It's a game with FE(Fire Emblem) in the title with Fire Emblem in it. It'd be impossible to completely separate themselves from it.
Project X Zone 2 was released only a few months ago, it has Fire Emblem and Xenoblade characters in it, advertises the fact and is basically full blown over the top fanservice all the way (not just sexy fanservice though, that's just one flavour of it, it's basically "90s Videogame Culture Fanservice - The Videogame"). This didn't turn heads or lead to any sort of devaluation of either Fire Emblem nor Xenoblade nor Nintendo - The Brand™. I think in this regard TMS is actually far enough away from classic Fire Emblem (and SMT) that it really seemed more like a sort of "Persona: Fire Emblem Allusion Edition". I could see this flying under everyones radar if published by Atlus or XSeed or even Nintendo themselves because.. it really IS pretty harmless content in the JP version to begin with.
Sadly, this isn't so much the case with modern JRPGs. You pretty much have to put up with some level of fan-service no matter what you buy these days, even in the ones that aren't specifically designed as wannabe almost-porn titles like Criminal Girls. It's highly annoying for people who like the genre but don't like the pandering.
Yeah, there are a lot of pandering games out there. I agree with you in the regard that it would be actually nice to have more games for more different tastes in general - and many RPGs feature content which I can strongly see why many people dislike it (same as with the shooting games in my "violence"-based example btw.). Nevertheless, the answer isn't to start cheering for change in products during localisation that already are a certain way in their original form. While people who dislike pandering might at first "get their way", this sends a message.
"It is OK to change tone, intention and even whole storylines during localisation for the sake of *insert current perceived as problematic content*." This is a very selective and anti-media stance in my opinion. Say someone is against bikinis in games so this feels like a sort of progression, but 2 years later localisation changes now omission all religious subtones in a game about religion or - and this is possible when political and social climates change, even in countries with very modern worldviews - companies decide to remove any mention of homosexual relationships from a work. Actually, we’ve still had that only a couple of years back in videogames in their US translations.
You single out RPGs and optional bikini outfits here, but those aren't the only things getting changed during localisations, it's just the case in the current examples. As someone who had to deal with all sorts of localisation changes in all game, movie, book, music, comic etc. genres during my whole life, this is terribly shortsighted and really a double-edged "progress" if you want to call it so. A real progress IMO would be to promote the games that aren't like
Criminal Girls or that Atlus Dungeon Crawler we don't talk about on GAF to help those other games getting more exposure and in progress... getting more like them done instead of changing something which is already there into something else. Promote Falcom RPGs (
Trails in the Sky/Cold Steel series, Ys - though newest upcoming entry VIII seems to have some fanservice -),
Ni No Kuni, Dragon Quest Joker spinoff and the upcoming
DQ7-remake, Pokemon, Valkyria Chronicles (the first one at least),
Souls-series (it is a Japanese made RPG, if anyone disagrees, let's take it to another thread
),
Shin Megami Tensei IV (unless you're arguing that demon designs are fanservice as well),
Tactics Ogre, Resonnance of Fate and the like. Hell, you're making
Cosmic Star Heroine which is a game that looks amazingly fun and is a game I absolutely have on my radar. I like fanservice in some games, myself, but it isn’t the only thing I enjoy in this world and I also enjoy all sorts of games and contents. Actually, as I've pointed out, I actively welcome games and companies producing games which are more inclusive, non-pandering and wholesome the same as I welcome companies doing over the top grindhouse style pulp games. I just do not welcome changing an already finished product for an intended audience to... make it something else.
Also, though this isn't really an excuse for the status quo, but something which sometimes makes me wonder when it comes up in arguments about Japanese-made RPGs in general... it wasn't a lot better back in the day. I mean, I get where you are coming from in a way (apart from the PC98 and other computer-styled games such as
Dragon Knight, there weren't as many JRPGs which DEFINED themselves through fanservice). But there was a lot fanservice back in the day as well, it was just pixelated or reduced to dialogue and concept/coverart. From the skintight bodysuits and flimsy skirts of
Final Fantasy IVs Rosa and Rydia and
VI with Celes to the bikini armour in
Dragon Quest series and the dancers in
Dragon Quest IV to the Dragon Ball-style sexy jokes in
Chrono Trigger and
Secret of Mana, the leatherstring-onepiece wearing Nei in
Phantasy Star II,
Lunars bikini- and nude-intro-walking scenes,
Grandias sometimes crude humour, ... that is now of course a very selective set of games but I really have trouble to think of any retro JRPG without fanservice right now...
Terranigma, Lufia, Tactics Ogre,
Front Mission and
Suikoden 1 maybe? I must admit I haven't played many more than those I've mentioned here because a lot of them weren't released in Europe and importing stuff was super expensive back then.
I'd argue that this argument works just as well for the opposite side. Tokyo Mirage Sessions is Nintendo & Atlus' game. They can do whatever they want with it. If they want to tone down the fan-service in the US version because they'd like to get paid for their work (or have the game be successful enough to fund a sequel) and think it'll be more successful with the changes (or for whatever reason), it's their game, it's their prerogative and by complaining about the changes, you're saying that they should cater to your wishes. If it's a dealbreaker, don't buy the game and maybe next time, they'll make a different decision.
Companies make these kinds of changes all the time in other industries as well. Just look at movies - there are tons of examples where they'll tone things down slightly (or up) because they want a specific rating so that they can reach a specific audience.
I agree, I even argued that in my post as well. Doesn’t mean I think this is a positive change or way to handle this sort of content, instead I think it sets precedents which can backfire in really shitty ways later down the line. (again, I wouldn’t care at all if the original work already would contain little or no fanservice, it’s really this „change something, change the tone, change the characters, …“. I see many European and German posters agreeing with this idea, I am not sure where you live or in how far you’ve encountered companies or governments or both in unison changing products because they disagree with it before).
Bonus: As I've pointed out, as a German I am more than used to movies, comics, literature and games being changed. Sometimes changed a lot. Mostly in regards to violence, abusive dialogue, politically sensitive themes. Some of the content changed, I actually on a personal level think "It would be good to have less media with this kind of content" but at the same time think "If it doesn't actively break laws or is hate speech, it SHOULD be allowed to exist in a healthy media environment.". Which is maybe a reason why I feel so strongly about any sort of change, because I've already seen how this sort of mindset of "we have to change media for our customers/country people" works, and it gets worse over time and more intrusive even. Though as pointed out in this thread already before, in Germany over the last couple of years, it finally began getting better. Maybe this is a reason why I feel so strongly about this topic, because after taking a breath now we get to enjoy "changed localised media" again because of certain current American standards. Edit: And maybe that's a reason why especially Anime fans in the US are also against these changes - back in the 90s, lots of Anime regardless of rating got cut for their US releases and Anime fans actually fought a long and hard fight for changing this with petitions, fanzines, articles, speeches on conventions... and they've partly won with new companies coming up who strongly opposed changing or cutting Anime, old companies changing their policies and they were successful. That was also funnily around the time Anime finally hit mainstream. Now this kind of mindset from back then is coming back full force (in Japanese videogames) and that feeling kind of sucks for longtime fans of both Anime and games, I imagine.
I never go buy a game in a German store (or a movie, book, comic for that matter) without beforehand checking actual German resource pages about cut movies, comics, games, books, ... And the "FSK18" sticker doesn't hold the ... localisators back. Though we actually have a government-funded agency on their backs who can and did very often in the past pull products from the shelves completely.
Did you know that buying, selling, talking about (in non academic/negative context) or showing to anyone in public the game Dead Rising 1 (and I think 2 as well) is a small criminal offence in Germany 
(It is actually "Beschlagnahmt", which is the second level of "not allowed to be officially sold", the first one being "Indiziert" which just means you can't publicly sell it or talk about it but are still allowed to buy in 18 years and older shops... getting
Resident Evil 2 in the 90s meant to go to the backroom where they also kept the hardcore pornography and pull it out of the shelves there. Most didn’t have it in stock because selling a product you can’t advertise publicly is bull). Or that I of course didn't jump through loops with Steam and do not own
Left 4 Dead 2 in its UK version because why would I do that it's verboten, I am totally fine with my version without any splatter or gun usage feedback
....
It is quite interesting being a fan of action, horror, scifi, even fantasy and superheroes in Germany. For the semantics amongst us, censorship is forbidden by law in Germany actually so they do all this and it's really just localisation even if it is the state making the decisions because otherwise the government would break the law itself
