Shengar

Good points. I posted that before I knew they were an art from Tactics Ogre. Regardless, while they might not be his design both still shows that Kozaki is more than proficient to provide IntSys with more realistic and diverse style than what we got now. The thing is, Kozaki drawn more inspiration from Western convention on his art than Japanese. He draw a lot of western character that might not be drawn by any other artist. His default style lean on realistic side which makes him having difficulties with unrealistic color hair made sense. This inclination carries through to his design. As shown by example and picture provide, Kozaki have difficulties when he have to designs stuff that must've shown its fantasy-ness. That's why he relies on design quirk if he asked by his client to make designs that shows fantasy from the get go. Being a professional as he is, he can only comply unless his client asked otherwise. In the case of Camilla, she's suffered for being a main character and the game general direction rather than direct design. She's completely given that outfit to checklist every possible fetishized outfit that you can attached to her character archetype. But this problem not happened to just Camilla, but other as well (Ellise, and Hinoka comes to mind). It seems this time in FE Fates, they try to make the main characters to not just fetishized but look different from generic units outfit as well. In FEA, we've seen that anyone beside Chrome, Lucina, and Henry have outfit that looks or at least feel similar to their default class. This is the problem I had with FE Fates art direction in general since the first time I seen it. As for Nowi, I inclined to believe that there's more to that story than just "I drew her because that's her character". Plus by default, Kusakihara could give him a no for that design if he wished for something less stupid and yet he (they) didn't, giving a nod to that stupid design. All in all, the process of character designing and art director doesn't all come to Kozaki alone. There'll be a lot of affecting factor and meddling when the illustrator does not double as the art director (unlike the case of Senri Kita, which lets her to provide an excellent array of designs). This is not my post as it was written by someone else, but it worth reading regardless.

Ishikawa Fumi work is godly and definitely the artist that will be suitable for FE. But the thing is, how long since she worked on a game designing? Is there any recent work of her? Suikoden 2 and 3 is more than decades old and artist can change their style drastically depending on what their client asked for. Kozaki can designs can be more varied if that what the art director wanted from him. You don't even to look at no more heroes when the designs of his generic units. It all comes down to IS whether or not they wanted the cast to be more diverse in age, race, and body shape. ===== If IntSys aiming for different artist and aesthetic that appeal to modern audience, I believe there's no one to fit that job outside Hidari. There are some that comes to my mind but most of them are already a full time employee of other company. There's Akihiko Yoshida, but I'm afraid IntSys don't want to use him just because they don't want people to call the game Fire Emblem Tactic.

Now in defense on Kozaki since it seems he got a lot of flak already in this thread: as some have pointed out already, he wasn't responsible for the quirk design we have seen in Awakening and Fates. He does the designing but only after he got the direction from Art Director Kusakihara. He said himself in an interview where usually the process of designing character have him draw a bunch of different design on that particular concept, gave it to art team, and then it really depend on the art director which one that going to be used in the game. The thing is, Kozaki's realistic and western influence had him difficulties on designing armor, character, and outfit that overtly feels like fantasy. I suspect in Awakening he have more involvement in deciding the art direction since FE13 have that many designs with realistic touch into it. However in FE Fates, it's clear that Kusakihara become more prominent on making the art direction as the game feels more fantasy than before. As the result, there's something glaring when you looked at Kozaki's art when moving from Awakening to Fates. If Kozaki were allowed to both design and direct the art department, this is something that we would get: Those are indeed Kozaki's art by default. He can go either very old school with realistic touch into it or more contemporary without being too overtly JRPG or anime. There's a reason why Lucina, who we know is fully dressed with no skin visible, is his most favorite character and design as shown by his many random doodles of her compared to other character.

I'm just going to put this here on the art direction :p ==== Old fans in modern times might get sceptical over IS choice of lead artist for their considering what we got in FE Awakening and Fates. I could understand that, especially with FE Fates being overtly obnoxious with sexual appeal on its design (though I personally blame the art director than Kozaki since his design by default is realistic). Will Hidari be the same? Isn't she the artist who handle Atelier Dusk Trilogy where the series presumably sold only to otakus? Worry not because she's probably THE BEST artist for Fire Emblem in our day. Let me show her design for the main characters in Dusk Trilogy: The most striking aspect to her artstyle is her water-ink like washed out color. It gaves her artwork a special vibe where everything feels kinda dark or depressing, but with a certain beauty outside of it. So it's no wonder that she was chosen as the lead artist for Atelier Dusk trilogy. Because that game is about a dying world and how the main characters try their best to prevent the inevitable. But her art isn't just about the color and the bleak beauty its represent. Hidari's drawing of character could be extremely detail. But in doing so, her artwork never become too busy with detail as her style of color greatly blend those details into the character. So they might look simple at a glance, but if you look them closely you will see how she put so many details into her character. Honestly, she's like Kozaki in that way but with her art style lean more to painting like as opposed to Kozaki whom by default is fairly more realistic. What makes her ultimately different from Kozaki and have me mumbling to myself "she's going to be PERFECT for FE" everytime I see her artwork on the Dusk Trilogy is her practicality. Her characters are all beautiful in their fashion but in doing so she makes them looks plausible. Her details on their clothing is not something frivolous or gratuitous that we are usually seen in many ridiculous design of JRPGs. There's always sense to behind why this character wear that particular clothing, or having some small pack strapped to their waist. When she have absolutely to make her character sexually appealing, she'll make sure that they look beautiful and feels like it's indeed the character themselves who choose to wear their clothes instead of being forced upon by the artist. So far I've only show her designs in the Dusk Trilogy. While the Atelier series is still a JRPG where fight monsters in it, the central theme and gameplay of the series itself is revolved around alchemy so as you can see most of the designs I posted here looks fairly "domestic". They are not exactly what we would see in a SRPG about war and epic battle against dragon isn't it? We've seen her absolutely gorgeous drawing and design with Fe Echoes, but can she fares good when she had to design for a completely new FE game? Worry not about that because Hidari's portfolio in character design isn't limited to Atelier series, but also Toukiden and it's subsquent expansion, Toukiden Kiwami, a hunting action game (or Monster Hunter clone, if you prefer it that way). You couldn't be more battle ready than being within a game where it's all about slaying demon on regular basis. As you can see below, her design in Toukiden Kiwami is practical too, and of course looking beautiful and stylistic at the same time: Ouka Nagi Fugaku Hatsuho Hayatori Ibuki Reki Souma Horo Sorry for just giving out list of link, but I wasn't allowed to post the pictures here without them being horribly compressed, but this makes me easier to point out specific character design so this perhaps a better choice. As you can see, Hidari design in Toukiden Kiwami is pretty much battle ready. While most her character leans heavily on the stylish side, we could see her attention to detail to make them not overtly stylish and have some practical to it. Nagi for example, is your usual big breasted character complete with a cleavage. She used bow and arrows in battle, and as you can see from her outift, she wears what it looks like metal plate on her left chest. I don't know what it is called, but I know that female archer usually wear something like that so their breast are not in the way when they notched and pulled their arrow. This shows Hidari's attention to detail by making sure that Nagi's big rack wouldn't hinder her job at shooting arrow. On stylish and practical design, Reki and Souma have the best vouch for it. Reki have special mention though because while she's having a plate armor on her chest that too conveniently shaped like that, the rest of her clothes are pretty much covering her body. But at the same time though, she doesn't look boring and still elegant in her own way. It shows Hidari design expertise on incorporating practicality and beauty. One last thing that I need to mention is that Hidari's character by default, male or female, isn't sameface. I know Kozaki can draw and design character with huge diversity, look to no other than the No More Heroes character rooster. But if he wasn't specifically asked to make his design diverse, his characters tend to be sameface or to be exact, templated. You can see differences between his character but most definitely you will see repeating pattern of similarity between some characters. To my observation, this mostly happened because Kozaki didn't varied the default expression of his character just enough to make them different to each other (which is why the reason why Maribelle feels so stand out in Awakening, since her "haughty" and "prideful" default expression is no one else have in the game). Hidari on the other hand always make her character default expression to be different. While the face shape of her character isn't that varied, but the expression that each character make is different enough to not make the viewer confused them from one another. And it's not like she isn't able to draw characters with vastly different shape face AND default expression though. Toukiden Kiwami's characters are exactly that, with Reki being the most stand out since her face is oval shaped, something that very rare from Japanese animanga aesthetic this day. I'm going to end this lecture. In short, Hidari is great and there could be no more perfect artist for FE beside her. If IS not going to make her the lead artist in FE Switch, I'm going to fly to Japan and set their office on fire. EDIT: Oh damn, I forgot to include her artwork that being used as cover for Civilization Revolution 2 PS Vita release to show her ability in drawing different characters:

2018 being said is mainly PR babble to not make potential 3DS buyer wouldn't hold back their purchase due to the oncoming new console. Switch isn't released yet, and the last thing Nintendo wanted to happened is people jumping off the ship because they view 3DS as an already abandoned platform. 3DS is a last resort emergency exit for Nintendo in the case of Switch becoming a catastrophic failure, sustaining them until they can take any action to prevent themselves from bankruptcy. Perhaps there would be 3DS release in 2018, but it wouldn't be big titles game like FE Echoes or mainline Pokemon series. It would be niche game made by small developer that isn't ready with HD development yet. The thing about Japanese is that it's currently undergoing a massive shrink. Japan population are known to have massively low birthrate, and with their overwork culture, the young adult just don't have enough time to play their game on console anymore (hence why mobile is so popular and FE Heroes try to take portion of the cake). On the subject of PS3 version being still released alongside a PS4 version, it's not take very long for the PS4 to massively outsold PS3 version despite the latter much bigger userbase. The PS3 was overstaying its welcome, and people are craving for new experience. PS3 version in the very late phase of its life is a pragmatic steps taken by developer and publisher as a failsafe measure for worst case scenario, nothing more. It's a PR to sell Switch on the western audience. I bet $5 buck that they gonna say the totally different thing to the Japanese audience that Switch is first and foremost a handheld, and it just happened to have ability to connect to a TV. I'm going to be real serious here. Switch is the successor to both the Wii U and 3DS. They combined their hardware line because each of them have main problem that complemented by the other strengths. The Wii U have abysmal 3rd party support, which have become one of the main reasons of its demise. Meawhile, 3DS was quite a success but compared to its predecessor, 3DS is pretty underwhelming (3DS sold 62 millions unit as of September 2016, the DS sold 150 millions in its lifetime. At this point, I'm even doubt it that 3DS is going to surpass PSP sales number at 82 millions). This happened because the handheld market is being siphoned by mobile phone as playing game on the go doesn't require a peripheral on its own anymore. As such, 3DS and its successor have looming problem ahead of them on the shrinking market. Nintendo couldn't go handheld exclusive because that wouldn't only limiting the creative capability of their first grade 1st party studio, but it's going to kill them in the long run. They need the Switch to be marketed as a console because that's the only way to sold it to western audience where handheld since the time of GameBoy never taken seriously as a gaming platform. But its design completely shows otherwise. If it's a home console, then why the hell Switch docking mode would only serve as a connector to the TV and charging (alternate link)? If it's truly a home console, shouldn't docking mode give more extra power to the Switch that it would make the portable feels like a secondary experience? The thing is that was not the case as Nintendo themselves have emphasized over and over again that switching from portable to TV mode and vice versa will be seamless with none of your experience compromised. They showing the ability for you play on the go much bigger than you able to dock shows how much the Switch is a handheld device. If it's truly a console, then Nintendo would have made the docking ability more relevant than its portability. And no, the N3DS wouldn't prolonged the 3DS life line longer than it should. N3DS was released back in the 2014 and how many N3DS exclusive have we got so far? Only thr, with one still in development as we speak. That is not something you would do if you're going to make a revision version of your hardware to completely replaced your old one. Nintendo clearly try to sell it as an upgrade, not replacement in the way it would upgrade the perfomance of some 3DS games like Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, Majora's Mask, and FE Fates. But it's clearly not enough to make people replace their old 3DS as no further games after them take the advantage of the increased N3DS power as Monster Hunter Generation doesn't even bother to have a better performance on it and its revision title is still a 3DS title. I'm happy that older FE games going to have serious remake. But I'm baffled with the notion that the 3DS, a handheld that released five years ago will be actively supported by Nintendo and IS to the 2020 with Echoes title. That only means the Echoes title will always be the inferior game than the Switch main title, and it's further imply that the remake is a secondary thing for IS. No, I don't want Echoes title to be severely limited by 3DS absolutely awful hardware capabilities. You must have seen Echoes artwork that being done by Hidari right? It's beautiful, but it's clear that the 3DS doesn't have the capability to put her beautiful design outside the sprites. Hold on a minute though, do you know that she also done a series of games called Atelier Dusk Trilogy? All of the three games are released on the PS Vita and it's able to make the design to life with its completely detailed 3D model. The Switch is much stronger than the Vita, and I want that Hidari drawn Sigurd come to life with all of the detail remains, not compromised into low resolution texture on a outdated hardware.

There wouldn't be anymore split after 2017. Switch is pretty much the successor to the 3DS and the announcement of the next FE mainline title on it pretty much a proof of it. 2017 will the last hurrah for the 3DS before Nintendo finally abandon it for the sake of Switch. The next Echoes game probably will used the mainline title new engine for the Switch and released on that platform without too much differences in level of presentation.

Thank God you're asking about Hidari because I'm going to give a lecture on her works. Old fans in modern times might get sceptical over IS choice of lead artist for their considering what we got in FE Awakening and Fates. I could understand that, especially with FE Fates being overtly obnoxious with sexual appeal on its design (though I personally blame the art director than Kozaki since his design by default is realistic). Will Hidari be the same? Isn't she the artist who handle Atelier Dusk Trilogy where the series presumably sold only to otakus? Worry not because she's probably THE BEST artist for Fire Emblem in our day. Let me show her design for the main characters in Dusk Trilogy: The most striking aspect to her artstyle is her water-ink like washed out color. It gaves her artwork a special vibe where everything feels kinda dark or depressing, but with a certain beauty outside of it. So it's no wonder that she was chosen as the lead artist for Atelier Dusk trilogy. Because that game is about a dying world and how the main characters try their best to prevent the inevitable. But her art isn't just about the color and the bleak beauty its represent. Hidari's drawing of character could be extremely detail. But in doing so, her artwork never become too busy with detail as her style of color greatly blend those details into the character. So they might look simple at a glance, but if you look them closely you will see how she put so many details into her character. Honestly, she's like Kozaki in that way but with her art style lean more to painting like as opposed to Kozaki whom by default is fairly more realistic. What makes her ultimately different from Kozaki and have me mumbling to myself "she's going to be PERFECT for FE" everytime I see her artwork on the Dusk Trilogy is her practicality. Her characters are all beautiful in their fashion but in doing so she makes them looks plausible. Her details on their clothing is not something frivolous or gratuitous that we are usually seen in many ridiculous design of JRPGs. There's always sense to behind why this character wear that particular clothing, or having some small pack strapped to their waist. When she have absolutely to make her character sexually appealing, she'll make sure that they look beautiful and feels like it's indeed the character themselves who choose to wear their clothes instead of being forced upon by the artist. So far I've only show her designs in the Dusk Trilogy. While the Atelier series is still a JRPG where fight monsters in it, the central theme and gameplay of the series itself is revolved around alchemy so as you can see most of the designs I posted here looks fairly "domestic". They are not exactly what we would see in a SRPG about war and epic battle against dragon isn't it? We've seen her absolutely gorgeous drawing and design with Fe Echoes, but can she fares good when she had to design for a completely new FE game? Worry not about that because Hidari's portfolio in character design isn't limited to Atelier series, but also Toukiden and it's subsquent expansion, Toukiden Kiwami, a hunting action game (or Monster Hunter clone, if you prefer it that way). You couldn't be more battle ready than being within a game where it's all about slaying demon on regular basis. As you can see below, her design in Toukiden Kiwami is practical too, and of course looking beautiful and stylistic at the same time: Ouka Nagi Fugaku Hatsuho Hayatori Ibuki Reki Souma Horo Sorry for just giving out list of link, but I wasn't allowed to post the pictures here without them being horribly compressed, but this makes me easier to point out specific character design so this perhaps a better choice. As you can see, Hidari design in Toukiden Kiwami is pretty much battle ready. While most her character leans heavily on the stylish side, we could see her attention to detail to make them not overtly stylish and have some practical to it. Nagi for example, is your usual big breasted character complete with a cleavage. She used bow and arrows in battle, and as you can see from her outift, she wears what it looks like metal plate on her left chest. I don't know what it is called, but I know that female archer usually wear something like that so their breast are not in the way when they notched and pulled their arrow. This shows Hidari's attention to detail by making sure that Nagi's big rack wouldn't hinder her job at shooting arrow. On stylish and practical design, Reki and Souma have the best vouch for it. Reki have special mention though because while she's having a plate armor on her chest that too conveniently shaped like that, the rest of her clothes are pretty much covering her body. But at the same time though, she doesn't look boring and still elegant in her own way. It shows Hidari design expertise on incorporating practicality and beauty. One last thing that I need to mention is that Hidari's character by default, male or female, isn't sameface. I know Kozaki can draw and design character with huge diversity, look to no other than the No More Heroes character rooster. But if he wasn't specifically asked to make his design diverse, his characters tend to be sameface or to be exact, templated. You can see differences between his character but most definitely you will see repeating pattern of similarity between some characters. To my observation, this mostly happened because Kozaki didn't varied the default expression of his character just enough to make them different to each other (which is why the reason why Maribelle feels so stand out in Awakening, since her "haughty" and "prideful" default expression is no one else have in the game). Hidari on the other hand always make her character default expression to be different. While the face shape of her character isn't that varied, but the expression that each character make is different enough to not make the viewer confused them from one another. And it's not like she isn't able to draw characters with vastly different shape face AND default expression though. Toukiden Kiwami's characters are exactly that, with Reki being the most stand out since her face is oval shaped, something that very rare from Japanese animanga aesthetic this day. I'm going to end this lecture. In short, Hidari is great and there could be no more perfect artist for FE beside her. If IS not going to make her the lead artist in FE Switch, I'm going to fly to Japan and set their office on fire. Also it's Studio Khara, and they're known for the Evangelion movies. EDIT: Oh damn, I forgot to include her artwork that being used as cover for Civilization Revolution 2 PS Vita release to show her ability in drawing different characters:

The fault in FE's story is down to how it was written, and such fault is commonly found in other JRPGs as well. The most common way to write the story is centered around the plot. This makes characters who involved within the story to suit in with what the plot dictates even when it's at direct contradiction with their traits. This is why we see so many dumb involving supposedly an intelligent character. I only skimmed, but many of the problem discussed is how dumb the character was with their action in order to follow the flow. With game like FE who involved a lot characters, building the story on the interaction between them should be the preferable method. It'll make them more fleshed out, and their actions will be more appropriate to their character. Honestly, it still baffles me how they stick to plot based story when the premise would involved a lot of internal and personal conflicts of the (main) character.

They should just hire someone who have the experience of writing a war story, or translating Chinese war epic, or both. Uniting the world is such overused trope, I agree with that. But in itself, it isn't bad. With the premise and setting of FE:Fates, uniting the war torn world shouldn't become boring. There should be a lot of different perspectives and ideas on how the world would go, on how each sovereign thinks their way of treating and governing their subject is the most just and right. But it isn't as the plot boils down ancient threat, everyone unite, then world peace. This is like what you said, is boring and total BS.

Combination of design, character, and utility. No wonder Nohr siblings are much more popular than their Hoshido counterpart. Also, have anyone discus Question 3 of the poll? Those data are really interesting to see the demographic and how FE players approach their game.

That's nice to hear indeed. Could you write more detailed impression on this?

I don't mind valid criticism. In fact they are good for discussion. The problem I've seen so far is how some people still focused on the tired subject of fanservice that it still managed to outnumber the legit criticism. Also on the other side, just because the game received criticism that doesn't mean the game is wholly bad and wouldn't be enjoyable. The definition of flawed gem exist, so don't translate criticism as hate. It isn't that hard really to distinguish valid criticism with (concern) trolling one.

Amazon JP is filled with trolls. Never trust the reviews for the games that just have been out for a week.

Dragon's blood.

To be fair, Awakening's Lunatic mode is hard for the wrong reason. It basically turned the game into grindingless Disgaea unless you have DLC.