I've been meaning to say this for a few days, but damn, this game looks great visually. I keep getting bombarded with FE Fates advertisements on Gematsu, and I absolutely love the color palette and shaders they're using. Everything looks so fluid, too. It came as a shock to me because the last FE game I played was Radiant Dawn on the Gamecube, and now there are handheld FE games that look better than that. I guess I got a false impression of the 3DS' capabilities from all the N64 remasters it's been getting. By the way I sadly never finished RD. I've been meaning to pick up where I left off, but over a decade has gone by and I still haven't gotten around to it. But before that I did own and finish both Fire Emblem (the one with Lyndis) and Sacred Stones, and loved them both, even though I remember FE games being really freaking hard if you were trying to keep everyone alive. I would like to get back into the series, and will probably make my comeback with Fates (or rather IF since I'll be getting the Japanese release). As for which version, I'll most likely go with Anya Oukoku (Conquest) since you get a female Corrin and, well, the cover art looks better.

I've been making good on my statement about learning Japanese, by the way. I decided to just go ahead and do it since it would help me with Japanese games I already own as well as the Japanese Playstation Store. It's somewhat difficult, but not nearly as difficult as I feared. I've already got some of the Hiragana memorized. It is worth noting that the language actually has 3 alphabets (Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji). The first 2 have roughly 40 characters each, but the Kanji alphabet has about 2,000. The reason there's so many Kanji is that instead of only representing a syllable, a single Kanji represents an entire word or phrase. What's strange to me (and a bit intimidating) is how a single sentence can easily have characters from all 3 alphabets in it. Anyhow, this is the site I'm using to learn the language, in case anybody else wants to learn it and render the localization of games meaningless.

http://www.learnjapanesefree.com/

^ I recently purchased a Steam game called Influent that's geared towards teaching language. One of the available varieties teaches Japanese.

Actually, wouldn't it be cool if we had a topic all about helping each other learn Japanese? It'll probably be easier than trying to do it on our own, and leaving it as a publicly-available topic will allow for an ever-changing participation in case some people lose motivation and drop out.

Ray wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1r5CKzI2Lo

Check this out. There's something in it, I think you'll find interesting about lesbians in Japanese culture.

Skip to about 4:00-5:30.

Well then time to shoot down most of what this guy says in that section.

I'm going to preface this by saying I have not visited Japan for a while but i seriously doubt it has changed to a massive extent since I last visited if this is a thing.

I have visited Japan, I have spoken with various Japanese gay, bi and trans people, hell I visited the gay district in Tokyo and its similar to the problem Japan has with rape just because it isn't spoken about doesn't mean its not there. (Hell because of Japan's insistence on everything fitting its specific gender role shaping its probably a bit more common there)
Its very prevalent and common for gay people to get thrown out or worse for being "childish" and "abnormal" and the rest will just turn their back on said person to fit in more with society meanwhile the person in question stops existing as far as general society see's it,they basically just vanish and that is horrible.
Hell even if they manage to keep themselves afloat more often than not you will see these people interacting exclusively with other gay people in the designated gay districts, they wall themselves off which while it can lead to meeting some really interesting people and build a community, that is not ideal.

Homophobia isn't a non issue in Japan, it just takes on a different form It's why crap like the class S trope and excuses for it being there annoy me because it creates a harmful perception of what homosexuality actually is the more memetic it becomes.
I should also add that there are Japanese people who just legit didn't know homosexuality was a thing because they see it as something only in manga etc. these people are not included in the ones im talking about here.

IronEvangelion wrote: As for which version, I'll most likely go with Anya Oukoku (Conquest) since you get a female Corrin and, well, the cover art looks better.

you can select the gender of Corrin doesn't matter which version you buy, no argument here it has the better cover though.

News Flash! The Skinship game is still in! Kind've

http://www.gameskinny.com/5no35/big-new ... game-sorta

Edit: Now I'm torn over whether or not to buy the game. . .

So, much ado about nothing, I suppose. Wait, that sounds familiar . . .

Also, good points, Rose. The one thing I did like about that video was the fact that it touched on the portrayal of two other bi characters in the game (actual bi characters, not Class S nonsense) and the fact that both of them had a negative portrayal overall. This seems to have been a source of concern to the Japanese LGBT community, and yet no one's talking about it over here. Is that because they're such minor characters or something else?

Bagheera wrote:The one thing I did like about that video was the fact that it touched on the portrayal of two other bi characters in the game (actual bi characters, not Class S nonsense) and the fact that both of them had a negative portrayal overall. This seems to have been a source of concern to the Japanese LGBT community, and yet no one's talking about it over here. Is that because they're such minor characters or something else?

I've talked about it a bit, but I think people are just too happy settling for what they got :/

Rosenakahara wrote:I've talked about it a bit, but I think people are just too happy settling for what they got :/

Obviously, I haven't played the game myself (yet), but is a negative overall portrayal necessarily bad? It's not like there's never been a sketchy person who also happened to be bisexual, and the lack of undeniably light-side bisexual romance options doesn't mean the game is saying something negative about bisexual people. In context, it might even make sense that you would find a higher rate of open alternative sexuality among the shadier members of society, because people who have already flouted society's convention in other ways are going to be a lot more indulgent even of aspects of themselves that society is wrong to repress.

Monk Ed wrote:Obviously, I haven't played the game myself (yet), but is a negative overall portrayal necessarily bad? It's not like there's never been a sketchy person who also happened to be bisexual, and the lack of undeniably light-side bisexual romance options doesn't mean the game is saying something negative about bisexual people. In context, it might even make sense that you would find a higher rate of open alternative sexuality among the shadier members of society, because people who have already flouted society's convention in other ways are going to be a lot more indulgent even of aspects of themselves that society is wrong to repress.

Camilla is also bisexual yet you cant romance those huge.......tracts of land as a female for some reason, in fact there are a few bi characters that you cant romance and all of them are all in all much better people than the ones you CAN romance.

Monk Ed wrote:Actually, wouldn't it be cool if we had a topic all about helping each other learn Japanese? It'll probably be easier than trying to do it on our own, and leaving it as a publicly-available topic will allow for an ever-changing participation in case some people lose motivation and drop out.

Yeah that is a cool idea. I don't know how regularly I'd post in it since I'm just learning it in my down time, but I'd be glad to help out. I'll have to get better first, though. My first goal is to memorize the entire Hiragana alphabet.

Rosenakahara wrote:in fact there are a few bi characters that you cant romance and all of them are all in all much better people than the ones you CAN romance.

...Now that just doesn't even make sense.

But it sure makes me curious to play the game!

Monk Ed wrote:Obviously, I haven't played the game myself (yet), but is a negative overall portrayal necessarily bad?

It wouldn't be if that wasn't the default portrayal of such in Japanese media. Treating LGBT people the same as everyone else (good and bad) is fine, but hitting one single note over and over again is not, even if it happens to be a note that is expressed in real life.

IronEvangelion wrote:the last FE game I played was Radiant Dawn on the Gamecube, and now there are handheld FE games that look better than that.

The Radiance games looked terrible even when they were new. Let's just hope Intelligent Systems keeps the main series handheld.

Still no official announcement on a European release date. What the hell?
As entertaining it has been watching you lot speculate over content in the north American version, I don’t even know if I’ll be getting “hair” or “boingy bits” in the UK.

Not that I care a great deal. I happen to enjoy playing Fire Emblem for the excellent turn-based strategy gameplay. Imagine that.

Think of it this way, Monk: if your sexual orientation is considered a sign of maturity, and who you like defines you as being consistently immature (in a country that places maturity on an altar), then that means you are incapable of being an adult. You're a child.

How can that be a healthy place to be in?

chazthesilencer wrote:The Radiance games looked terrible even when they were new. Let's just hope Intelligent Systems keeps the main series handheld.

Actually it was Path of Radiance I played last. Sorry, I get those two mixed up all the time.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1182077
I don't even know what to believe anymore, till I play the English version myself though won't believe its in

So it's face-petting lite. You face pet in the game, but only with your in-game Waifu, and no one else.

I'll still wait until the games out to buy it. But if this is true, well. . . It's a compromise I think I can live with.

Ray wrote:So it's face-petting lite. You face pet in the game, but only with your in-game Waifu, and no one else.

I'm surprised to learn that's not how it already was. I just assumed (though if asked before now I would have sworn I was outright told) that the minigame is only for you and your character's one-and-only.

http://www.gameskinny.com/6wym3/fire-em ... se-release

The Bathhouse is still in, complete with the swimsuits. As aforementioned the face petting feature is still in but only for your in game spouse.

No news about the how Soleil's controversial "gay conversion dialogue" will be handled or changed.

Well that's good news. Looks like Kotaku was just trying to stir up a shitstorm. Also I'm going to hook up with Camilla if that's at all possible.