Just bought it and it's in French rather than English.

[Volkira]

I just bought the game via the Summer sale and installed it.All the audio is in french anyway to get english audio?

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

The intro is intentionally in French; there is no other spoken audio.

[Volkira]

Phewww ok.It was pretty bad french by the way definately not a native speaker.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

It was probably the original Japanese audio -- as in, the audio from Japan of someone speaking French, badly.

[FlamboyantMongoose]

you might find this a helpful explanation for the french audio:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ys

[Gamemako]

The original Japanese release had a Japanese woman speaking French with a horrid accent. This version has a Polish woman speaking French as intentional homage to that. As FlamboyantMongoose pointed out, the video is narrated in French because that's the origin of the legend of Ys, though the video game Ys has little or nothing to do with the European legend.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

The original Japanese release had a Japanese woman speaking French with a horrid accent. This version has a Polish woman speaking French as intentional homage to that.

lol, wat

[Gamemako]

Originally posted by Quint Monroe:

lol, wat

As in, the new version can be understood by speakers of French, but isn't natively French (which would spoil both the fact that Esteria is not France and that the original was... something). You should hear the original.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8wVB19-b-c

[博麗靈夢]

is that French?i almost can't realize it is French~

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Hahaha oh wow.

So it was an intentional design choice? Interesting.

[Gamemako]

Originally posted by 博麗靈夢:

is that French?i almost can't realize it is French~

Amazing, wasn't it?

Originally posted by Quint Aguacate:

So it was an intentional design choice? Interesting.

Indeed. Wyrdwad from XSEED described it that way,at least.

[D'Ther]

Originally posted by Gamemako:

Originally posted by Quint Monroe:

lol, wat

As in, the new version can be understood by speakers of French, but isn't natively French (which would spoil both the fact that Esteria is not France and that the original was... something). You should hear the original.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8wVB19-b-c

My ears were still bleeding after earing that intro (PC version and not skipable by the way, seriously...............) and now after viewing this i'm totally deaf.

[👽Shini]

i didn't realize it was french, and thought it was some made up language, like wannabe elvish, so i turned the game off to see if there's an option to disable voice acting, and there isn't.
good thing it's only in the intro.
it may have been a good idea in japan to put some 'foreign' atmosphere at the beginning of the game by having french intro, (considering the japanese audience will just be like "oh foreign language, how exotic, cool game!") but to the rest of the world, especially in modern age where everyone hears every language all the time, seems cringe.

[Phendrana]

As a native french speaker, i had no idea it was even french until 1 minute into the intro. The original Japanese version literally sounds better, i have no idea why they hired a polish girl for it, it makes 0 sense.