Every new Atelier game the dub beggars show up.

[Walrus Beard]

Seriously, be quiet. Gust isn't going to do English dubs. If you are actually serious about Japanese entertainment, you play in Japanese with English subs BARE MINIMUM. Ideally you would endeavor to learn Japanese like I am doing. Yeah Gust may have thrown a few bones in the past, but they are not doing that anymore. These games are not for casuals. Learn to read, or go away.

[Chibi Life]

To be fair they are trying as hard as they can to go mainstream and guess what mainstream games have? Multiple voice acted language support, or at the bare minimum English as an alternate language.

[McCarry]

That is some wild elitist take

[Legendary Mr. Tiddles]

I can't in good conscience say no to "learn to read", but my dude, chillax! We know there is a massively vocal subset of the community that is really hardcore into japanophilia. You don't need to beat people over the head and shoulders out of nowhere like this. You've already won that fight. The floggings will not improve morale.

[Walrus Beard]

Originally posted by Legendary Mr. Tiddles:

I can't in good conscience say no to "learn to read", but my dude, chillax! We know there is a massively vocal subset of the community that is really hardcore into japanophilia. You don't need to beat people over the head and shoulders out of nowhere like this. You've already won that fight. The floggings will not improve morale.

Don't really care if I won. Their constant whining gets annoying.

[Legendary Mr. Tiddles]

Originally posted by Walrus Beard:

Originally posted by Legendary Mr. Tiddles:

I can't in good conscience say no to "learn to read", but my dude, chillax! We know there is a massively vocal subset of the community that is really hardcore into japanophilia. You don't need to beat people over the head and shoulders out of nowhere like this. You've already won that fight. The floggings will not improve morale.

Don't really care if I won. Their constant whining gets annoying.

When did you make your heel turn?

[Rolien]

Originally posted by Walrus Beard:

Seriously, be quiet. Gust isn't going to do English dubs. If you are actually serious about Japanese entertainment, you play in Japanese with English subs BARE MINIMUM. Ideally you would endeavor to learn Japanese like I am doing. Yeah Gust may have thrown a few bones in the past, but they are not doing that anymore. These games are not for casuals. Learn to read, or go away.

70 dollars for a game that can't even be bothered to put in English, Mandarin, or Spanish dubs?

If people are expected to pay 10 more dollars they are entitled to whine about it.

[Walrus Beard]

Originally posted by Rolien:

Originally posted by Walrus Beard:

Seriously, be quiet. Gust isn't going to do English dubs. If you are actually serious about Japanese entertainment, you play in Japanese with English subs BARE MINIMUM. Ideally you would endeavor to learn Japanese like I am doing. Yeah Gust may have thrown a few bones in the past, but they are not doing that anymore. These games are not for casuals. Learn to read, or go away.

70 dollars for a game that can't even be bothered to put in English, Mandarin, or Spanish dubs?

If people are expected to pay 10 more dollars they are entitled to whine about it.

Your position only makes sense for people who do not find English voices in Japanese media extremely jarring and out of place. These games are fine as is with Japanese voices and English subtitles.

[Chibi Life]

Originally posted by Walrus Beard:

Originally posted by Rolien:

70 dollars for a game that can't even be bothered to put in English, Mandarin, or Spanish dubs?

If people are expected to pay 10 more dollars they are entitled to whine about it.

Your position only makes sense for people who do not find English voices in Japanese media extremely jarring and out of place. These games are fine as is with Japanese voices and English subtitles.

That depends. Are they taking the price hike and lack of additional dubbing and putting it into the quality of their gameplay? I am doubtful.

[jclosed]

While I understand the people that want to have English dub, and I will never ridicule them for their wishes and opinions, we have to be realistic here.

Atelier games stopped having a English dub since Atelier Firis. That's already 9 years ago. If you take that in account, having English dubs in these games is way back in time. I don't say it will never ever happen and I would like to see those that want English dubs to be served, but chances are slim and realistically seen non-existent.

Those English dubs where always very limited in those older games anyway. Most times only a few lines where voiced, and the rest was silent, so you had to read those lines of text anyway. You can notice the difference if you switch from English to Japanese dub in these games. All of the sudden almost every line is voiced, where there was complete silence in the English dub. There was a lot of criticism about that, and external factors (voice actor strike), lead to the decision to drop English dub completely. By the way - I personally did not use English dubs (and no - I can't understand Japanese either), simply because of so few lines where actually voiced.

I think the developers tried a few games without English dub to see if the sales would drop in English spoken country's. The outcome is obvious. There was no drop in sale, or that drop was so minimal that it was negligible. Do not forget that that Atelier Ryza was sold as hot cakes, even without any English dubs.

As I said before, we have to be realistic here. Company's developers and publishers are no charity. They make a cost-gain analysis, and the outcome was (most likely) that adding English dub would maybe improve a small amount of sales in the western part of the hemisphere (do not forget the main sales are in the Eastern part), but not enough to recover the cost of adding those dubs. It's just pure business...

As said above. I really would like to see those that want English dubs to be served. But realistically I think that this will simply not happen. Complaining won't help in this case I am afraid.

[Rolien]

Originally posted by Walrus Beard:

Your position only makes sense for people who do not find English voices in Japanese media extremely jarring and out of place. These games are fine as is with Japanese voices and English subtitles.

Mandarin and Spanish aren't English. but okay.

[Craga]

Originally posted by Walrus Beard:

Originally posted by Legendary Mr. Tiddles:

I can't in good conscience say no to "learn to read", but my dude, chillax! We know there is a massively vocal subset of the community that is really hardcore into japanophilia. You don't need to beat people over the head and shoulders out of nowhere like this. You've already won that fight. The floggings will not improve morale.

Don't really care if I won. Their constant whining gets annoying.

The absolute irony of you complaining about whining......while you create a post of you whining.

[Walrus Beard]

Originally posted by Craga:

Originally posted by Walrus Beard:

Don't really care if I won. Their constant whining gets annoying.

The absolute irony of you complaining about whining......while you create a post of you whining.

I am simply responding to others.

[Evangela]

English main users on Steam are like 23%, while Chinese users are a whopping 50%.

I wouldn't be surprised if in 5-10 years we'll see Japanese games come with Chinese dub before English. The English language is losing relevancy, just like how the western video game industry is shrinking.

[Unrealtairo]

Originally posted by Walrus Beard:

Originally posted by Craga:

The absolute irony of you complaining about whining......while you create a post of you whining.

I am simply responding to others.

And yet, you are literally whining about whining.

[「 Ｎｏｉｒｅ 」]

I'll just say this. Despite the performance issues and depth of field complaints present at launch and localization changes, I double dipped on Ryza 3's physical limited and digital ultimate editions. All for the simple fact that there's no English dub.

Every concern about the changing art direction and the evolution of the series becoming more mainstream are valid. I prefer the turn-based combat a lot more myself, especially with how they made it fast-paced in Sophie 2.

Despite all of that, the absence of English dub is a huge plus for me. When English dub is present, the subtitle is usually based on the English dub, and nowadays it's hard to trust a lot of American localizers. When there's no English dub, the game's English subtitles are based off on the original Japanese script, making it less difficult to butcher the translations.

From financial standpoint, this is probably better for Koei too. As long as they keep not having English dub, I'll gladly keep getting the ultimate editions. I enjoyed the Ryza trilogy, loved the characters, and the gameplay flow were very addicting. The series isn't perfect but it's doing something right.