Enchanted Arms North American release to retain Japanese

[bapenguin]

Joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com/2006/08/07/enchanted-arms-embraces-bilingualism/) brings some good news that the North American version of [eM] eNCHANT arMs (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/e/enchantedarms/) will not only contain a localized English version of the game but the same copy will also have the original Japanese audio track on the same disc (with English subtitles).

This is excellent news as localization of a lot of these games cause less than satisfactory quality in the voice acting.

[Deathbane27]

Let's hope the translated subtitles aren't worse than the voice acting. :p

[Heretic Machine]

Translated Japanese games are currently in the same state that anime was in the late 80's-to-mid 90's. Which is to say, terrible. Currently, most good animes get equally good voice actors, and I can only hope that games start to follow this trend.

On the bright side, most native-English titles have really great voice acting these days. I wonder if the Japanese get terrible voice actors when those games get translated?

[BigJonno]

I've never got why the voiceovers are so bad. As Perigon said, the voice acting in a lot of Western games is excellent, we've had top-class voice actors in a lot of games (Dwight Schultz gets EVERYWHERE) and now we're starting to see actors who are more known for stage and screen work being brought in for big games (GTA and Oblivion spring to mind) so why don't they do the same for translations?

[EvilBob46]

Currently, most good animes get equally good voice actors, and I can only hope that games start to follow this trend.

Well, I think they already do. If you have a niche RPG that isn't expected sell more than 200,000 copies and get only average review scores at best, obviously the voice acting will likely be terrible because the publisher doesn't really believe in the widespread success of the title (and won't spend a lot of money on localization). However, if a Japanese game will likely become a hit over here, and if the publisher has the experience necessary to properly translate a title, then Japanese games can have really good localization and you get quality material like in Metal Gear Solid 3 and Resident Evil 4 (which, coincidentally, are the 2 biggest Japanese hits in recent memory).

[Lon Lon Rabbit]

This is the same as the HK version of the game, it's great they retained the option, but from reports unless you have a pretty huge and high def tv the subtitles are very small, blurry and largely unreadable.

But still, very cool they've got the option in there.

[Atepsflame]

That was one of the things I loved about the Otogi series. The english sucked, but you could switch right over to the Japanese. Made the game so much more enjoyable.

[noxa]

Woohoo! Excellent news!

[Cefca]

I think it´s great that we have the option now to choose between languages. Personally I´ve never liked how Japanese games are translated to other languages.

[Zurik]

Well if the english voices are around Dynasty Warriors/99 Nights quality, I'll be switching it to Japanese.