Xenoblade Chronicles. The Last Story. Pandora’s Tower. Fire Emblem: Awakening. All four are first-party Nintendo titles released to major fanfare (with the exception of Pandora’s Tower) in their home country of Japan. And yet, it took a massive social media campaign to essentially force Nintendo to publish these titles in the US and Europe.
But why? What thought process fuels these bizarre decisions to not localize popular games to the West? This article is hardly the first time the following idea’s been put out there, but this possibility is becoming increasingly likely with each game like Fire Emblem: Awakening not coming overseas. What is it that links these four disparate titles? What common trait do they share that makes them undesirable for localization? Perhaps the answer lies in the image of the central protagonist of Fire Emblem: Awakening. He looks like an anime character - in fact, so do the entire casts of all the Rainfall titles. It is a real possibility that Nintendo is purposely trying to not localize games with a Japanese aesthetic to the West for fear that they will be scorned by Western players due to their “anime” look.
Xenoblade Chronicles composer Kenji Hiramatsu reflects on his work and feels that it's "time for a fresh start."
There is no together at the top. There is only one top jrpg series. Xenoblade Chronicles series is alone at the top
I like the Xenoblades series but my ‘top’ series would be either the Trails series or Persona series. Just too many good games for me to just pick one series though, so I say play them all lol.
I'm not huge into JRPGs, but my favorite is easily the Persona series. It's all opinion though. Xenoblade is a great series.
Tetsuya Takahashi has revealed his plan to make the next Xenoblade vastly different from previous games.
I liked the Xenoblade X formula. It takes awhile, but opening up Mechs was amazing. Especially once you can fly them, and use them in battle. You have to put some time into the game to do it, but it's worth it!
Also, the graphics were more realistic than the other games. Still looks good today, just a lot more pop-in than is acceptable today, hell even too much for back then. It wasn't game breaking though.
Xenoblade 1-3 and X are so great. That said, I'm ready for them to do a big change up.
Video game sequels like Assassin's Creed Origins, Doom (2016), and Fire Emblem Awakening were just what these franchises needed to be revitalized.
Lmao what’s Halo Infinite doing on this list?
Who would ever say Halo Infinite saved the Halo franchise
Thought the same - very bizarre!
RE7 though... my God, what a shift over RE6! That franchise was definitely going in the wrong direction, so RE7 was a welcome return to form.
Resi 6 was and still is the worst entry in the series.
7 was a great turnaround, despite people’s concerned about the switch to FP perspective.
DMC5 definitely helped the franchise after the whole DmC debacle. Whilst it was a decent action game, it was a far cry from the series and the characters we knew.
AC Origins is my favourite in the entire AC series. Despite the switch to a more RPG style of gameplay - the setting, soundtrack, length, etc were all amazing. sadly followed up by the ridiculously long and “more of the same” Odsyssey.
I don’t feel it’s fair to say the franchise slipped with Doom 3, Doom 3 was incredibly atmospheric and took the game in a different direction but there’s no denying Doom (2016) was sensational.
Halo 4 & 5 were disappointing but Halo Infinite definitely didn’t save the franchise? What?
I'm going to have to go with SMB 3. I was around when SMB 2 first came out and people hated it. 3 is still arguably the best mario game created.
"Halo Infinite"? Worse Halo ever. Whoever made this list just lost all credibility.
In future lists of a similar nature I have a suspicion Final Fantasy XVI will feature.
Fire Emblem will most likely get an English release, but seriously, Xenoblade, Last Story and Pandora's Story all failed commercially in Japan from what I have read.
It is no wonder Nintendo did not want to bring them over to English countries.
That said, it is definitely a good thing that they did/ are coming.
I remember, approximately 6 months ago, I told people on here that Fire Emblem was no longer USA bound. Thought I was crazy didn't you? Well, I told ya so!
However, the author's reasoning is flawed, Anime has done very well here. Infact, a lot of modern cartoons seem to have taken much from the Anime art style. Personally, I still think that the reasoning has more to do with sales... and arrogance.
The West is very arrogant. Why should Nintendo cater to the West? If a region constantly bashes your products with DOOM and gloom, then you would be hesitant to release products there.
Games such as: Fire Emblem, Pandora's Tower, and Last Story will likely go digital next gen. Avoiding retail entirely means much less risk for Nintendo.
Besides FF, many jrpg's don't perform successfully. The cost of localization, changing in-game items or in-game situations that wouldn't make sense outside of Japan, not to mention English voice recording.
All this is extra cost.
And definitely the cost is too much and no return is made.
I love jrpg's, i hope that the Japanese devs can just find it in their heart to appease the niche crowd here in the west that love them
I really think we should wait until e3 before assuming FE isn't coming over...
I mean, 1 year we don't get a hand full of games at the exact moment we want to(even though we still got them, and they wouldn't't have come over at all if Nintendo Didn't want them to.) and we start assuming ridiculous things...-_-;
for nintendo if its not some garbage like carnival games or zumba it has no bussiness in america apparently.....how fail