It’s common in the North American release of the game. The Japanese release has the objectively funnier weapon related glitch, letting you underflow the crit on weapons with forging
I remember a story about the development of the 3DS Ocarina of Time the dev team comprised of like half old hats who initially made the game, and half newer blood who knew the 3DS software.
The story goes that in a meeting about the game one of the old developers expressed joy that they could finally make a version of the game without any of the pesky bugs. This was met with derision from the new team members who had previously played the game and thought some of those glitches were fun. The team compromised and kept a lot of the fun bugs like many that speed runners use, while removing the strictly bad ones.
I mean, their standards for what constituted as "bad" was pretty wishy-washy.
The two most notable examples are Door of Time Skip (becoming adult Link early by performing a precise clip to bypass the door to the Master Sword) which was patched with a wider door hitbox, and Infinite Sword Glitch (Using the properties of how Navi/text boxes work and how sword hitbox works to continually swing Link's sword, which also enables Hovering tricks on top of speeding up combat.)
Both of those glitches are hard to run into for a casual player (I suppose Infinite Sword Glitch could happen accidentally, though unlikely) and make the speedrun of OOT significantly more interesting.
In return, OOT3D had its own collection of Glitches that don't exist in the original game, so it's still an interesting game to speedrun, but I'd argue the developers didn't really have a consistent standard for what was "fun" or not.
Iirc there were two variants of PoR discs released in japan, the more common 1.0, and a later 1.1 that had some glitches patched. NSO simply run the latest patch (same that happend with the shindou rom with mario 64)
For Mario 64, they localized the Shindou version of the game for the 3D all-stars release yeah….. but for some reason on the N64 app it’s actually the launch NA version, without rumble and stuff. Japan version is probably shindou though.
I think a lot of people may prefer having silly glitches like the backwards long jump over rumble though, so maybe that was a good call by Nintendo
Same thing will inevitably hold true if/when Wii NSO is added and Radiant Dawn is put on it. The North American ROM will be the updated 1.1 since 1.0 has some wild bugs.
My first FE game was Shadow Dragon; I’ve got this 😎
(That said, getting the generics in FE4 is a downgrade and also deprives you of story content, iirc, so I figure it’s not actually a good idea.)
Edit: Wait, hold on, Linda’s not bad actually. Guess I’m potentially sabotaging Tailtiu’s romance in my eventual playthrough— and rip, I’d have to use Amid over Arthur.
I didn’t realize it was related to tutorials as people said earlier but yes this is a common thing in the physical copy of American Path of Radiance. Unfortunately it’s so early that you end up often discarding a few before you get the convoy but it can make sure Ike almost always has a basic option pre-convoy even if you use him a ton.
Thats why I usually give some of the other swords to titania and one to Oscar so I don't have to be forced to discard if I pick up an item on enemy phase
There still aren't that many item slots and you gain a lot of other weapons you need to store somewhere. Inventory management gets even tighter on a second playthrough with the Bands which take a slot that could go to Vulns or whatever (even if the items inventory and weapons inventory are separate)
Money isn't a problem in (international) FE9 though
Yeah, you can give some of the swords to other units, but in my limited experience in early Path of Radiance you get a lot of weapons from enemies and only 4 slots per character to hold said weapons. So eventually someone’s probably going to end up with 4 weapons and getting a weapon drop.
Yes. If you skip the very first tutorial in that map about visiting houses, you will get 4 swords. If you watch any portion of it when it first prompts you, you will only have 1 sword.
I’m pretty sure it’s because he’s over preparing and he even talked about it before entering the map. I remember this happening when I played the game on my Wii.
Seriously though, the fact that this random glitch ends up being helpful to both the player and the story is a crazy miracle, but I personally love it for that exact reason
It actually isn't a glitchthis was intentionally coded in. The glitch happ na when you watch the tutorial b cause then you do not get the extra swords.
To actually answer the question. On the GameCube version if you watched the initial cut scenes you only got 1 sword. If you skipped the initial cut scenes you got 4 swords. Apparently it’s a glitch. It looks like they just patched it so you get the swords now whether you watch the cutscene or not.
Fun fact, but the glitch is actually the other way around, the code malfunctions when you watch the tutorial and then you do not get the three extra swords.
It's a well known bug if you skip the tutorial. I headcanon that Ike was carrying them for some errand for dad when chapter 1 happened and never got the chance to set them down.
You sure about that? Considering you don't even have a convoy for several chapters i can't imagine it makes sense to force you to carry so much inventory from the get go. I wouldn't presume to know why the code has them there or why they're programmed to vanish in the tutorial's end but I can't imagine this was the intended result.
I datamined the code, with the code working as intended you get 4 swords. It malfunctions when viewing the tutorial. Someone else posted the links to my videos on it in this thread if you are interested.
I think you don't entirely understand the concept of a bug. Something being in the code does not mean it is intended; mistakes are made. The code causes 4 swords when it works as written, but that suggests an error because it's extremely unlikely it is what was intended. There could be any number of reasons they wrote in code that adds 4 swords to your inventory, but that does not mean they intended you to have them. Code does not just randomly "malfunction" in most cases (overflow etc aside)- it does what it's written to do, and bugs happen when what's written is wrong.
I'd be much more interested to know what part of the code causes them to disappear. That would probably shed some light on what might have been intended.
I datamined this, someone linked the videos in this thread already, but the 4 swords are actually intended. And then the EU versions removed the code that game the extra swords again.
Eh... Its a US specific change then. And also really stupid since you just fill out a characters weapon invintory before you have the convoy...
Like its a messy thing no matter what, be it left over testing in the US version, a bug, or whatever it's feels like an error that made it to release. Else you just want to belive NoA thinks the US players would need the help of 4 swords to beat the first few chapter when you have an entire Titania. I doubt it was "intended" for the retail version.
With intended I did not mean 'what the developers intended', instead I meant that it follows the code logic soundly. The actual bug actually happens when you watch the tutorial and do not get extra swords. I hope that clears up what I meant.
With intended I did not mean 'what the developers intended'
But that's basically the only thing that matters when talking about whether or not something is intended. Saying that the code does exactly what the code says it does is pretty meaningless because that's always going to be the case outside of scenarios like undefined behavior or random bit flips.
Yeah, even if the code is doing what it says, if it's unintended, it's a bug. (Also, bugs are all results of the code as written. It's very silly to look at the code and say something is not a bug just because it does something other than crash or negatively impact the game.)
Right... Its still and error so I wouldn't use intended because that implys someone wants it to happen and a choice with reason.
It was an error and you should only have 1 sword no matter what, the problem is after watching the video, someone accidently duplicate the iron sword line 3 more times on one script and nobody fixed it.
English is strange and words make implications. Don't sweat it I'm a pedantic prick. Sorry.
No, it most definitely is not an error as far as code itself is concerned. Whether or not it was a piece of code used for development testing that was not removed before release I cannot say. However, the code is specific and stands alone from the first Iron Sword Ike gets. The code wasn't duplicates, it differs from the initial piece of code and is written in a totally different place .
Though if I had to assume, I would not consider this a piece of code that was forgotten to be removed, as there is a debug menu that allows Devs to create, add, remove and test multiple things way faster than writing code would. So if this was a piece of leftover testing code, it is a very inefficient way of testing.
The four swords, as far as code logic goes, are supposed to end up in Ike's inventory. When viewing the 'visit' tutorial the code that grants the extra swords is skipped, and that is the bug in effect. The intent, or at the very least, the goal of what is written in the code, is absolutely that Ike gets four iron swords. The only thing we can never know is if the intent was for players or internal testing, though as I said before, the internal testing reasoning is convoluted at best.
That's very interesting. Never imagined it'd be like that, ahahaha.
Still, for all intents and purposes, I would classify it as a bug or glitch. Especially since it's not present in the European version.
Just a guess but maybe it's debug code they forgot to remove like you suggested as an unlikely possibility.
Like perhaps they got tired of using the debug menu all the time. Later, perhaps the testers always watched the tutorial and never caught the four swords.
Because no matter how you look at it, it feels weird and unnatural for Ike to start with four swords.
If they wanted the extra swords to help players, they should have added a remark in the dialogue or something. Like "hey I brought extra swords".
I don't understand you people. How can you hear "this thing is specifically coded to happen. Someone went out of their way to add this to the game," and go "it must be a bug or a glitch."
Bugs are unintentional. This isn't any different than snipers/swordmasters/berserkers getting +15% crit. Someone went into the game, and intentionally made it happen.
If it looks like a glitch, smells like a glitch, there's a very high chance it's a glitch.
Being coded in is an important detail, yes, but it's not the end all be all. Lots of games have weird or nonsensical lines coded in.
What matters more IMO is that it needs to make sense. Snipers etc. getting 15% critical makes sense because it aligns with previous games and those classes use a singular weapon so the player will naturally think to themselves "oh, that's a benefit of this class".
Ike coming with 4 swords out of nowhere feels completely unnatural. If the developers intended for it to help the player, they did an awful job of getting the point across. Like I said, they could have added dialogue to mention Ike getting four swords. I mean, they've changed dialogue before. (Well at least in Radiant Dawn, I don't remember much else.)
Also, the 4 swords being gone in the European release I feel is also an important detail. Why did that happen? Two possibilities come to mind. One, they realised the 4 swords was a glitch and fixed it. Two, they figured Europeans didn't need the extra help. But that makes no sense.
(There are instances where the lines are blurred though. Like the Knight Ward giving 30% speed growth. But I'd class that as a secret or Easter egg. Although it's not impossible for it to be an oversight as well. I don't remember what the guidebooks said.)
Logically we can assume when translating someone accidently did this trying to secure the iron sword no matter on the tutorial status. It was missed when cleaning up errors. So we have the script to make sure Ikes Invintory is Iron Sword, and then also does it with 3 swords.
We're looking at pre update games, JP is usually version 1 with mathematical errors and other stuff, with PoR it has the crit under flow, US usually fixes these and then adds new errors in scripts because the text was translated, now we get 4 Iron Swords. EU/PAL usually fixes the text errors. And that's alls this is. They didn't need to put iron sword for tutorial skip. Maybe there was other issues that happend if the command wasn't run on US revison but they managed to fix it for PAL. We can assume so much about the code that holds this game together and speculate, but Ike having 4 iron swords is just a mistake that happened by the team hired to translate the game.
Nope. It's specifically a North American port bug. If you pick Hard mode on the NA version of the game Ike starts with 4 iron swords. Btw Hard mode is actually normal mode in Japan. Unfortunately you can't access the Japanese Hard mode without owning the JP port
Fun fact, it actually is completely intended. The bug happens when you watch the tutorial and don't get the four iron swords.
As for the difficulties, you're thinking of RD, and even there it also isn't the case.
PoR had the JPN maniac mode removed and got Easy mode instead. But Normal and Hard are almost identical between JP and Eng.
For RD, they changed a lot of stuff from the JP version to the international ones and thus renamed the difficulties accordingly. The two regions can't really be compared difficulty wise.
It’s common in the North American release of the game. The Japanese release has the objectively funnier weapon related glitch, letting you underflow the crit on weapons with forging
The NSO Japanese version actually has the underflow crit glitch patched out
God damn it Nintendo why. A 20 year old single player game doesn’t need a balance patch
I remember a story about the development of the 3DS Ocarina of Time the dev team comprised of like half old hats who initially made the game, and half newer blood who knew the 3DS software.
The story goes that in a meeting about the game one of the old developers expressed joy that they could finally make a version of the game without any of the pesky bugs. This was met with derision from the new team members who had previously played the game and thought some of those glitches were fun. The team compromised and kept a lot of the fun bugs like many that speed runners use, while removing the strictly bad ones.
What were the bad ones that were removed?
Don't know about glitches but the framerate was boosted from 20fps to 30fps.
I mean, their standards for what constituted as "bad" was pretty wishy-washy.
The two most notable examples are Door of Time Skip (becoming adult Link early by performing a precise clip to bypass the door to the Master Sword) which was patched with a wider door hitbox, and Infinite Sword Glitch (Using the properties of how Navi/text boxes work and how sword hitbox works to continually swing Link's sword, which also enables Hovering tricks on top of speeding up combat.)
Both of those glitches are hard to run into for a casual player (I suppose Infinite Sword Glitch could happen accidentally, though unlikely) and make the speedrun of OOT significantly more interesting.
In return, OOT3D had its own collection of Glitches that don't exist in the original game, so it's still an interesting game to speedrun, but I'd argue the developers didn't really have a consistent standard for what was "fun" or not.
Hope they keep this mentality for whatever they do with OoT next. I love me a little old-school jank in my coding.
In the process, some of the extra item spawns were removed. Most likely due to oversight.
Iirc there were two variants of PoR discs released in japan, the more common 1.0, and a later 1.1 that had some glitches patched. NSO simply run the latest patch (same that happend with the shindou rom with mario 64)
For Mario 64, they localized the Shindou version of the game for the 3D all-stars release yeah….. but for some reason on the N64 app it’s actually the launch NA version, without rumble and stuff. Japan version is probably shindou though.
I think a lot of people may prefer having silly glitches like the backwards long jump over rumble though, so maybe that was a good call by Nintendo
They patched it way back when, its just the v1.1 jp por is rarer in japan.
Nintendo just uses more recent versions of the game on NSO. It was patched 20 years ago.
Same thing will inevitably hold true if/when Wii NSO is added and Radiant Dawn is put on it. The North American ROM will be the updated 1.1 since 1.0 has some wild bugs.
No, he started with Wind Waker and then played Four Swords after because he thought it was a sequel.
As a character from a GameCube game, Ike respects and appreciates all his fellow GameCube game characters.
Be like Ike.
We like ike!
Your Lin flair's missing some SNES units
The only FE games I haven’t played yet are the Jugdral duology, and imo I can’t justify adding Linoan without actually having finished her game 😆
Dont forget to kill off some units in FE4 so you get Linda on the team
Kill off some units, huh?
My first FE game was Shadow Dragon; I’ve got this 😎
(That said, getting the generics in FE4 is a downgrade and also deprives you of story content, iirc, so I figure it’s not actually a good idea.)
Edit: Wait, hold on, Linda’s not bad actually. Guess I’m potentially sabotaging Tailtiu’s romance in my eventual playthrough— and rip, I’d have to use Amid over Arthur.
But then you'll get a new Lin unit for your flair.
Loosing Arthur isn't worth at all
Oh, what?? Someone mentioned your flair and I recognized your name from other platforms. Hi, I love your art!
Haha, hey thanks! Kind of you to say :)
I see, this is probably a sign for me to start Four Swords...
r/angryupvote
“I understood that reference”
Funny you say this because when I got PoR back in 2006-2007, I also got Four Swords along with it. Maybe it was Ike how got the game back then 😂
Classic blunder
I came here looking for a comment like this and was not disappointed
I didn’t realize it was related to tutorials as people said earlier but yes this is a common thing in the physical copy of American Path of Radiance. Unfortunately it’s so early that you end up often discarding a few before you get the convoy but it can make sure Ike almost always has a basic option pre-convoy even if you use him a ton.
Thats why I usually give some of the other swords to titania and one to Oscar so I don't have to be forced to discard if I pick up an item on enemy phase
There still aren't that many item slots and you gain a lot of other weapons you need to store somewhere. Inventory management gets even tighter on a second playthrough with the Bands which take a slot that could go to Vulns or whatever (even if the items inventory and weapons inventory are separate)
Money isn't a problem in (international) FE9 though
Real. I forged quite a few weapons but I still had like 60 or 70k by the end of my playthrough
Yeah, you can give some of the swords to other units, but in my limited experience in early Path of Radiance you get a lot of weapons from enemies and only 4 slots per character to hold said weapons. So eventually someone’s probably going to end up with 4 weapons and getting a weapon drop.
Yeah, you end up losing 1 or 2 Iron Swords, but it's not a huge loss all things considered.
He might want to take those four swords on an adventure
Don’t tri to force those heroes though
It's a pretty common glitch in the American version of them game, but it's helpful so I'd roll with it
Not a glitch. It was explicitly coded into the game for unknown reasons. In fact not starting with four swords is the real glitch.
For more details here are two videos that explain it better than I could
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpai1Wl2U2o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnXVIGm1P-c
Let's gooooo
for a little more detail: pretty sure it's caused by turning off the tutorials for some reason, so if you skip those then yeah he gets 4 swords
I didn't turn them off and still got 4 swords. I did skip pretty much all of them, but they were on.
Maybe it's specifically WATCHING the tutorial then? I know it's connected to one of the early tutorials
Yes. If you skip the very first tutorial in that map about visiting houses, you will get 4 swords. If you watch any portion of it when it first prompts you, you will only have 1 sword.
I'm pretty sure it's watching the tutorials. Or at least watching a specific tutorial
Really, it's just skipping the "visit" tutorial
TY
I’m pretty sure it’s because he’s over preparing and he even talked about it before entering the map. I remember this happening when I played the game on my Wii.
He was just really excited for his first job, ok??
Seriously though, the fact that this random glitch ends up being helpful to both the player and the story is a crazy miracle, but I personally love it for that exact reason
It actually isn't a glitchthis was intentionally coded in. The glitch happ na when you watch the tutorial b cause then you do not get the extra swords.
It’s a god-send for Ike only runs
This is a universal thing in Path of Radiance's American version that will always happen unless you watch a specific tutorial video.
Funnily I think data mines reveal this might have been intentional add to the North American version (sans the Tutorial videos skipping it)
To actually answer the question. On the GameCube version if you watched the initial cut scenes you only got 1 sword. If you skipped the initial cut scenes you got 4 swords. Apparently it’s a glitch. It looks like they just patched it so you get the swords now whether you watch the cutscene or not.
Fun fact, but the glitch is actually the other way around, the code malfunctions when you watch the tutorial and then you do not get the three extra swords.
Mercenaries can never have too many swords.
Yes he did lol
Yeah Ike definitely takes these four swords on an adventure
Always come prepared
Four Swords for Four Seasons
Yeah
Holy shit Zelda reference
It's a well known bug if you skip the tutorial. I headcanon that Ike was carrying them for some errand for dad when chapter 1 happened and never got the chance to set them down.
Fun fact, but the 4 swords are intended and the actual bug happens when you watch the tutorial and Don't get the extra swords!
You sure about that? Considering you don't even have a convoy for several chapters i can't imagine it makes sense to force you to carry so much inventory from the get go. I wouldn't presume to know why the code has them there or why they're programmed to vanish in the tutorial's end but I can't imagine this was the intended result.
I datamined the code, with the code working as intended you get 4 swords. It malfunctions when viewing the tutorial. Someone else posted the links to my videos on it in this thread if you are interested.
I think you don't entirely understand the concept of a bug. Something being in the code does not mean it is intended; mistakes are made. The code causes 4 swords when it works as written, but that suggests an error because it's extremely unlikely it is what was intended. There could be any number of reasons they wrote in code that adds 4 swords to your inventory, but that does not mean they intended you to have them. Code does not just randomly "malfunction" in most cases (overflow etc aside)- it does what it's written to do, and bugs happen when what's written is wrong.
I'd be much more interested to know what part of the code causes them to disappear. That would probably shed some light on what might have been intended.
I just started playing this, it happens if you skip the "visit" tutorial. If you watch it, you only start with one.
It happens when you do something specific in the prologue chapters I remember doing it but not how
I believe its a glitch to do with turning tutorials on and then not watching them when asked if you want to see them
No, that was Link from-- Wait, wrong GameCube game...
Congratulations, you got the multiple swords glitch !
Don't look a gift sword in the blade
NTSC Problem... I'd look on cutting room floor for version diffrences, I presonaly just prefer PAL since it can run at 60hz anyway
I datamined this, someone linked the videos in this thread already, but the 4 swords are actually intended. And then the EU versions removed the code that game the extra swords again.
Eh... Its a US specific change then. And also really stupid since you just fill out a characters weapon invintory before you have the convoy...
Like its a messy thing no matter what, be it left over testing in the US version, a bug, or whatever it's feels like an error that made it to release. Else you just want to belive NoA thinks the US players would need the help of 4 swords to beat the first few chapter when you have an entire Titania. I doubt it was "intended" for the retail version.
With intended I did not mean 'what the developers intended', instead I meant that it follows the code logic soundly. The actual bug actually happens when you watch the tutorial and do not get extra swords. I hope that clears up what I meant.
But that's basically the only thing that matters when talking about whether or not something is intended. Saying that the code does exactly what the code says it does is pretty meaningless because that's always going to be the case outside of scenarios like undefined behavior or random bit flips.
Yeah, even if the code is doing what it says, if it's unintended, it's a bug. (Also, bugs are all results of the code as written. It's very silly to look at the code and say something is not a bug just because it does something other than crash or negatively impact the game.)
Right... Its still and error so I wouldn't use intended because that implys someone wants it to happen and a choice with reason.
It was an error and you should only have 1 sword no matter what, the problem is after watching the video, someone accidently duplicate the iron sword line 3 more times on one script and nobody fixed it.
English is strange and words make implications. Don't sweat it I'm a pedantic prick. Sorry.
No, it most definitely is not an error as far as code itself is concerned. Whether or not it was a piece of code used for development testing that was not removed before release I cannot say. However, the code is specific and stands alone from the first Iron Sword Ike gets. The code wasn't duplicates, it differs from the initial piece of code and is written in a totally different place .
Though if I had to assume, I would not consider this a piece of code that was forgotten to be removed, as there is a debug menu that allows Devs to create, add, remove and test multiple things way faster than writing code would. So if this was a piece of leftover testing code, it is a very inefficient way of testing.
The four swords, as far as code logic goes, are supposed to end up in Ike's inventory. When viewing the 'visit' tutorial the code that grants the extra swords is skipped, and that is the bug in effect. The intent, or at the very least, the goal of what is written in the code, is absolutely that Ike gets four iron swords. The only thing we can never know is if the intent was for players or internal testing, though as I said before, the internal testing reasoning is convoluted at best.
That's very interesting. Never imagined it'd be like that, ahahaha.
Still, for all intents and purposes, I would classify it as a bug or glitch. Especially since it's not present in the European version.
Just a guess but maybe it's debug code they forgot to remove like you suggested as an unlikely possibility.
Like perhaps they got tired of using the debug menu all the time. Later, perhaps the testers always watched the tutorial and never caught the four swords.
Because no matter how you look at it, it feels weird and unnatural for Ike to start with four swords.
If they wanted the extra swords to help players, they should have added a remark in the dialogue or something. Like "hey I brought extra swords".
I don't understand you people. How can you hear "this thing is specifically coded to happen. Someone went out of their way to add this to the game," and go "it must be a bug or a glitch."
Bugs are unintentional. This isn't any different than snipers/swordmasters/berserkers getting +15% crit. Someone went into the game, and intentionally made it happen.
If it looks like a glitch, smells like a glitch, there's a very high chance it's a glitch.
Being coded in is an important detail, yes, but it's not the end all be all. Lots of games have weird or nonsensical lines coded in.
What matters more IMO is that it needs to make sense. Snipers etc. getting 15% critical makes sense because it aligns with previous games and those classes use a singular weapon so the player will naturally think to themselves "oh, that's a benefit of this class".
Ike coming with 4 swords out of nowhere feels completely unnatural. If the developers intended for it to help the player, they did an awful job of getting the point across. Like I said, they could have added dialogue to mention Ike getting four swords. I mean, they've changed dialogue before. (Well at least in Radiant Dawn, I don't remember much else.)
Also, the 4 swords being gone in the European release I feel is also an important detail. Why did that happen? Two possibilities come to mind. One, they realised the 4 swords was a glitch and fixed it. Two, they figured Europeans didn't need the extra help. But that makes no sense.
(There are instances where the lines are blurred though. Like the Knight Ward giving 30% speed growth. But I'd class that as a secret or Easter egg. Although it's not impossible for it to be an oversight as well. I don't remember what the guidebooks said.)
It's a mistake clearly.
Logically we can assume when translating someone accidently did this trying to secure the iron sword no matter on the tutorial status. It was missed when cleaning up errors. So we have the script to make sure Ikes Invintory is Iron Sword, and then also does it with 3 swords.
We're looking at pre update games, JP is usually version 1 with mathematical errors and other stuff, with PoR it has the crit under flow, US usually fixes these and then adds new errors in scripts because the text was translated, now we get 4 Iron Swords. EU/PAL usually fixes the text errors. And that's alls this is. They didn't need to put iron sword for tutorial skip. Maybe there was other issues that happend if the command wasn't run on US revison but they managed to fix it for PAL. We can assume so much about the code that holds this game together and speculate, but Ike having 4 iron swords is just a mistake that happened by the team hired to translate the game.
You can remove that “Suspend Menu” bar by the way.. Please do
Nope. It's specifically a North American port bug. If you pick Hard mode on the NA version of the game Ike starts with 4 iron swords. Btw Hard mode is actually normal mode in Japan. Unfortunately you can't access the Japanese Hard mode without owning the JP port
Fun fact, it actually is completely intended. The bug happens when you watch the tutorial and don't get the four iron swords. As for the difficulties, you're thinking of RD, and even there it also isn't the case. PoR had the JPN maniac mode removed and got Easy mode instead. But Normal and Hard are almost identical between JP and Eng. For RD, they changed a lot of stuff from the JP version to the international ones and thus renamed the difficulties accordingly. The two regions can't really be compared difficulty wise.
it’s a bug in the NA releases of the game which for some reason never got patched