But that's beyond the point, isn't it? Or are you suggesting that if a game has quality it can have the luxury to force you to pay it three times in order to experience the whole thing?

Honestly, I'm sure a similar summarization will be just as easy. We do know that the two versions are not completely separate as they share characters. I saw a prompt yesterday that appeared if you chose a decision only possible in the other version. It asked you to go to eShop to buy the other version. Considering other JRPGs who have different parallel storylines (having just played through Suikoden 3 which is a 80+ hour game with 3 storylines), this is the way to extract the most money, so I guess I can't blame Nintendo.

I'm not reading too much into the new into for Fates, but there are a lot of characters different per campaign, with 6 being shared/ 11 counting kids. On the prompt, that may be refering to after chapter 6, where the story splits. I don't know how different they are, but I hear there are at least over 20 stages each, and they are different from each other, along with characters, music, and classes, so it may not be as much cutting content out as you may claim it to be, but we'll have to see if that is true when the game releases in the west. As for games splitting stories, I can't think of any that take it as largely as fates claims to be, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Yeah, it's shameful. Sadly this kind of behaviour goes a long way back, the Illiad and Odyssey should've been one version as well.

I need to be strong and not support this practice, but impressions are so good and this looks like to be miles better than Awakening, an already masterpiece.

Hardly a surprise, how could people even think that NIntendo would publish half a game full price ?

That's fair enough if the game feels to be cheating you for more money. I've felt that way for while, but if the seperate games feel varied enough to feel like standalone games, I don't mind paying for the other campaign or 2. I feel like Fate's DLC could be terrible too...

And when did AA do that with the 5th campaign...? o_O

In both the original Game Boy version and the Wii version :P

Yeah, for me it's one of the main problems here. I think that Awakening was a bad Fire Emblem. A fairly good game, yes, but a bad Fire Emblem that just made me want to play Radiant Dawn again. I cleared Radiant Dawn 3 times and Path of Radiance twice (each time in one week or less, or even 2 days), Awakening took me 2 years because I got bored and gave up several times. And I bought the Awakening limited edition 3DS bundle Day One, I had such great hopes for that game... 

That's why the longevity of the different versions is so important. Like I said, I don't care about the easy-noob-friendly-Awakening-like Hoshido version, it will surely bore me like Awakening did. I'm interested in the Nohr version because from what we know it looks like what a Fire Emblem should be. If I'm done with this version in one day and am left with the Hoshido version after that, I will be mad at IS (and the useless Castle won't make up for it like I've read). That's why I would like real informations.

You can *sigh* all you want and say "I don't have time for this" (before writing a really long post),  but your "staggering amount of content" doesn't hold if it really is 22/28 chapters per version. Nohr isn't supposed to have side battles, only main quest. A 22/28 chapters main quest is ridiculous compared to the 42~ chapters of Radiant Dawn. They can fill the Hoshido version with 30 side quests like Awakening to get bigger numbers, they were almost all the same uninteresting open field battles and it will never make up for a bad/short main quest.

So, in the end, we have 2 different games, who are both shorter than a full Fire Emblem game, and you have to buy both to get a longer, full game. This far, OK if the total price is under 50$. Except that the two games supposedly don't have the same play style and are designed for separate audiences (Awakening audience and previous FE audience), so at least some people will enjoy what seems to be half a game only. 

I'll wait to finish the game to be certain, but right now, the maybe 28 chapters of the Nohr version seem really too short and can't be called a "full game". If both versions turn out to be awesome in the end, so great, I'll be glad to be wrong about it. But I doubt it and nothing shown until now suggest it. 

Wait, so they sold them seperately..?