and changes in the future.
(...also let me complain for a second out of topic on how bits of skins and such can skyrocket the age rate given by the ESRB and PEGI while in their opinion gambling with lootboxes is totally safe even for the youngest children -.-;;; ).

@NEStalgia I agree that you can't "unweeb" this game, which makes it even weirder that they're changing narrative elements and clothing on behalf of people who will never even want to play this game. Why alter the social satire in a game that's already so Japanese?

Anyway, they wouldn't need to completely relocalize this game. They'd need to change a few art assets and re-write a small portion of the game in one of the chapters.

Meanwhile, they're actually adding a new dungeon and a new song to this game, so it's hardly just a cheap port with zero effort put in.

@BarefootBowser "there are some fair points there and if the game is demonstrably worse for the changes and I can't comment specifically on that then fair enough."
Censorship is Censorship and that isn't going to change.
@BarefootBowser "But I don't think most are being particularly 'pro-censorship' here and suggesting that those that don't think it's an issue are misinformed is disengenuous because there are plenty of pro-anime skin comments here too."
Anything can be taken at face value. But when the word "Censorship" has never showed it helps educate nor provide any good context.
@BarefootBowser "I'm personally amused that this reaction is always the same and every time we see it the game involves young women in skimpy outfits."
if you haven't noticed of lately "sex" sells regardless of what one thinks.
@BarefootBowser "I'd also add that weirdly a large number of people seem to be happy with content being cut to sell back to you in microtransactions - especially if Nintendo do it, no matter how crappy the game is!"
I think that has gotten alot of blowback already.

@m8e3point1415 "In a free market it will regulate itself." That's where the problem is there is not a free market it is a facade of "Free Market". In the USA they claim free market but the tax payers a Subsiding Corporation whom in turn make them pay them again in tax returns. That isn't Free Market values. Example Those whom get Tax Payers subsidy but then in return as for Bailouts. How is that Free Markets. If truly "Free Market" they fail they fail and they are they own making but that isn't the case in the USA.

@SwitchForce "Put this way the US Constitution does give the Freedom of Expression so games fall into that and whether one wants Censorship or not has to no right to make anything Censor for that reason. And as other mentioned it's the buyers to buy or not just like me. If you make light of Censorship more buyers will buy it just the opposite result. Just like Book banning what did that do-more people bought the book."

Reads like book banning worked on you, actually

So not only is the Wii U version still readily available and vastly cheaper, it's also less censored? Great.

Not Again.why?makes no sense.i want my games pure and uncut.i dont even like sexy stuff in games but taking it out is wrong and offensive.and changing story like dialogs and stuff is disgusting to me

The censorship in this game is just dumb. Some things censored on characters then not censored in other scenes. Then you have the dungeon who's theme is modeling that was completely changed even though it was super tame. Considering the small fanbase for this game you would think they would ignore all the censorship nonsense. Game would get a rating of age 12 or above without the censorship.

@Yorumi Technically I don't think the game was being marketed at the subs only crowd, so much as they realized the game had absolutely zero sales potential outside Japan, Iwata committed to releasing it and they had little else going on for WiiU - and the game wasn't quite what most people on either side thought with "SMT x FE" and so they released it, but with only the minimal effort. OTOH, any sales saving grace it had was with a T rating or less, and they didn't want to spend the money and time on TWO ESRB evaluation cycles, so they just told Atlus to take out everything that could cause even the tiniest murmer at the first evaluation cycle.

That's my interpretation anyway. Sometimes people assume puritanical intentions when the real intentions are cost-saving measures with a fickle ESRB.

Looking at Sony's antics these days, it seems clear that there's an industry-wide financial risk assessment at anime cleavage, meanwhile RDR can do full frontal and GTAV can have actual prostitutes and lap dances, and nobody blinks.

The shame of this whole discussion is we're so caught up in the pro/anti-censorship brawl. This is a great game with excellent turn-based RPG gameplay, fun characters, and an awesome J-Pop soundtrack that fully deserves a second chance on the Switch, even in its censored Western version. If you like JRPGs, you do yourself a disservice to skip this game solely because you're up in arms over the censored parts of the game that, in my opinion, were inconsequential to the game experience.

@Darlinfan

Yeah guilty.

All part of the fun!

Some trigger happy SJW got their hands on this game and had a field day. Some of the changes are just baffling and so extreme you'd almost think it was a parody of the modern censorship culture.

That said, I can overlook a few goof outfits and that one plot change. I'm still buying day one. But if someone were to skip this game on principle, I'd totally support their decision.

And then there's Luigi's Mansion 3 with that insanely annoying beeping when health is low. Or Zelda Link's Awakening with wild frame drops from 60 to 30 rather than just cap at 30. Nintendo keeps making excellent games, but then throwing a wrench into it with at least one inexplicable decision.

@Ralizah
That wedding dress is absolutely ridiculous. Same for the cloud covering the boss's chest. It's not even about showing skin, it's about looking downright silly, and a plotline making little sense post-change.

This is already what I expected since the Japanese trailer was the same, and Nintendo's new policy of "sending the western censors right to the Japanese development studios".

This is technically the best business decision if they want their games censored for the west (even if I personally disagree with censoring the developers), because if the Japanese version is the same, nobody knows what was changed.

The problem with this game is, it came out on the Wii U before they implemented the policy, so people already know what's been censored, and I doubt the Japanese players care that much, since they have the uncensored original version already on the Wii U.

@SBandy People are insane. Like literally ... I wonder how someone in Hong Kong feels reading this headline.

This is a great game and what? Brought down by a lack of "fan service" (still enough there, trust me)? Bringing it up with this kind of wording, in this day and age? People be crazy.

Also, I know different languages and all, but in German, censorship has a particular meaning, and a company self-censoring to reach a (potentially) wider audience ain't it. It cheapens the term and makes it loose its significant, but yeah, that is just me.

It just shows that we tend to lack perspective and that we are not really able to learn and adapt. I kinda "got it" in the late 90s/early OOs when people around here were outraged by 'green blood' (it just looked super silly to be fair, really screwing with the games immersion), but this? It's silly and again, makes real censorship seem trivial, which is ... not good imho.

I'm sure I'll get downvoted but I have kids who love RPGs, anime and j-pop. A censored version means they can enjoy this game too but if it had all the sexy content I'd be a bit of a lousy parent to let them play it so I'm happy about this. We all loved it on the Wii U and are all up for double dipping. Just to be clear, it doesn't offend me if its uncut but I sure as hell wouldn't let my kids see it! Ok?

@NEStalgia @KoopaTrooper @BakaKnight
Even then there really isn't much of a reason this game needed to be censored for a T rating. It's no more explicit than Persona 4: Dancing All Night (also T/12) in any category, nor plenty of other T rated games released around that year like Nights of Azure, any of the Ateliers. The changes reminded me of the kind of stuff Nisa would do because they wanted them personally like changing a name from one of the Atelier games from "Esty Earhardt" to "Esty Dee" (get it? xD) to "add spice". Nothing like that in Disgaea 5 or any of the Danganronpa games though, which really activates those almonds as to why not, especially with how edgy Another Episode was.

@Yorumi Yeah, indeed. For a minute there, you had me wondering, so I re-read your comment a couple of times before replying with a "oh, I don't know, maybe to look like you actually know what you're talking about and defending, instead of plastering your own misguided views on this topic in this comments section?"

My apologies for almost misinterpreting your comment...

@BarefootBowser Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't like blind defenders of uncensored material either, and if it truly is about the nudity for them, then screw them, because that's not even remotely worthy of a normal discussion, but all I'm trying to convey here is that if people want to bash something or protest against something, then at least be aware to some extent of what it is you're either actually defending or protesting against.

In the case of this particular game it really isn't as simple, and I would even go so far as to say vile, as some perverts up in arms because of the removal of underage anime boobies.

There's a real impact on some chapters of the game due to the changing of the narrative and removal of certain assets, which make that particular part feel decidedly different from the original version.

Personally, I find it weird that the developer is apparently okay with this, and worse, that people are defending this.

As some smart people have already said, both in this and in the original article about the censorship of this game on the Wii U, this censorship or "localization" which is actually done for the masses, isn't what a large group of people, interested in Shin Megami Tensei or Persona games want.

They buy and play these games specifically because of them being what they are, and I don't mean anime fan service, but games addressing a lot of topics about mental issues, dysfunctional societies and behaviors, and so these people or rather: fans, know what they're buying, and what to expect from these games, so they don't want some watered down, Westernized version of it.

Right firstly may I say I was sooooo much looking forward to this but now nope. Hopefully a day one patch? If I want to see the content or not should be my choice personally

@Ralek85

You kinda lost me to be honest.

Kinda reminds me of how Skies of Arcadia was censored in the West on Dreamcast and then later the censorship was put in the Japanese release of Legends on Gamecube.

Haven’t played this game, but I still intend to give it a shot in January.

I really doubt this games is a kids game - common - If your buying for your kids then something is wrong and to let them play it when there are plenty of other kid friendly games like Mario or Mario Karts. This is where alot of the debacle starts. Pointing out censored games will more then likely get people looking where you didn't want them to look in the first place.

@ThanosReXXX "They buy and play these games specifically because of them being what they are, and I don't mean anime fan service, but games addressing a lot of topics about mental issues, dysfunctional societies and behaviors, and so these people or rather: fans, know what they're buying, and what to expect from these games, so they don't want some watered down, Westernized version of it."
Exactly that is what is overlooked but instead they are called perv or other bad names and that in itself tells alot about of those posters themselves calling others those outrageous names cheapens their own postings.

@Yorumi I dunno, didn't feel it was more RNG (and grind) dependent than about any other similarly designed jRPG. I would go so far as to say, that the game was rather forgiving in terms of difficulty actually, meaning yes, you could have some really bad luck and wipe due to no particularly 'poor' series of choices on your part, but overall that was not something that came up for me enough to notice it in any way shape or form.

I enjoyed it quite a lot and the fact that I didn't feel much of any need to grind still speaks well of the game imho, even in high gear, and the presentation of the traditional combat was really like best-in-class to me. P5 did menus and scene transitions better, and many might prefer its aesthetics, understandably, but as far as making pretty static, generic, TBS-combat look and feel exciting, I don't know any game that did it better than TMS#FE.

I mean there were games that did it equally good, sure, but most of them actually had not this particular bland type of, to put it gently, tried-and-true TBS combat. I just now played the demo for DQ and compared to that presentation, TMS#FE is a friggin rollercoaster road within a kPOP concert, while you're trippin good. No other way to put in frankly.

@BRAINFOX I mean, I personally agree, but it's impossible for us to know the details behind this censorship.

Maybe the ERSB and the PEGI saw in TMS something more problematic in their opinion then in P4: DAN or other titles, or maybe the censorship in TMS was preemptive and done before rating the game to avoid the possible worst scenario of having to do the rate process multiple times (which can get pretty expensive).

My point was simply that Nintendo wanted to stay safely in the age rating check of the TEEN/12+ and worked towards that goal (and knowing how unclear and confusing the age rating system can get, it's likely they even went overboard to play it safe).
With other titles the situation may have been different, for example P4: DAN is likely a different story; with the original Persona 4 having M/16+ rating I highly doubt Atlus cared for the rating result as surely there was no way their new spin-off could get a rating any higher then what the original game got.

I strongly believe the censorship makes the game worse, and many people here are being extremely disingenuous and downplaying the changes. The change to chapter 2 in particular I feel hurt Tsubasa's character arc, decrease the threat of that chapter's villain, and overall shy away from what could have previously been considered an actual critique of the idol industry and gravure modeling.

That and the censored costumes were ugly as sin.

That said, I've played the game, I've seen both versions of the story already, all I really care about is if they're adding enough content to justify a repurchase.

@Yorumi I definitely don't think we got the full story on the game, it seems like a "development Hell" kind of thing happened. And yet what came out of it was very polished which doesn't seem to support that. It's clear SMT x FE didn't originally mean Persona Dancing x FE. But that's what it became. I'm not complaining because as I said I ADORE this game. It's beautiful. One of my all time favorites partially for pure silliness. But it's definite not the SMT x FE anyone imagined, and its FE integration is minimal and contained with pseudo-characters that other than Tiki aren't themselves, and the level up motif. And it's not SMT it's more Persona. Which is twice as weird since it was the producer of Devil Survivor 2 and Strange Journey, not the Persona directors. And then on top of that weird censorship decisions that don't seem well thought through at all.

IMO part of the problem is just that this was never meant to be an AAA system seller, but a lack of, well, anything, meant they had to try to make it into an AAA system seller.

@Varkster My dear fellow member, I would like to invite you to read my previous post (#76), but I can also understand that, for whatever reason, you couldn't be bothered. However, please allow me to inform you that this isn't about anime boobs. This is about nonsensical changes that are an intrinsic part of the game, and which make the original intent of it look like a caricature of what it was actually supposed to be.

This game is NOT meant for the average gamer. It is meant for the gamer that knows and loves all things Japanese, and is into the sometimes weird stuff that happens in these games, regardless of whether or not it involves animated nudity.

And obviously, fans of the Shin Megami Tensei series already know what to expect from it, so they also expect that to carry over to the games, and not have it be cut out for the sake of appeasing the masses, most of which were never going to buy this game anyway...

@SwitchForce True, and insulting is even putting it mildly. After all, who in his or her right mind would throw around the label pedophile, and expect people to not get mad about it?

Meh, I still enjoyed the heck out of the game on Wii U even with the altered elements. One chapter got especially hobbled in the narrative department because of the alterations, but it hardly affected the overall plot so... whatever. I've played games that had trash translations that ruined the entire plot and didn't let it detract from the fun I had.

If you don't want to get it because you wanna stick to your guns about "sending a message", more power to ya.

I'll still buy day one, I'll still have a ton of fun. Because I'd rather give them a reason to follow up on future games, ports or collaborative projects.

@Varkster We do not know if it is a goid technical port, or not. Since the game was running on the wii u, i do not expect any problems.

But due to the choice of simply using the western version, it is a 'bad' definitive version. At least for me. My hopes were that this game contain all costumes, all dlc and you can switch between western /Japanese altered scenes. On the other hand, if it had all this but was running like garbage, i would also not buy it.

Really wanted the game to be uncensored.... Not picking it up now unless I find it on sale. (Yes, some Nintendo games sometimes go on sale here if they)

@BakaKnight "maybe the censorship in TMS was preemptive and done before rating the game to avoid the possible worst scenario of having to do the rate process multiple times (which can get pretty expensive)."

Yes, this is precisely what I've always believed the issue was.

@ThanosReXXX I did read your post which is why I removed my comment, as I see both points of view. The reason I got riled up in my previous comment is because you are just about the only one in this comment section that I see explaining with a leveled head what the problem is.

The people that are whining and making smartass points to make themselves look embarrassing and stupid are doing people like you and your point a disservice.

@Varkster (re: comment #120) This is a game I think I'd nominally have fun playing, but I'd feel like kind of a POS for supporting some pencil-pusher getting a power rush at deciding that I can't handle seeing a wedding dress and the game's original narrative content. Not feeling like a POS is more important to me than getting to play any one game (of which there are plenty of alternatives to anyway), so yeah, that's the deciding factor in me passing on it.

It's super annoying, especially because they had a perfect second chance to get things right after flopping with (not necessary causal) bad press over this exact stuff the first time around, but again, I'd rather be annoyed than feel like a POS. That's life.

@NEStalgia

I'm PRETTY sure that the game was altered to achieve that T rating to boost sales, since the original release in Japan sold VERY poorly. The Japanese release also had the equivalent of a T (or 12+) rating.

I don't think the game would have managed that rating (at least here in the States) without those alterations. Stupid puritanical muricans that we are.

@CharlieGirl

This is easily my favourite comment of the week haha XD

@PapaTauren but she completely misses the point if what @ThanosReXXX says is correct. Please reconsider your favourite comment .

Well that settles it, I won't be getting it. I'll be looking for the homebrew version somewhere and play it how the creators wanted it to be played

I got the game first time around for my sister and really enjoyed it myself. I never finished it and plan to buy it on Switch just because it’s handier.
From my understanding the removed scene fits better thematically but isn’t essential. There was an arc about the main character overcoming confidence issues so she can wear a swimsuit for a photo op or something (as part of her job as an idol) and this was swapped out for a more generic confidence arc instead.
I’m happy the rerelease exists and means that Nintendo didn’t give up on the game and will be nice if similar crossovers will happen in the future. Will tie me over till SMT 5 gets more news anyway.

Sounds fine to me. As a fan of anime, it gets really old for me to see so much emphasis being placed on such "controversial elements".

@Varkster Well, I didn't mean for you to remove your comment, all I want to achieve is that people actually get what this is really about, and that's not as vile and disgusting as some of the censorship defenders seem to think.

Sadly, they'll keep saying and thinking the exact same thing, every time a topic or article like this will appear. In some cases, it's warranted, but in others such as this one, it isn't really as black & white as they would have you believe.

@Nehalem Thanks for the mention, and sadly enough, it is true what I said, as quite a few others have also already confirmed, both in this comments section and in the comments section of the previous article about the Wii U version of the game, but the censorship defenders just want to push their own point, regardless of the clearly visible facts.

Funny thing is that the makers of the patch (linked to in the article) explicitly list every little thing that is restored, and that goes FAR beyond some gratuitous nudity and/or cleavage...

So NintendoLife should like this game more now, right?

I purchased the Special Edition of this game on Wii U (They were sold out of the standard edition) because I really wanted another jRPG that was unique to the console and not a VC release. All the censorship stuff is just glossing over a different issue in my view, the game really isn't that good.

The cycle is go into dungeon where random battles slowly whittle your resources and the tactics they promise are either frustratingly difficult to understand (hard mode) or completely unnecessary because you can just steamroll anything you encounter. Then they send you back into dungeons that were a slog to progress through the first time just to go down another path and about that time they lost me. This added to the fact I didn't care about the story (which was too pre-teen drama for me) or have any real connection to the characters (who acted like they were in a low budget anime slice of life drama).

I really don't think a more revealing wedding dress, swimsuits or anything else censored being added back in is going to fix what is broken in the game.

@Yorumi IIRC development started with the idea it would be a SRPG, but early on that was changed to a normal RPG mostly by IS who decided that Atlus shouldn't shift focus away from their core strength, or something like that.

But also, the original idea was Nintendo's and was supposed to be FE x Pokemon. Then they were told no because Pokemon Conquest was a thing. They then got the idea to do Atlus with SMT, and approached Atlus. Atlus told them they were too busy and declined. And then sometime later Atlus approached Nintendo and asked if the collab was still on the table. They assigned it to the producer, but he was also technically too busy for it. So a lot of the time gap was, I believe, because Atlus wanted to do it, but the involved parties also didn't have time to do it so it kept getting put on the back shelf. But it was a project they actually wanted to work on rather than having to.

I just find it strange how a guy never involved with Persona and only involved with some of the darker SMT games managed to produce a very Persona game that is even lighter than the real deal.

Also the producers, on the Nintendo side, behind Sushi Striker were behind it. IS wasn't really involved.

FWIW, I imagine much of the budget went to Avex, and they did a stellar job as always.

I liked the game and playing it really gave me joy. I will get this game in an instant. Rarely replay games, but hey, this one seems up my alley. Loved the mechanics and the characters.

Nintendo life is part of the problem here. you guys are always bashing against "Fan service"or over sexualization of anime characters in some games every game that has this elements is always reviewed with low score. so now you guys are gonna be happy about censorship in Tokyo mirage. Thank you for nothing NL. our eyes and minds are pure thanks to your pristine and superior moral.

Imagine not getting a game because it's censored lmao

@Shiro28 lmao, ok

I've long thought the best approach when it comes to matters like this is to have a range of options before you start the game, and the player can then choose how much nudity, swearing, violence etc that they are prepared to see. Otherwise, it does feel as though those more puritanical than you are forcing their values on you, or you are being forced to accept globalised ideals, perhaps.

It can even be on the tamest setting by default, as long as there's a way for the player to see what they want (within the parameters of the artist's vision, of course). No one gets offended by being offered a choice.

@Taarna Exactly, we all purchased what we wanted and moved through the 'blood censorship', haha
I got into Clayfighter, though.

Lame, but not surprised. I thought the game was alright on Wii U but I ain’t double dipping for this.

This game will bomb.

All I've learned is that I want the game.

A Wii u game. Good times.
The game wasn’t actually that good.

Wouldn't have bought it again anyway but any interest I had is now dead.

Guess it's a no buy for me. What a shame.

I understand the concept of why censorship is made in video games, but the fact that Nintendo feels is necessary to censor the game for all regions including Japan makes me wonder just how far did this game's fan service go to make Nintendo take that step?
On the other hand that might not be the case and Nintendo just wants to play it safe since the Switch is region-free unlike the Wii U console that is region-locked. This might potentially make the Japanese Wii U version go higher in demand making the price skyrocket (or maybe not).

Is a shame the Japanese version won't be uncensored with english text available, that was my only reason to want to import the Switch version, now i might not bother buying it at all since i already own the Wii U version...

I don't get it though, neither Fire Emble nor Shin Megami Tensei are games for kids nor have they ever been censored as extensively as this game has, i know Fire Emblem does get censored but not that much, what is the real point and purpose of this??

The game is brilliant! A very deep and fun combat system, great characters, a fun story and well designed gameplay. Cannot sing enough praises for the game. That and they even re-dubbed scenes to so the new dialogue matches the Japanese voice-track so its not out of sync for those who understand Japanese. its a must buy! Such a good JRPG especially if you enjoyed Persona 5.

That and the new costumes are actually a lot more fun and visually interesting compared to the bikini ones. The only real misstep in my books was the bridal dress. That and some of the costumes were changed to begin with to meet some Japanese Karaoke bars guidelines if I remember correctly... been a few years.

People are surprised about this? Did none of you pay attention to the Nintendo Direct trailer?

@Yorumi It's been a while and I can't remember every boss, but even as you describe it, it's just farily standard jRPG procedure imho, esp. in SMT, which always involves some trial and error and a certain amount of RNG (like most RPGs do though). But I do think that is also in large part subjective of course.

I had issues like that in say SMT:Nocturne (really great game though ^^). TMS#FE just felt very accessible in that way to me. I mean, hell, coming to think of it, compared to Nocturne, it was a complete breeze and even compared to SMT IV, it felt very consistently 'do-able-without-grind'.

That's just what I mean, even within SMT it does not stand out to me as particularly RNG-heavy. Of course, there is such a thing as bad luck that makes a 50%-proc seem like a bad joke, but to have these line up over a couple of tries, well, statisically speaking that ought to be truly rare ^^

Damn. I really hoped to play the uncensored, Japanese original. Oh well, no sale then. I'm so syrprised by the number of people who want to be told what they are and aren't allowed to see. So much for being adults.

Use anime tiddies to sell a mindless cashgrab

Removes anime tiddies

@SBandy You were asking whether it ought to be considered censorship when the developer itself decides to release the game in that particular form, right?

I just wanted to point out, that in my view, it doesn't. At best (or worst), it might be considered self-censorship, but even that is a stretch to me, as this is just about economics on a marginally scale.

I tried to illustrate this by saying that in German, censorship specifically refers to something that the "government" forces upon a company, a private individual, or other non-state actors.
If you want to talk about censorship as an issue, it might be worthwhile thinking of, for instance, China. That is censorship. That's a concern.

Bringing up censorship in the context of TMS#FE feels silly to me.

It's a company altering tiny parts of videogame to potentially be able to advertise and market and thus sell it in a more competitive manner. I'm European, so I have to really twist myself into a pretzel to even make this a free-speech-adjacent issue.

It's not like the game would have been confiscated and burned and the responsible CEO's been taken and sent to labor camps or put under house arrest (again, look at China), IF the game hadn't been "censored". That is just inane. That's why I said, it cheapens the term, makes it use kinda arbitrary.

@Ralek85

Thanks for your clarification.

You make a good argument.

I always feel irrationally annoyed when a game is "censored" for something so minor. It's like someone thought, "Oh no, the Westerners can't handle cleavage, we better hide that!"

That's a bummer but not a deal breaker. I dislike this sort of thing in the extreme. I absolutely hate the mentality that boobs and panties are taboo. You never hear of the big muscle bound men wearing loincloths getting censored.

Regardless I wanted to play this on Wii U and never did, so I'll get it on Switch.

@CharlieGirl

Shhhh...don't give me ideas, my hugging pillow will get jealous.

The comment section is always best when someone removes a boob from a game that nobody cared about until the boobs were removed.

thats a damn shame, guess i'll get the Japanese version, was hoping to not have any hassle trying to read what they are saying lol

@Seanmyster6 Invalid argument, due to the fact that it’s the publisher doing the editing of the work, which is a more accurate representation of what’s actually going on. There’s no censorship. It’s a work that’s been edited by an editor. Now go get your tiddies elsewhere and quit being so over dramatic.

I was planning on getting it, but i have too much backlog to violate my principle of not supporting any censorship. I don't even know what was censored, but if i just buy it, they certainly won't change their behavior. I'm too old now to expect they'll change this practice in my lifetime, but we have to stand strong for the kids (isn't the world going to end in 12 years anyway because of people complaining about global warming travelling in private jets everywhere they go?).

For the record, I never planned to buy the game anyway, but that doesn't mean I can't be upset about it being censored. Of course, if you want to make a whole bunch of assumptions about people you hardly know, be my guest. 😒

My opinion of censoring depends on the situation. This game and Xenoblade Chronicles X on Wii U are rated T and they would have lost that rating had they stayed uncensored. They are already niche titles, so from a business perspective, it's common sense to make sure they state rated T. Now when they censored Fatal Frame, that made less sense because it was rated M anyway (although I also think it's super-dumb that women would explore a forest full of spooky killer ghosts while wearing lingerie. And where I do get annoyed is when they change a game's actual story because some group really tries hard to be offended (Catherine).

@graysoncharles Most conservatives don't even know what this game is

Meh, still getting it.

Well this seems to be a hot topic...

I don't care for censorship, but the neckbeards crying over boobs aren't really compelling.

If you want to see boobs, you're already on the internet.

@graysoncharles Conservatives? are you kidding? the SJW crowd are the total opposite of conservatives. they are as liberal as it gets. blame the sjw crowd, they are the ones demanding all these changes, not us. We conservatives have more important matters to attend to than demanding that already tame wedding dresses be covered up.

@BlackTalon2
I think @graysoncharles is talking about the “moral guardians” conservatives (who definitely do exist), but I don’t think they’d care about such a niche title such as this, they go after what’s really popular (As far as I know there hasn’t been any outcry from those type of people for Senran Kagura).

@Toy_Link i know they exist, im one of those moral guardian social conservatives, and ive been so since kindergarten. we dont demand this kind of silly censorship, this is an sjw thing, their total lack of morals have twisted them so much, they protect and promote grave sins and perversions while at the same time demanding that tame wedding dresses and swimsuits be censored.

@DarkLloyd the Japanese version will be same version as the western one.

@CharlieGirl The more you know ~*

And just like that, my interest for this game became null. I hope it is DOA.

@Ralizah These incels don't care about context they just want to cry about anime tiddies because they're brainless dolts.

who knows, maybe now they'll fix the game to be the way the creators intended

I have been dying laughing about this whole thing. If you can stomach the idol crap then there is an incredibly fun RPG here. I can’t even attempt to get into the mindset that one would skip it for covering up anime characters.

It’s a nice ego boost looking at people who get upset about that, if nothing else.

Even with the "censorship", a word I will probably never stop putting in quotes when used in this capacity, the game is still pretty dang tacky.

Removing some skimpy outfits to (say that you did your best in order to) avoid upsetting a handful of people, thereby shattering your already tiny audience.

It's like they never wanted this game to have any amount of success.

win/win when it comes to this game (potentially) bombing, considering it appeases anyone honestly thinking it's going to "send out a message about censorhip" and all the people upset about how it butchered the original concept of smtXfe

@ThanosReXXX "This game is NOT meant for the average gamer. It is meant for the gamer that knows and loves all things Japanese, and is into the sometimes weird stuff that happens in these games, regardless of whether or not it involves animated nudity."
What do you expect from people whom have no knowledge of JPRPG games.

@ThanosReXXX "True, and insulting is even putting it mildly. After all, who in his or her right mind would throw around the label pedophile, and expect people to not get mad about it?"
This is the Problem with uninformed posters-they bring in their own personal grievances into something that is not something.

If others haven't read Nintendo has stated they aren't censoring the game but now time will tell if this is true.

https://nintendoeverything.com/nintendo-apologizes-for-situation-surrounding-censored-tokyo-mirage-sessions-fe-will-let-fans-cancel-pre-orders/

@SwitchForce i'm not sure what you mean; the statement says that this is a port of the western version
it's just saying they'll refund if you personally feel attacked for them not informing at the start

@somebread then you have no idea what your talking about. Re-Read Post by ThanosReXX post #130

Wait, so the japanese players weren't even informed they were getting our version? That was very bad marketing honestly...

Still surpised the japanese players wants a refund, sure our version is worse, but for many fans this is likely a second playthrough (if not a third or a tenth), any change can be interesting at that point to shake things up a little.
Same reason honestly on why my interest would have raised tenfold if they released here the game with no censorship, the more changes/differences to what I played, the merrier to justify a second purchase and playthrough.

@SwitchForce it would be nice if this comment feature would tell you which comment is being replied to, since my second one was referring to the end of your comment there but im not sure if you're replying to that or my other one

I'll say this one more time and then I'm leaving this utterly embarrassing comment section. You can be against censorship that's fine that's your right and you can do whatever you want with your money. But shaming people who are going to buy the game regardless, calling them children, saying it's against moral guidelines etc is downright pathetic.

This goes the same for people just blatantly insulting people who are just calmly saying they don't like censorship and won't buy it. They have a right to not like it. Do I think it's silly? Yeah but that's my opinion. I'm not going to call someone an idiot for not buying a game.

What is utterly ridiculous and immature are both sides being extreme about it. Saying Nintendo is being immoral and I hope they fail miserably. Newsflash people, the ones who will suffer most are the devs not Nintendo. This is not a first party Nintendo game. So you are basically saying you hope the developers lose tons of money for something out of their hands like their publisher censoring things? That's being extremely hypocritical. Especially when you say you're doing it for the artists and devs....well guess what you're not lol. You can send a message you don't like censorship by not buying but don't pretend you're doing the developers any favors that's incredibly silly.

Bottom line is look above at some of the actual civil conversations people are having about the topic of censorship and follow suit. If you're here just to spread vile crap towards others and cheer on the game flopping when it's completely out of the developers hands, then I don't know...think a little bit before you type?

@Joker13z not exactly sure Atlus of all companies is going to get hit with a massive dent from one port's failure amongst specific groups

This is easily resolved. Set up a computer monitor next to the tv on which you play your switch. Play this game on your switch and simultaneously look up porn hub on your computer. #lifehack

Disgruntled customer: "I wish to return this abomination of a game!"
"Concerned" store attendant: "Oh, dear! Whatever was wrong with it?"
"The final boss didn't expose enough of her breasts."
"..."

@BlackTalon2 “ like the jihadis and rainbow jihadis , and gun grabbers and wefare state socialist parasites”

Rainbow jihadi? My god, you’ve got to be a parody.

“this is an sjw thing, their total lack of morals have twisted them so much, they protect and promote grave sins and perversions ”

Oh honey. You’ve been brainwashed. Some SJWs do get outraged over silly things - but most have far stronger moral codes than your amoral ilk. You cause demonstrable harm to society with your bigotry and ignorance in ways far more serious than a game developer deciding to edit its own content.

As for “grave sins and perversions” - you’re going to be unpleasantly surprised when you find out that God cares far more about how you treated your fellow humans (“perverts” and “parasites“ in your twisted parlance) than He does about those “grave sins” you’re so obsessed with.

@BlackTalon2 @graysoncharles It all gets confusing with terms like "conservative" and "liberal" in the US. "Conservative" by definition means maintaining the traditional way of doing things. Thus "conserve." "Liberal" means one thing by definition, and there was a time not to long ago when it was associated with free sex & rock & roll, bucking the social norms, and being generally defiant and experimental. Today it seems most associated with "collectivism" of standardized committee decision making of enforced norms, puritanical control, speech control, thought control, political correctness (conforming to committee defined norms) and offending noone. Basically the opposite of what it meant 25 years ago.

To confuse things more, back in the 1920's it was acknowledged the term "liberal" was co-opted by the Socialist & Communist factions to basically soften their image by hiding from their actual descriptive names.

So the stereotype is to think "conservative" means religious morality police conforming everyone meets traditional Christian standards, and that "liberal" means free thought, and defying the norms. Yet generally today "liberal" seems more associated with thought police/control, and domineering control of behavior - generally authoritarianism and enforcement of group-think, and "conservative" seems to mean just about everyone else.

Confusing things more, we've always associated "conservative" with "right wing" and "liberal" with "left wing", but the extreme end of left wing would be totalitarian authoritarianism/statism, and the extreme end of right wing would be lawless anarchy. The opposite of what the labels tend to be used to indicate.

TL;DR; Everything means everything else in Opposite Land!

@somebread My whole comment.
Whoosh!
Your head.

Jesus lol. Bye guys have fun arguing with eachother.

At least, Nintendo is communicating and apologizing. Comparing this to Sony, it’s absolutely pro customer. Even though the fact that it’s censored cannot be reversed with an excuse, it’s nice to read, that Nintendo cares. Sony just does things and avoids any kind of fanbase communication.

The sad part about this update is that the argument has been that the content wasn't suited for the West, and the whole gravure chapter has no paralell in the west so it needed to be changed. Which is true.

But with this change, they're removing the socially relevant conversation from Japan and sticking them with the "Fresh" culture that makes sense in NO country. The original game, in Japan, that chapter was a poignant social commentary, as the Atlus team is known for doing. The updated version was total nonsense because there is no equivalent to the gravure industry here so they stuck something really garbagy in to replace it. But gutting that from Japan is just bizarre and revisionist. Granted, I don't think it's about censoring content in Japan. I think it's about not fueling comparisons and availability of the content for the west to a point, but more importantly I think it's just about being cheap and updating only one version.

But they break the meaningful parts of the game in Japan for no actual reason beyond bean counting. Nintendo REALLY hates this game, which is depressing.

And we can't count on Sony for games with deeper questions anymore either. Ubisoft it is?

@RadioHedgeFund ...except the censorship in this game screws up the story because of how poorly it was implemented.

@Joker13z less passing me by, more not really caring

This probably doesn't bode well if Xenoblade Chronicles X happens to get ported over. That one had a slider removed from character creation and some customes censored, which looks ugly as sin and really stupid.

However it's relatively minor compared to TMS only because I felt the changes they made to the story were really significant. Sticking to my patched up Wii U version.

@Kriven hence the meaningful
edit: ninja'd

I was someone interested in this game I missed it on Wii U, but if this is going to be a censored version it's a skip. I don't like censorship in general video games or otherwise in any form of media, I want the game to come out how it was originally created. It's especially mind numbing when the censorship doesn't even make sense.

@YozenFroghurt well, I meant I made an edit to my post, but that works
edit: like this

@YozenFroghurt they are going to low hanging fruit that only meeks by - instead of going for the higher tree tops. Why else would they use tropes here.

@Joker13z Why the Pro-Censorship people always think the reason for not liking censorship is because of "more boobies or tiddies". Granted some are like that but many of us prefer to play the game as it was originally intended. If it wasn't then why put it in there in the first place? you're not only censoring the game, you're also censoring the creator. Although, some censorship is justified, like age range for example, some are just plain ridiculous; extra cover up, change in dialogues. I would have been ok with some minor changes but not extreme changes, I feel like I'm not playing the full experience

I remember how bad the Western version of chapter 2 was. Now Japanese players get to experience that.

Anyone else wonder if this was just a horrible miscommunication?
"Guy's, with this rerelease we have an opportunity to avoid the censorship controversy we caused last time and ensure that Western players get the same experience as the Japanese players"
"Make both versions the same. Got it"

@SwitchForce I've read the article, and it would seem you've misunderstood it, because nowhere in that article does it say that they aren't going to censor it. They're just going to offer you a refund on a pre-order if you don't agree with it.

@Joker13z Great comment (#215). Deserves more likes, instead of the dislikes that some idiots on here have given you. But what can you do, right? Long live the internet...

@Silly_G Aside from a few trolls, this really isn't about the "boss character's breasts" for the ACTUAL fans of Japanese RPG's. Both me (comments #76 & #128) and others, among which @NEStalgia (comment #225 (edit: and comment #245)) have quite elaborately tried to explain why this is a thing, and why we disagree or at least understand why people are disappointed with the game being released in this state.

@YozenFroghurt I would also like to kindly point out what I mentioned above to you. It's not about "a child's breast" either. Well, at least not for ACTUAL Shin Megami Tensei fans...

I pre-ordered Manhunt 2 for Wii, but cancelled it as soon as i read it were censored.
I refuse to buy any censored game, except for the fantastic Fatal Frame 5 on Wii U. Only one thing were censored there anyway.

@ThanosReXXX they made that vaguely stated so they don't get caught flat footed again.

I really, really wish people would understand the context of the thing they're commenting on BEFORE THEY HIT THE REPLY BUTTON

Yes, I get it, the word "censorship" is used, and everyone immediately associates this with other games. For the drive-by commenters that don't know the context but are compelled to comment on things they don't know about, please understand: This particular game has a unique set of circumstances. "Censorship" isn't mere "censorship" here, it was a localization with severe edits to the game. This isn't the petting game being removed from FE: Fates. This isn't the boob slider being removed from XC2. Yes, they covered a Tsubasa up-skirt. Yes, they did some really stupid looking modifications to costuming that were entirely unnecessary as the original costumes were not at all taboo and were perfectly normal for western entertainment culture (Miley says hello.) The issue people have with this game in particular is chapter 2 was entirely replaced with a different story and theme. This makes sense. It was a social commentary on the gravure modeling industry in Japan, and an idol being forced from being a media idol to a gravure idol. A life altering change, and something that really happens in Japan's entertainment industry. (Not quite the same but the closest you could come in the west would be basically pressuring a burgeoning young pop star to become a porn star instead.) Because that does not exist in the West, at least not in the same capacity, it didn't make sense to keep it here, so it makes sense they changed it. But instead of softening it to a similar, if softer, Western variant that kept the context in tact of "switching from media sensation to risque, sex-peddler that will probably ruin your reputation forever" - even as swimsuit modeling or something and we can "read between the lines" - they instead replaced it with wearing funky early 90's rapper clothes and changed the theme to "being true to your inner self". It broke the actual message the chapter was about entirely and replaced it with nonsense. And now they're removing the original from Japan as well, scrapping the social context and message to instead homogenize them with the world, and the world version replaced a meaningful theme with a weird, joke of a theme that doesn't make sense at all. It's not about censorship in this game, it's about horrendously terrible "localization" done in the name of censorship. The issue is mostly contained in a single chapter, but imagine if the 14th chapter of FE: 3 Houses was randomly replaced with a chapter about Dorothea being style conscious about her battle uniforms because the censors decided the war theme might be too heavy for some audiences? That's kind of what happened here.

That is what the conversation is about in this game, not seeing up Tsubasa's skirt while she rides a pegasus. Please understand that before commenting!

(Note that despite that rant, I'm a huge fan of the game, it's one of my fondest games in recent memory, but that chapter is so infuriating even to me.)

@YozenFroghurt Well, Nintendo has always tried to emulated Disney.....well done I guess?

Song of the Far East?

@Ventilator I was ok with the censorship in Fatal Frame V, since I think the Nintendo costumes are way better than the swimsuits.

@NEStalgia If I could have given you 10 likes for that last comment of yours just now, I would have. Regardless and very sadly enough, people will still not understand and will still hold on to their views that this is just about pathetic basement dwellers who want to see animated boobs, preferably underage...

@SwitchForce It actually seems quite clear to me: because they are now releasing the same, Westernized version across all continents, the Japanese pre-ordering crowd can now get a refund because they were probably mistakenly thinking that they were getting a port of the original, Japanese Wii U version, which wasn't censored, but because it's now going to be one version for all regions, they're essentially getting an inferior product, so that's why the refunds are offered.

IDK why Nintendo seems so damn keen on censoring this game, even in Japan...

@Yorumi I hear that but that comparison to EQ is kinda, well, unfounded in a way. The game's are differently structured, since in EQ you, as you say, can and have to create your own team. The combat encounters have to be designed to account for all kinds of variations.

SMT is not really like that, esp. not TMS#FE. Your team and skills basically progress linearly. There is not that much strategy involved in planning this out. EQ in that sense is not what most people refer to with "jRPG" (a poorly defined "genre" at the best at times). EQ is structured more like the classic dungeon crawlers of yore, despite it's anime trappings and country of origins!

This becomes pretty obvious if you look Persona Q.

I wonder if the Reincarnation patch guys will do the same for the Switch version. Gotta say, I'm glad I played de-censored patch.

@Taarna what the hell are you talking about?

How about just not censoring the game Nintendo

Is that too hard?

@Yorumi Well then it gets more confusing because then there's "fiscal conservatives" and "social conservatives" and "conservative constitutionalists" etc. etc. The words have lost any meaning, because using them isn't informative of any actual stance (or worse, is misleading.)

The fact that there's even debate over interpretation of the constitution (a document that epitomizes the original term liberal!) is more of an indication of just how fubared the society is, not even understanding the basic law by which all law flows. There can't be a "liberal interperetation" of a document that's inherently born of a liberal philosophy to begin with. Liberal philosophy stemming from the term "liberty" meaning the power belongs to the individual (the opposite of the current manipulation of the word to mean more control of the individual.) It's not a difficult document to read. It's a handful of pages. It explicitly states that the (federal) government is limited to what is explicitly stated in the document, and explicitly states that that's not the total limit of governmental power, merely the limit of federal power, and that if it's not in that document, then it's in the state government's jurisdictions to legislate, and they can legislate whatever they want so long as it doesn't directly conflict with what's in the constitution itself.

It's not complicated (at all), it's not difficult to understand (at all), it was written for a bunch of post-renaissance farmers to understand... it doesn't even limit governmental power very much at all, it just DELEGATES what powers are assigned to which level of government "These dozen things are central and override anything different done locally, everything else is local and anything goes."

That we're to a point of debating "conservative versus liberal interpretations " of a document a handful of pages long that point blank says "these few things can't be overridden and are administered centrally, and only these things, everything else, figure it out locally and do whatever the heck you want so long as it doesn't conflict with this."

It doesn't even prevent tossing itself as law and provides the exact procedure to follow to do it. How did we end up with different interpretations of a law that says "this is the supreme law, but if you hate it and want a dictatorship, follow these instructions: 1, 2, 3)

Only modern society could take something so opaquely simple and unrestraining and turn it into a brutal contest for victory of over-complicated re-interpretation. I'm convinced modern society would need an entire industry of analysts and experts, including 10 year doctoral programs to functionally understand a game of Simon Says.

@YozenFroghurt So because there are more issues with censorship in the world, we shouldn’t complain when it happens in a game? Is that the argument you’re making?

@Webheadd Its not ridiculous if you played Chapter 2 of the Western version. It was terribly written, and made no sense

would like a poll of how many people are earnestly reading the 12 page diatribe comments

@YozenFroghurt @Yorumi's one of the few people that can match or exceed my word count. @ThanosReXXX is the other. And @Ralek85 can exceed the lot of us

@YozenFroghurt Well, no offense, but I responded to your comment #228, so I was most definitely not confusing you with someone else.

As for the game: in this case, it IS about the content, but not about the animated boobs, so sad to still see you mention and hold on to that, because it is missing the point. It's about what @NEStalgia quite elaborately explained in comment #245. There are essential parts of the game, that explain/expose a typical Japanese societal issue, that are changed into something completely meaningless and disconnected from the rest of the game, which makes the Western version a decidedly inferior product, regardless of any animated nudity.

But having said that, I do fully agree with you that there are far more important things in life to worry about than games. But that doesn't mean that I can't understand and/or sympathize with the people that want to play these games as they were intended to be played, in their original version.

It’s sad to see pc culture bleeding into every aspect of life can’t watch a movie or play a video game without censorship or some political lecture and saying only two genders can get you suspended on twitter and in the state of New York you CAN get a ticket for misgendering someone but it’s a lot worse in Europe and Canada sadly

@NEStalgia I'll continue to consider this a compliment ... of sorts!

@Yorumi I think it's really more about noticing RNG in a way. EQ gives you ways to build around it, if that makes sense, while more linear (j)RPGs leave you brute-forcing your way through, either by outgrinding it (like pushing base HP beyond limit XYZ or just running your head against that RNG wall until you pass it).

Part of it is that in EQ, grinding is not necessarily grinding. You can just ignore some challenges continue on and come back later. In a linear game like TMS#Fe, there is mostly no coninuing, just going back, before that RNG-encounter, and do actual, old-school grinding, if you should encounter such a barrier.

I found myself wipe-out more than a handful of times in all kinds of dungeon crawlers with the though - a) alright, shouldn't have forced that encounter yet I guess or b) alright, my build/ party setup really did not account for that type of encounter my bad.
There is still RNG there, at times devastating one, but the issue is easy to overlook or ... kinda misplace That's been my experience at least.

Heres the thing I don’t understand is that given the subject matter it sells best in Japan. Why even bother releasing this in the West?

I mean it’s not like westerns can’t get the Japanese eshop version if someone wants to play it.

But they forced the version without the Japanese Subtext (I’m not even talking censorship, I mean cultural stuff) on the Japanese. It makes the game senseless for them?

Censorship is ALWAYS a bad thing. Higher the rating then to deal with the boobies, or whatever the heck they're having an issue with. Don't like seeing boobs? Then don't play it, and just let other people enjoy the game. Why do these easily offended idiots have to ruin the fun for everyone else? It's so annoying.

They still have time before the release to do a 180 and release the Japanese version instead of the western version. Either way this games target audience was never children but teenagers and adults. It's almost as stupid as the reason for the creation of the esrb because parents thought video games were just for kids and blindly like sheep bought kids Mortal Kombat then started whining about the excessive violence! Honestly stop trying to find a scapegoat and just look in the mirror folks! Just like the Hank Williams Jr song lyrics go "why can't everybody else leave everybody else alone? Hey you do your thing and we'll do our thing too!".

I love that censorship isn't a regional issue any more. Now if Nintendo or Atlus do something stupid with a game, they have to suffer the wrath of gamers in their home country.

@NEStalgia Thank you for that concise, clear statement about the poor narrative changes in this game accompanying the visual censorship. You said it better than I ever could have. It's not the same thing at all as, say, that one skimpy costume being slightly altered in Bravely Default. As far as localization goes, it's more like rice balls becoming jelly donuts.

Although I'll still fight you on that petting minigame being removed. I don't like the wholesale removal of game mechanics, especially ones as innocuous as that.

@Yorumi Also, since I just happened to scan your comment towards @NEStalgia I wanted to point out, that I am not quite sure about your sentiment there:
"that's mostly because a person's natural tendency is toward tyranny. None of us wants to live under a tyrant but we all want to be the tyrant."

Strikes me like a sentiment born right ouf Tolkien's idea of the Long Defeat. The better angles of our nature don't exist. As an amalgamation of individuals we are bound to fail, as righteousness and love for freedom rest with the individual and not the group (something that I think the Federalist Papers and their striking fear of factions speak to as well), while at the same time we, as social beings, find ourselfes hard wirded to seek out and form groups again and again, and ever growing.
Hobbes had a more nuanced view, I think. I always understood him to mean, that within a given group, or today, rather society, we tend to act our best while outside of it, in contact with other groups/societies we tend to to the opposite.

I always felt that the idea of the growing moral circle (loosely based around what Peter Singer wrote) made some sense. We tend to not want to act as tyrannts toward our morale circle, while we have no such concern for anything/anyone outside of our morale circle. At the same time, we could never accept a tyrannt from outside of our morale circle, while we might accept one from within, if we presume this tyranncy to beneficial or at least non-harmful to ourself and our 'inner' moral circle (you might call this very consideration the moral hazard of tyranny if you will ^^).

Just a ... like food-for-thought comment. I don't quite see preferences for tyranny as an individual "natural" marker, but rather a highly contextual and social one.

Lastly ... eurocentricism is a thing we ought to keep in mind. Whenever we fall back to naturalistic arguments, we tend to look at "western" culture and history and draw conclusions from that. That concept is fraught with dangerous though.

China is the most famous example of this. I remember Bill Clinton making fun of China ("good luck"), when it came to controlling the democratizing power of the internet. We figured we, the west, knew what we were talking about, but we had no clue. Before that in the 80s we laughed at the idea, of mixing a controlled economy with a free-market system, and once again, we had - due to own history making us blind - no idea what we were talking about.
The story continued onward, we though - based on the driving historical forces of the western world - that a rising level of prospertity would give birth to a middle-class, which in turn would demand a freedom and democratic rights on an overwhelming scale. Again, we came out the other side looking the fool.
We did not stop though. Next up: Softpower, you know, Coca-Cola and Star Wars. The power of culture. We believed, we could change China, but gently but relentlessly 'presenting' our obviously superior and irrestible popular culture, to which our ideals and dreams are kinda inherent indeed, to the broad populus, and slowly but steadily, we would win hearts and minds.
Again, turns out - so far- we ware wrong. China is changing our popular culture, as one of the biggest consumer markets on earth, leading to our culture output adapting to THEIR cultural guardrails and not the other way round. Never has this been clear as when it comes to Hong Kong.
In short, there is a view of the human condition almost entirely seperate from anything we generally tend to consider when such question come up.

//making @NEStalgia proud here ^^

Also, yeah you mit be better in terms of party building, esp. in EQ, as I never did my due diligence in terms of research and just went with what sounded or looked cool to me in EQ. I dunno what it is, but I rarely engaged with western crawlers like this, where I tend to be all about min-maxing while staying just versatile enough. Can't quite explain it though, might be the playful presentation in EQ that fools me t_T

@Yorumi True, though Google/Facebook are pretty bad examples considering they effectively wouldn't exist without government - Google is deeply tied to the US government, and rode roughshod over ICANN from the start, and Facebook was launched with funding from a known CIA front company. The government literally paid to start Facebook. So calls for government control of Facebook are less calls for government to control private business, and more about calling on the government to leash their own dog.

@NEStalgia My bad. Neither this article or the link detailing the original localization mentioned how a chapter of the story was butchered with some Disney cliche.

@Ralek85 You certainly did not let me down

...Well this escalated quickly.

Really disappointed in Nintendo Life for repeatedly calling this "censorship." Other sites are not using such a loaded word- your bias is showing.

This is not censorship- it's localization. The Japanese version is a port of the localized Western version, which itself was never "censored." Atlus & Nintendo can release any cut of any game they please, and it is not censorship. They are releasing the product they want to release, as is their prerogative. Calling it censorship is wholly innaccurate and it trivializes real censorship that's actually oppressing people in far less free countries than the US or Japan.

All of you'll who are up in arms about this need to relax. And maybe take a chill pill, pick up a newspaper, and point your anger and rage towards the stuff you read in there that actually matters

@YozenFroghurt That’s kind of like saying “My house is on fire, but the wildfires in California are worse, therefore I shouldn’t complain.” Sure there are bigger problems with censorship in other countries, but to use that as a way to dismiss censorship in a smaller scale, does not contribute to the conversation in a meaningful way. I’m sure I could come up with a situation people face that is worse than their government censoring, but giving that situation does nothing for government censorship, and in effect is just ignoring that problem for a perceived larger issue.

The Japanese hate when you mess with their anime girls

@YozenFroghurt I argue it does have an impact on the game because the censorship completely ruined chapter 2. If they had removed the gravure modeling and replaced it with something as good or better, you wouldn’t hear any complaints from me. However they did such a poor job rewriting chapter 2, it really hurts the narrative of the game. I’ll still wholeheartedly recommend the game to anyone, even with chapter 2’a issues, but I still can’t overlook the blemish on the game that is chapter 2.

@CharlieGirl In the real world, they'd get arrested for ogling Jailbait.

@Yorumi Maybe. I see FB as part of the social control/propaganda ministry of the intelligence portion of the government, and I see google as the heart of Big Brother itself. The monitoring/archiving/"correcting" of all "valid" information. Albeit, Google + Amazon, really. Keeping the government fighting against itself in petty power struggles was one of the key designs of the constitution, after all.... That's the beauty of the simplicity of the document. Where statist governments try so hard to write volumes of rules to govern the "perfect" government like it were a machine, the US constitution starts with the premise that people suck, will grab as much power as they can, so as long as you can keep them tied up fighting each other for power, they'll only poke their heads out when it's something REALLY important.

If you have to appologize for censoring it then why censor it?

@Yorumi But do you actually think that is the case? When in history has there been more freedom, I wonder?

I mean, what does freedom actually mean to you? Political freedom? Positive or negative? Intellectual freedom? Personal Freedom? Economic Freedom? Freedom from poverty, sickness ... death?

Considering just the issue of free speech, some people claim that a starving child in Africa might benefit from freedom of speech, such as it is, because there is now the possibility to make it's suffering been heard and seen. It still there, but thanks to its newfound freedom, it is no longer invisible.
But you might as well claim, that that child is no more less or free due to any changed circumstances of it's freedom of speech. It is still starving, decidely unfree to excercise it's own free will, as it is preoccupied in a fight for survival, and ultimately loosing any of it's agency to ... well, death obviously.

Freedom is complex term, if there ever was one.

I think if there were actually few people who, when opposed, sided with tyranny, we should see more tyranny as we the number of people increases. More people, more conflict, more chances for more people to side with tyranny, if that is truly what a majority favors.

Aside from the question of what freedom actually means, I am reminded of Lewin, who, simply put, described behavior as a function: B = f(p,e). That simply means to indicate that behavior is the result of the interaction between a person, p, and their environment, e. Traditionally, to really paraphrase here, we tend to place too much value on p and we underestimate e.

Whether it's an individual tendency or a societal way ... well, that is actually a major difference, because they probably will not result in the same outcome, and, maybe more importantly though, the behavior of a society, or for that matter ANY very large group, is much, much, much more easier to predict - and then potentially counter-acted - than the behavior of any one individual. I mean, if there is one actual law in social sciences, that is pretty much it: Individuals tend to act erratic (from an outside perspective), groups don't.

Man, I shudder to think of the uproar that would have existed had the internet been around in the NES/SNES era. Some of our most beloved games where localized to the point of being barely recognizable as the original game.

@Toy_Link Persona 5 is rated M and has penis demons. So...

@YozenFroghurt No worries, man. And no need for apologies either. There's so much going on in this thread, that it's easy to lose track of what's what.

And true, they handled it VERY poorly. But also the replacement bit, because it just makes no sense in the larger picture of the story that the game was originally supposed to convey.

@rpgaymer Whether it's actually censorship or localization, is of a somewhat secondary concern here, or we could at least establish that it's localization done wrong, because of the aforementioned reasons by me and other people in this thread, that actually know what this game and its story line is supposed to be about...

Oh, and the Western version of the Wii U game actually was censored, as in really censored, not censored in quotes.

@CharlieGirl Imagine supporting censorship. Regardless of how tasteful something is, a whole entire area of the game is based around a female character being sexualized and it's really hard to support a release that messes with the original vision that much

@NEStalgia As always trying to please.

Btw, and just for lulz, I played the DQXI demo for real today, and I stand by what I said before. The game is (not) pitch-perfect.

I esp. love the little details, like the 1st stone column you see, hiking up that mountain you just know there is a chest behind it ... and as sure as the next sunrise, there is! or the detail of the cacti'esque soldiers dying by being impaled by their own spears, the enemy "A.I." that sees itself casting heal speals on itself the very first turn at full hp ^^ and a hundred little things more!

I also really liked playing with the Draconian Options for stronger enemies and no exp/money from weak enemies as that, at least initially, keeps you from grinding, while maintaining a steady challenge. That's really neat as well as the ability to speed up combat encounters, which are have some nice details for sure (like said dying animations with that spear) but ...

... they are also presented in the most stale manner imagineable, with a basically static camera and the same actions repeating over and over. And not just the presentation is overly simplistic, to its own detriment, but the underlying mechanics are also rather shallow, or,rather basic, generic and anachronistic. The whole "pep-mechanic" is pointless, and just a build-in extra layer of RNG, which ... yeah, pointless to me. Sure, it might make more sense once you have abilities to use with it, but ... ugh. Enough RNG there, no need for this, nothing gained from it.

Anyways, not trying to start another rant, just emphasizing that I truly think DQXI is amazing, but the combat is a complete mess. It's in keeping with the ghosts of the past, and does great at that, but that is absolutely the only thing about the combat, that should be considered great. Makes me truly sad, that so many people, put so much love into a piece of art, only to really completely mess up (from my view, as discussed) the punch line.

If the combat was anything even marginally more engaging or inventive than what we got, I would have probably kept playing until my battery ran out. As it was ... knowing I would always hate an integral part of it ... It's completey gut-wrenching. I probably sad all of this before, but, yeah, it really makes me sad. The game put such a smile on my face starting it up, but ... insert Trumpian "saaaddd" here

@Trajan
Persona 5 was released about a year before Sony integrated it's current policy toward sexual content.

Damn that Sony, censoring everything. Good that we have Nintendo come to the rescue... Wait.

Well, they were discovered, PR recovery mode on.

Cya
Raziel-chan

Just release the original version Nintendo.

To quote a wise man "I'm a big fan of everybody wins" So here is how you would do this:
Setting in the options menu, on or off, defaults to censored version on. Everybody wins.

@AlternateButtons You have no idea of the artist's original intent. For all we know there was a producer at ATLUS who pushed for that content to be in it when an artist necessarily didn't want to. But you projecting your own bias onto the devs immediately turns it into censorship.

Don't be disingenuous about your arguments. If you personally wanted a game with the Japanese content, then just say that rather than put words in the developers (Nintendo/Intelligent Systems) mouths.

@Ralizah That does look really stupid, but why is a high school aged girl in a wedding dress to begin with? I don't know the story of this game besides J-Pop demons in Tokyo, but that reads as suspect right off the bat.

@Manah This is a Nintendo published game using a Nintendo IP. It's the same reason Link's shield had the cross taken off in the original Zelda. Nintendo can alter or not alter THEIR games in any way they see fit.

@Yorumi Hrm, well, first off, as it pertains to the issue at hand, I don't think cooperations are people, and thus there ought not to be any innate rights or freedoms ascribed to cooperations from the get-go (money equals speech aka Citizens United stands as one of the most perplexing ideas I've ever encounter). Hence I am willing to go along with any notion of freedom as a (in part) subjective right of the individual against government interference.

By that understanding, one could argue that degrees of freedom were lost. Yet I struggle to talk about loss, when something was not taken, but given up. That is like ... I mean, as long as we are not talking about a tyranny, but people making choice in a democrary of one fashion or another, there is also a negative freedom of interference, meaning chosing NOT to be free of interference by government.

That goes for any right obviously. Like religious freedom can only be considered protected, if the freedom to not believe is safe guarded with the utmost care. That is something, that for some reason, certain strains of party politics always fail to come to grasp with.

But even though, no freedom can be absolute as long as there is more than one individual claiming said freedom. My freedom to take a **** in public might and eventually will conflict with your freedom to take a walk without getting ****ed all-over, to make it really blunt and vivid ^^

Without enforcement by a kind of law any form of freedom is just an idea. That is of course nothing else than the paradox of freedom: the logical conlusion that followed that (to paraphrase Kant) each individual ought to be restricted, but not beyond what is necessary to safeguard an equal degree of freedom for all, is a reasonable baseline, in my view, to weigh these conflicting interests.

In other words, what to do when some folks feel they rather have more government interference (like healthcare in virtually all of Euripe for example) than less, which would in turn force upon them the need to trade their healthcare on a market of demand and supply. More rules, more laws, more government, can equal less freedom, but it can equally mean more freedom, even within a narrow view of freedom as freedom from interference.

IF there is no other option than freedom from interference, than it's not actually a freedom, but a thinly veiled free-market tyranny, no more or less than a newspeak'esque euphemism of Orwellian quality.

In that regard, I feel troubled to argue that there is more or less freedom in total, as I can only account for outcomes not input. That is esp. troublesome, if there is not even an underlying majority desire inherent in formulating that outcome, like for instance in the U.S. where due to procedural rules, a mathematical minority can and in fact does make lawful decisions for any and all.

On a historical scale, the argument in terms of interference is difficult as well. Women were most decidely not free going back (depending on country/region) 200 or just 100 years. In most at least western countries women are more free now than they used to be, like by a huge margin. In terms of positive freedom (like the right to vote), we made huge strides in the western world. But in terms of interference ... well, most of those freedom gained where actually not in defense of women from government interference, but by factual government interference in their favor by curtailing the freedoms of men to make use of women as they wish, as, yes, in effect and in many places legally, as their property. Property meaning anything (including a woman or a slave for instance), that you have a legal claim to, that you actually control, and that you can legally and legtimately do with as you please, meaning also excluding others from using it.

Oh and slaves did commit a crime, if you were to consider the zeitgeist. They were born black, born inferior, useless for other tasks others than the ones assigned, lacking not just the proper gens but social graces and, I guess, tea sets, all in all, unable to live .. free. The point is not the lack of a crime imho, but the lack of choice in committing that crime or having a saying in codifying it. In that regard, slavery makes alot of sense. It's can now be perceived as an attempt of the righteous to enable the sinners of seeking attonement. This is just semantics in the end though, it's matter of eligibility to freedom, not loosing freedom due to any real or imagined violation of said freedom.

Whole point being, looking at one narrow definition of freedom on a global as well as a historic scale, cannot yield any useful results. If we assume there was a fictional place, where there were only a bunch of humans and those were close to absolutely free, each living their individuals lifes apart from each other, with no top-down interference, then we ought to deduct, that freedom of interference is a zero-sum game. Any freedom gained by anyone, for instance to take fish not just lake from A,B,C but also lake D without impunity, that must impede on somebody else's freedom to freely take fish from lake D,E,F. It doesn't matter if there is enough fish to go around, as long as my choice is now more narrow than it used to before the state of affairs changed.

If you add 8 billion people to that and go from fish in lakes to about every commodity and right on earth, well ...
you could come to outright genocidal conclusions, and as a German sigh, I mean, I rest my case in that regard

I think you are right about people being hypocrites. I would dare say I hold this as a sort of divine truth. But I do not agree that people, in the majority, care about political ideas as such and necessarily empower people who would enact such political ideas. Most people would be perfectly fine with a dictator, as long, as I suggested ...
that dictator comes from their "in-group", definitely within their morale circle if you will, and they feel a subjective gain to be had. That is their true hypocrisy.
People stand for nothing, nothing outside of themselves and those closest to them (the inner part of their morale circle).

That's why freedom only works, in my view, as a broad concept, a universal one. As soon as it becomes divisible, it becomes possible and in fact easy to betray it at will. If you want it for yourself, you must want it for everyone else by necessity. That's why I think freedom is on a march to victory. The gains outweigh the losses.
The scales tend to be, in the loooong historical view, not betwen individuals acting out those freedoms, but within the vast spectrum of freedoms, as they collide.

That's why most ideologies are so much trouble. They are not in favor of one freedom above another, that would could be dealt with, that is the eternal balancing act of freedom as a concept that is never static, but that they see one group as eligible and others ... not ...
or they go down the rabbit whole entirely and start introducing new pseudo-actors, that compete for the same freedoms, cleverly claiming, that if those actors are not granted the same freedoms ... one is guilty of that ultimate crime, denying eligibility.

It's a clever framing device, that "the right" loves to use as much as "the left". The key is not who uses it for what purpose, but to recognize that it IS a framing device. It's there to obfuscate, not to enlighten.

@BarefootBowser I would definitely go to other sites for that. The community here doesn't seem too knowledgeable in worldly affairs.

I am getting the game. I wanted to get it for Wii U but didn’t and they are adding new elements. So even with the weird censorship I am still in. Doesn’t really take away from the game unless you are really desperate to see anime girls a little unclothed.

@YessMasster Strong Fire Emblem and SMT fans are not happy with this game partly because it has nothing to do with either franchise thematically. As a JRPG it completely gets the job done competently enough. I cannot speak on anime fans as I am not one. I also didn't play the game because of the above reasons and that Jpop/idol culture is trash, but I watched my (at the time) 17 year old sister play it and she enjoyed it.

@PBandSmelly The decision to put SMT in a generic-ass idol anime was also a bad idea in the first place.

@Seanmyster6 Your argument relies on a "probably" and therefore is invalid until you produce actual case evidence.

@Lizuka After the explosion of success that was Fire Emblem Awakening, Fire Emblem's brand was heavily tarnished once Fates and this game released. Three Houses did a lot to salvage that but it took the near complete removal of sexual or suggestive content being removed from the series for it to be in a position where it is being talked about by more than just the niche insular crowds that flock to anime skin games.

It's not unrealistic to think that your game's focus on or away from "uncomfortable" content could be the difference between mainstream success and obscurity? I use quotes on uncomfortable because it could be anything, but Nintendo and Intelligent Systems have a brand that they are still growing and trying to find a new identity for. This game alienated the crap out of long time Fire Emblem fans and did nothing for newcomers.

@Yorumi In regards to your "sub-only anime" argument. I don't know if it was that cut and dry. I jumped ship as soon as I saw the reveal Jpop performance trailer, but for the couple years leading up to it was HYPED beyond belief and a game that combined the gritty calamity riddled world of SMT with the heroic and tragic themes of Fire Emblem that was teased at this games first mention. I would suspect that many others who were fans of both or either of those aforementioned series were at least curious as well.

Fans: But you said you'd stop with all this censorship.
Nintendo: Points at forehead
"It's not censorship if the game's already censored."

...Hold on. Can't they just patch the game such that you are given the option to remove the censoring?

@SBandy Artistic choice. Original artist made the new outfits AND is adding glasses to a character who they originally intended to have glasses as well as creating the new costumes for the game. This is the developer's vision but people can't seem to fathom that maybe the developers decided less nudity was better because they all seem to think Japan is some homeland for their sexual fantasies and nothing more.

This situation is a mess, and censorship can go in the trash. These certain people or groups need to always find something to be offended about. They have no desire to probably make their own game, but they love to cause problems because they see a game a certain way in their mind. It is always easier to be a taker than a doer. This issue in the game is small, but it has become a bigger problem because the game shouldn’t be censored at all.

i dont like censorship like anyone else does but lets not let one game ruin it for everyone and besides nintendo has let other game be uncensored like xenoblade 2 and 3rd party games.

IIRC this was not exactly a stellar game to begin with, so.... yeah.

Come on Nintendo, you’re so much better than Sony when it comes to this, why would you wanna drop the ball now?

@Anri02 Yes. It didn't bother me. You don't miss out anything in that game anyway.

The bottom line is who's still gonna get this or will it flop big time?

@m8e3point1415 quite frankly if you need a game to be uncensored then you are not playing it for the game itself.

@YessMasster We already solved the violence issue back when the ESRB was formed, Hatred was given the highest rating because all you do is kill unarmed civilians and police. You do know that people still get angry and triggered over violence, right?

Acting like some harsh words aren’t acceptable over 5 year- oops, I mean 5,000 year old lolis with big boobs is also pretty ridiculous.

That being said, censoring the Japanese Switch version is absolute rubbish.

@Ralizah Wow, that wedding dress looks so incredibly ugly in the English version, it doesn't even look like a wedding dress at all.

@locky-mavo Because Fire Emblem’s involved.

All I have to say is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKhW0JDn9l0

@tobsesta99 sure, rating system is good, still, there are situations like recent devil may cry, which is undoubtly full of violence, yet nudity was censored.

@YessMasster Nudity being censored is absolutely dumb. Sex itself is somewhat understandable to me

I'm fine with censorship as long as it's pretty much exact to the original art, in fact more games should be censored imo.

cough Xenoblade 2 cough

Nintendo and Sony need to stop censoring games being released on their respective platforms. Different games appeal to different audiences.

As far as I'm concerned,
censored game = D.O.A.

It's so weird they'd do that to begin with, considering that in recent times Nintendo has been gearing towards not censoring content, theirs or otherwise. Someone must really have a bone to pick with swimsuits, because the game is very much tame otherwise.

The only censorable thing I see here is some childish accuse-and-reply comments which nobody really gives a damn of.
Getting finally back to the post topic, I think both versions are fine but I'd definitely choose the uncensored version as it's the closest one to the original. Hence I can't find anything weird with the choice of japanese customers.
Anyway, I don't find it a "great" game.

Well there goes an hour of my life reading the comments section, but hey it was fun at least!

@NEStalgia Your explanation of the situation is the most concise and clear about the problem. Most people are too quick to typecast themselves with the usual buzzwords, then whine about everything they hate before getting close to the point, and by then I can't stomach the posts. Thank you.

@Yorumi

--good observation, but it ignores one key element, who decides what is a crime and what is freedom? the SJW crowd? the Queen? the govt? the people? Until you answer that question, you won't get anywhere, and by crime i mean in terms of morality not legality. Christian Conservatives like me already know the answer and i won't get into it here as this is a video game website.---

@NEStalgia

----Believe it or not, the same hippie fornication+rock and roll liberals are the same collectivist communist liberals, look at their values, look at what Lenin did to Russia in the first few years of the Soviet Union, he literally legalized two grave sins in 1919. it is all connected, and i would hardly call them puritanical considering the perversions they spend billions of dollars or pounds promoting, at tax payers expense. More like they are reverse puritans, they call good evil and evil good. Liberals today are exactly what they were in the 60s and the 30s and 20s and in 1917 and in 1791 France. Remember when they confiscated all the gold from American citizens? That was in the 30s. Nothing has changed, they always wanted speech control and gun control and destroying property rights and to silence conservatives and anyone who opposed them, that was always their goal, they just were not as open about it back then. They never believed in the Truth, they were always against the Truth, but back then, they controlled the media, they don't have as much control anymore thanks to the internet and social media.

---External coercion becomes more necessary when self control/ internals control is removed. Liberals/communists want to remove traditional morality from society because it gives them an excuse to grab power and impose more of their own rules in place of God's.----

"So the stereotype is to think "conservative" means religious morality police conforming everyone meets traditional Christian standards"

---This is correct, this is the standard i follow. The fiscal conservatives/economic conservatives and neo conservatives however do no fit this profile. Fiscal conservatives are really more libertarian or objectivist. The neo conservatives are really just liberals who want wars and more military spending.----

"Confusing things more, we've always associated "conservative" with "right wing" and "liberal" with "left wing", but the extreme end of left wing would be totalitarian authoritarianism/statism, and the extreme end of right wing would be lawless anarchy. The opposite of what the labels tend to be used to indicate."

----The thing is, statism and anarchy are both extremes, but in both cases, man replaces God, in one, man in the form of the govt/state replaces God and becomes the god of society, in the other, it is man in the form of the individual that replaces God. Liberalism and anarchy both reject God.

@Sondheimist Sounds like you are the one who has been brainwashed by hollyweird and the socialist infested academia. You should stop reading slate, cnn and all the lamestream media hacks. You also sound like those rainbow jihadis, you think you know more about God than God Himself and His Scriptures. Well, you don't, you dont decide who or what God is or what His Laws are and how He operates, He has already decided and told us that.

Conservatives are not destroying the entertainment industry or the gaming industry, it is the SJWs who want to tear everything down and replace it with something in their own image. This has been going on for decades, and the gaming industry is just the latest victim of the SJW plague.

this trash is what Nintendo decided to port over to the Switch over something like Pikmin 3 or Mario 3D World do not buy this garbage

@deKay “Think of the children! Censor!”

@BlackTalon2 Oh shut up with the politics. Sounds like you’re the one reading CNN here.

@tobsesta99 hey, i didnt start with the politics here. learn to read.

@BlackTalon2 Ok, SJW fanatic.

@tobsesta99 its anti-SJW.

I might pick it up.
Once it inevitably ends up piling up at my local Gamestop's used section. Calling it now, this game probably ain't gonna sell well compared to most Fire Emblem OR Shin Megami Tensei games... Kinda like last time it was on the market, lol.

As SUDA 51 would say, there's nothing worse than censorship.