One thing to note is that while it wasn't mistranslated, RD's Hard difficulty is roughly in between other games hard difficulties and other games maniac modes. RD also has a reputation as really difficult because the first 4 maps are really hard, even though the rest of the game is easy.
RD has a really weird difficulty curve. Dawn Brigade chapter are a hell because your partners are incredibly weak and you're mostly forced to grind, or use certain characters like Tauroneo or Jill. Elincia's chapter has better units, and you'll also be forced to use Haar sometimes because he's THAT good Greil Mercernaries chapters are much easier because you have a big squad with amazing units. Even weaklings like Rolf or Mist are better than the Dawn Brigade. I really liked RD, but it doesn't help that some chapter are really unforgiving because you don't have the chance of use all your units correctly, and the fact that, if you want to know the whole story, you must play it twice ;-;
@@CrickettoSantalune The dominant strand of fire emblem play has been 1 super highly invested carry that takes all the stat boosters and a bunch of shmucks that get nothing. The DB having a bunch of bad units like Edward Micaiah, Leonardo, Nolan, Laura, Aran, Meg and Fiona and then a few broken units doesn't make the DB part hard, it just means that using aran is a self-imposed challenge. Using more than 2-3 main combat units has always been a mistake in FE, RD just punishes it harder
@@ussgordoncaptain A lot of - maybe even most - FEs are actually easier if you solo them with the Jagen than play them in the expected way. I'm not just talking about Seth, Titania et. al who are absolutely cracked beyond belief, even FE7's Marcus is good enough that if you inject him with the stat steroids he remains a juggernaut all through the game, mediocre growths be damned. Hell, I'm sure someone has beaten Binding Blade with the more traditionally Jagen FE6 Marcus too.
theres a fine line between mistranslation and localization error. it could definitely be argued that the changes weren't sufficient to justify the renaming. im grateful for the context, though.
Unironically, one has a better case trying to claim that FE8's difficulties should have been reclassified as "Very easy", "Easy" and "normal" due to the massive rebalance that mostly went in the player's favor, yet that didn't happen.
I thought this was going to be about the JP hard/maniac portion of the script that wasn't carried over in international releases, but this was still a very informative video. I always assumed it was a mistranslation, since that's what everyone says, but it did always feel strange that they also made the game easier + mistranslating difficulty names seemed like a really strange mistake to make. Thanks for clearing things up for people
I really would have liked a difficulty in between international's normal and hard. Playing without enemy ranges and weapon triangle was unnecessarily hard. But I've now been enlightened on the localization for RD and its misconceptions. Thank you.
Having 8 more guaranteed Master Crowns actually sounds kinda better than having to raise units to 21. Cause you can early promo if they're stat capped or close in the stats that matter for them, rather than having to waste/rely on EXP or BEXP. As well as honing the spear tip of your army so you're not as conflicted in choosing a tower team. Dawnbies starting out at lower level looks better too. Slightly lower bases with higher potential growth. Neat!
Thank you for a great video 👍 Always love hearing about Fire Emblem history/trivia/etc. Interesting to think that this was during the time when games didn't have updates/patches if there was something that the creators wanted updated when going international. It must have been hard for the translators when you have only 1 shot at the execution and deadline. 🤔
The only thing that always didn't make sense to me was the removal of enemy ranges in Maniac/Hard mode. It really changed the game frustratingly rather than interestingly.
Didn't know about some of these changes - namely, that reverting laguz in the JP version set the gauge to 0, and that "Battle Save" didn't exist. Perhaps a future remaster could feature a "toggle system" - i.e. Battle Save = NO, Weapon Triangle = YES, Fixed Mode = YES - to further customize each playthrough. In any case, while it's not a "mistranslation", I would still maintain that the difficulty designations were confusing choices in localization. Kind of akin to "Pokemon Blue was Pokemon Green in Japan, except JP-Blue actually served as a template for both WW-Red and WW-Blue". Just some of the challenges faced in localization...
I agree that is definitely an intentional decision, though I think is a bit funny how Radiant Dawn's Lowest difficulty (even in the American Version), is harder than the Normal difficulty in modern Fire Emblem games. Like, even if you're very strong compared with the enemy there is still some tricky stuff you have to do in some maps. I'm not against calling RD's lowest difficulty "easy", but for that detail I find it very funny in retrospective.
i thinki the internationl harder than the japeoanie becoe the stats are cut on the endeurd en leonrdo and anoter ting is that the reductosn of master ceorusm mkes the game hrder du to laking a why to promtu erlir so the greli merenrey paret is herde du to a lack of trnsfer bouneses
I started playing RD not too long ago, and i noticed on normal mode that a third of my units weren't doubling armor knights. And i was genuinely shocked that they couldn't double them. Maybe that is the reason.
I agree with your point. However, I don't find it very much of a difference. Therefore, I am currently still of the camp of just translated normal to normal instead of normal to easy. Nonetheless, I think that Radaint Dawn should have more develoment time to 'fix' the game a bit. For example, making the difficutly more linear and having more balanced units.
This was certainly an interesting video I always wondered why there more master crowns in the Japanese version (noticed it on serenes forest hidden items guide) However I still which they didn't change the names because some people use the Japanese difficulty naming and other use the international one when talking about the game which leads to conversations of normal and normal being 2 seperate things causing confusion
I agree that it’s incorrect to call it a mistranslation, but I still hate the change. I find that Radiant Dawn’s easy mode is still similar to the normal mode of most FE games, if not a bit harder, and that Radiant Dawn’s normal mode is comparable to the hard mode of most FE games. Radiant Dawn can be punishing for blind players, and this change makes that worse imo.
I remember passionately advocating Zihark>Jill on SerenesForest back in the day. For the wrong reasons, like, blatantly biased reasons, but look at what the LTC of HM is doing now haha!
the single best video to be posted on this website since its inception. thank you vicious sal for your irreplaceable contribution to broader human culture. this is all unironic. for those outside of the more dedicated radiant dawn fandom, the radiant dawn difficulty misinformation has been nonstop perpetuated for years and years and years.
This is an amazing video. No, the easy normal and hard was not a "translation error". That's absolutely absurd. It was a localization choice. Heck, given the changes to character stats AND the changes to objectives plus higher exp gain, it is very fair to say that the lowest difficulty of RD is an Easy mode.
@ViciousSal I love your work with Radiant Dawn so far 👍 What would be the best way to support your work. I would love to be able to support your Daybreak project. 🙏
I might open a kofi or something when i have a playable project as some have asked this previously. But I want to get something tangible into player's hands first!
I think the fact that you can't import PoR Easy Mode data into RD (causes the game to lock up and emit a really unpleasant noise, at least on physical hardware) is a big part of this. You would think that PoR Easy and RD Easy are equivalent, but then RD doesn't support PoR Easy Mode data, so they must mean different things.
Technically speaking, it *is* mistranslated. There is no argument here; the English names are literally not the JP names. Of course it was an intentional choice to *localize* the names as Easy/Normal/Hard, and I don't think anyone is suggesting otherwise. The real question is... was that localization choice a good one?
I don't know the interntional feels harder edud has a 65%sepd gotu but he has nly one sppend normaly that wood be 2+ of the japonise and soem of his bases are low for a levle 4 edeurrd your spedeing mis infortion and you cna't not save on hard intrentional
1:30 you mean the guys who butchered several things in radiant dawn most infamously saying the black knight just let ike win instead of the actual translation of his warp powder drains his strength, something he says in path of radiance in all translations? Ohhhh yeaaaah let’s not give those guys any shit they were soooooooo on their A game.
I know that has been changed in RD, which IMHO is a fantastic change. Expescially as it does not contradict the Bk anywhere in PoR as far as I am aware. If you have a piece of the script where the PoR Bk mentions his suit warping but not him, please do share! Ptherwise it seems to me like a big W on the localisation team since the JPN is far more farfetched than the new US reasoning.
Tbf considering that almost every FE game has garbage localazation and censorship ( espacially the modern ones ) I'm not surprised that people think it's a mistranslation
