Surprised no ENglish voice overs

[Sangra69]

I am so tempted buy, but man I love Asuna's English voice actress.

[AzurillFan]

ayy a fellow dubbed fan finally. i thought i was the only one who preferred the english voices

[billyhatcher643]

Originally posted by Jason:

ayy a fellow dubbed fan finally. i thought i was the only one who preferred the english voices

i prefer english voice acting too so i guess im not getting this game since it doesnt have english voice actors and i prefer watching anime only in english too i cant stand reading the annoying colored subtitle text it drives me nuts i also cant stand japanese voice actors

[AzurillFan]

Originally posted by NiGHTSfan:

Originally posted by Jason:

ayy a fellow dubbed fan finally. i thought i was the only one who preferred the english voices

i prefer english voice acting too so i guess im not getting this game since it doesnt have english voice actors and i prefer watching anime only in english too i cant stand reading the annoying colored subtitle text it drives me nuts i also cant stand japanese voice actors

ye, same

[Jinxxed]

You have to understand the history behind these Sword Art Online game. They don't have english dubs because they were never meant to be released to the west at all (USA and Europe). When the first (second) SAO game came out on the PS Vita it was only a Japanese and Eastern (Chinese and some other places) release. People in the west petitioned for there to be a western release of the game. They went hard for months trying to get Namco to release it. They didn't have a budget at all for a translation team. The game was already done and they were already working on other projects.

But someone over there listened which extremely rare for Japanese companies. Japanese and Korean companies are terrible at communicating with people outside their own markets. So this was huge a few years ago. They released to the west with a budget of zero dollars. The translation was horrible, but they saw that there was a demand for jRPGs in the west that was just as strong as the PS1 days. Translating a full jRPG takes a lot of time and a lot of money and only the giant studios have the luxury for them. They also have to consider how many people actually purchased the previous games. Square for example, knows millions of people will buy their games so they have the budget for full english voice acting and other languages.

Sword Art Online is no where near as popular and even has a ton of people who out right hate the anime, let alone the games. Most hardcore fans of the show aren'teven aware the games have existed for about 5 years now. This game right here is the 4th or 5th official Sword Art Online game and the fact that you're surprised this one doesn't have english voices means that you weren't aware of those games yourself until now because none of those have english voices.

Look at a majority of the JRPGs on steam. They don't have english voice overs because they aren't absolutely required like they used to be in the PS2 and PS3 era (I use Playstation since that's the platform where jRPGs mostly were). It's no longer a standard,thus making it possible for these games to release in the west at all. If they required voice acting in other languages it would be too expensive to release to the west at all. Think about the amount of voice actors they would have to hire and how many they would have to pay. These games do not sell in the high millions. English voice overs aren't going to increase their sales enough to make up for the millions it would cost them to high the voice actors from the anime along with all the extra voice actors for game exclusive characters and background characters. They would either have to do what they're doing now, or hire completely different people who they could pay less and hope that they sound the same.

So with that said, they're never going to have english voice overs in these games unless people start buying them. So by not buying this game just because you can't bebothered to read, you're just helping to doom the future games to never being translated. Assuming, you're a fan of Sword Art Online, you might want to reconsider. Of course, there's no garuntee others would do the same because no one likes reading. I'm 100% sure not a single person will read by entire post, let alone an entire jRPG.

[Ren'puisin]

Originally posted by Jinxxed:

Japanese and Korean companies are terrible at communicating with people outside their own markets.

This, I can agree.

I did watch the other games' LPs :3 (thank you, PS players) And read nearly everything in them (with some exceptions being the side/optional/fanservice stories). Good stories, but well, this post made the localization quality made sense. And nice post, Jinxxed. Never knew it was like that. Really appreciate this.

And if you must know, this game has the better translation/localization. Really.

P.S.
If you know the in-character-ness of most SAO characters (or understand some Japanese), you will probably cringe during those LPs.

[Rayan]

I mean, it clearly says on the store that there's only English voice covers, shouldn't be surprised over that smh

[kensan900]

it's published by bandai they really only care about their japanese market so they're not really gonna put any effort for any other region

[Tiasmoon]

Originally posted by Jinxxed:

I'm 100% sure not a single person will read by entire post, let alone an entire jRPG. :blissful_creep:

I've read all of it. I should note that few jRPGs have visual novel levels of text. Especially when comparing to the longer VNs, so reading an entire jRPG isn't much work. :P

Originally posted by kensan900:

it's published by bandai they really only care about their japanese market so they're not really gonna put any effort for any other region

You mistakenly assume that caring means dubbing. Especially when it comes to anime styled games or niche games, people tend to care more about original voice then a dub.
Dub becomes more of a thing when something goes mainstream.

So for the most part there's little reason to give dubs to a game like this one, as its intended audience is the fanbase, rather then a mainstream audience.