Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem: An Anusol to the Argument

I know the title is confusing, but stay with me, I promise I’m leading up to something.

For any of you who are unaware, when Nintendo make announcements, they often do so in the form of an hour long livestream called a “Nintendo Direct”. In it, they usually announce some big first party stuff, a few smaller indie things coming to their consoles and then a few huge outliers. In January of 2015, those outliers were Puzzle and Dragons and that Project Treasure thing.

There was another Direct on April 1^st (Which is a death sentence. I mean just push it back one day if you want people to take you seriously, Jesus). It announced a bunch of really cool first party stuff. Mewtwo and Lucas are back in Smash (Cry some more, Roy fans). Mario Kart’s getting a 200cc mode which makes for even zanier karting action. On top of that, Fire Emblem if… was elucidated, meaning I was a wreck of hype for about ten minutes.

The outlier games this time were, weirdly, both from Atlus. One of them was the Attack on Titan game that seems to be quite popular. Looks fun, a bit like Freedom Wars meets giant naked people. I’m up for it.

The other was, curiously, also Fire Emblem related. SMT x Fire Emblem (or Illusory Revelations #Fire Emblem, or something) is a game that was announced eons ago, but we heard nothing about it until the Direct a few days ago.

It has not lived up to people’s expectations.

People were expecting either a Shin Megami Tensei game with Fire Emblem characters or vice-versa. That or it was something completely different that still retains the dark SMT atmosphere and storyline.

What we got, was this:

This (for whatever reason) has pissed off almost everyone.

I do understand, to an extent. It’s not what you were expecting at all, and I understand. As someone who watched Crash Bandicoot get slowly murdered, I understand the rage at a game that doesn’t live up to your expectations.

However, the vitriol that this game and its supporters are being hit with is fucking ridiculous.

I’ve seen people say “Its tone is all wrong” and that they “hate the art style”. They seem to think that “It’s too Persona, rather than SMT”. They hate the character designs, they hate the music. I even saw someone say the gameplay looks shit.

We’ve had a trailer and someone said that.

Jesus.

I can’t help but be reminded when something similar happened ten years ago now. The Gamecube had just been announced and we got that awesome tech demo of Link and Ganondorf from Legend of Zelda fighting in a dark and stormy area, and everything looked really brooding and cool. Here’s the demo, for reference:

It was only short, but Zelda fans got really hyped over this. It looked so cool, so realism, much swordplay.

You all know how the rest goes.

The Wind Waker was announced a year later, and people got pissed off. Everyone was upset that the game had abandoned its darker, more realistic beginnings, and instead adopted this childish graphical design. Critics called it “Celda”, fans got angry and swore off the game.

Then it was released, and everyone loved it. Critics loved it, fans loved it, Nintendo knows we loved it (Hence why it was one of the lucky Zeldas to get a direct sequel in the form of Phantom Hourglass) and everyone agreed that the argument over the cel-shaded graphics was silly and (if anything) made the game timeless. I know Wind Waker looks loads better than Twilight Princess ever could.

See what I mean? People got angry because of a trailer and ended up loving the final product.

The same thing is happening now. Don’t judge the game before you’ve even had a chance to play it, who knows, you might love it.

Besides, it has Robot Pegasus Motorcycles, who even cares? Fucking Robot Pegasus Motorcycles… That can fly.

For those of you who were confused as to the title of this post: Hopefully you now get it. I hope your butthurt goes away soon too.