Do people care about RGG Kenzan and Isshin?

[Stormcaller]

I've heard that one of the reasons that Kenzan and Isshin haven't been localized to the West is a lack of interest. I personally think that a Samurai RGG game would be kickass to play but I dunno how everyone else feels about it.

[pharmacist12]

I already beat them both on ps3, but that's not the point. The reason why they weren't released was because it had culture specifics that the American/European base won't understand so they decided against it.

[roc_lobsta]

I've heard about this "culture specifics" thing, but I wonder what do people mean exactly?

[pharmacist12]

Originally posted by roc_lobsta:

I've heard about this "culture specifics" thing, but I wonder what do people mean exactly?

Um, I don't wanna spoil it, but stuff like child prostitution for example.

[Bstel]

Originally posted by pharmacist12:

Originally posted by roc_lobsta:

I've heard about this "culture specifics" thing, but I wonder what do people mean exactly?

Um, I don't wanna spoil it, but stuff like child prostitution for example.

Yeah, this. There's also the problem with the branding... "Yakuza" isn't really an appropriate title for a Western release for Kenzan and Ishin. Ryuu Ga Gotoku is broad enough to be used for many things, but "Yakuza" is very specific, and it'd be weird to have that title on two games that have practically zero Yakuza elements. Heck, even Judge Eyes/Judgement is not titled "Yakuza" despite being a spin off of the Yakuza series.

[♱ TURBO ♱]

I care.

[Robert F.]

Dammit, I really want to play it and beat the living ♥♥♥♥ outta Jo Amon in Bakumatsu period.

[pharmacist12]

Originally posted by Bisul Bernanah:

Originally posted by pharmacist12:

Um, I don't wanna spoil it, but stuff like child prostitution for example.

Yeah, this. There's also the problem with the branding... "Yakuza" isn't really an appropriate title for a Western release for Kenzan and Ishin. Ryuu Ga Gotoku is broad enough to be used for many things, but "Yakuza" is very specific, and it'd be weird to have that title on two games that have practically zero Yakuza elements. Heck, even Judge Eyes/Judgement is not titled "Yakuza" despite being a spin off of the Yakuza series.

If I remember correctly, yakuza we're in edo period and they're were more of a samurais, that term yakuza comes from a deck of cards from hanafuda gambling.

[Bstel]

Originally posted by pharmacist12:

Originally posted by Bisul Bernanah:

Yeah, this. There's also the problem with the branding... "Yakuza" isn't really an appropriate title for a Western release for Kenzan and Ishin. Ryuu Ga Gotoku is broad enough to be used for many things, but "Yakuza" is very specific, and it'd be weird to have that title on two games that have practically zero Yakuza elements. Heck, even Judge Eyes/Judgement is not titled "Yakuza" despite being a spin off of the Yakuza series.

If I remember correctly, yakuza we're in edo period and they're were more of a samurais, that term yakuza comes from a deck of cards from hanafuda gambling.

IIRC, Yakuzas were originally formed by a bunch of ronin (masterless Samurais) who formed a gang within a community. Correct if I'm wrong.

[dancingstar93]

Originally posted by pharmacist12:

Originally posted by Bisul Bernanah:

Yeah, this. There's also the problem with the branding... "Yakuza" isn't really an appropriate title for a Western release for Kenzan and Ishin. Ryuu Ga Gotoku is broad enough to be used for many things, but "Yakuza" is very specific, and it'd be weird to have that title on two games that have practically zero Yakuza elements. Heck, even Judge Eyes/Judgement is not titled "Yakuza" despite being a spin off of the Yakuza series.

If I remember correctly, yakuza we're in edo period and they're were more of a samurais, that term yakuza comes from a deck of cards from hanafuda gambling.

Version I read (albeit on Wikipedia so not necessarily correct) is yakuza emerged from Edo-era Bakuto gangs running dodgy gambling operations, & yeah the popular etymology of "Yakuza" is as a phonetic reading of the kanij for 8-9-3, a losing hand in a gambling game, which came to mean "loser" or "worthless" -- you'll notice the yakuza in RgG games don't refer to themselves as such, preferring 極道, gokudô.

[EDIT: even if the above is true it doesn't preclude what you suggest since groups like that are just the kind of places Edo-era ronin in need of work / food would end up getting hired, as security / enforcers.]

I've not played past the opening of Ishin, but given the setting it's likely that proto-Yakuza organsations show up running gambling dens & the like but they're probably not essential to the plot.

Kenzan not being localised at the time was as much a case of the series bombing in Western markets with the commercial failure of Yakuza 2 -- 3's localisation was initially cancelled & when fan lobbying persuaded Sega it was worth releasing they still weren't prepared to assign enough time & resources to localise the whole thing resulting in a lamentable amount of content cuts. Right now, leaving aside arguments as to whether anything in Kenzan would fall foul of Western ratings boards or Sony's content policies, it's an early PS3 game, would likely be a pain to port, would take a lot of work to localise in a way that didn't either make nonsense of the story / setting or make it utterly incomprehensible to most non-Japanese players, so I don't see it ever being deemed a viable commercial prospect: your best bet at the moment is to import a used copy & play on PS3 or under emulation on PC & use the English-language guide by khhsubs.

Ishin launched during the time when the series was practically dead in the West following the failure of Dead Souls, and, per comments by the localisation team in an AMA on r/PS4 last year, when it started taking off again, Ishin got squeezed out of the schedule (both in terms of marketing / release and actually having people free to work on it) while they were trying to get the main series games out and reduce the turnaround time from Japanese launch to Western launch. Add to that, it's set in a period of history that probably doesn't have the level of appeal / interest among Western fans of Japanese games that Sengoku / early Edo period stuff does (Nioh & Sekiro, in addition to heavy fantastical elements, are set ~250 years before Ishin; Ghost of Tsushima, nearly 600 years earlier).

(In the meantime there is Way of the Samurai 4 which while different in important respects from RgG games -- emphasising player choice, varying story routes with a shorter single playthrough against developed story & character -- has a very similar setting to Ishin & with the DLC you can also play as Sakamoto Ryôma and join the Shinsengumi.)

EDITED TO ADD: Re Judge Eyes / Judgement -- unlike the other RgG spin-offs, that doesn't have any trace of the 龍が如く title or logo in its title logo in the Japanese original. The Fist of the North Star game whose Japanese title & title logo is a mashup of / phonetic play on the titles of the two franchises down to the styling of the kanji was also renamed for NA / EU release; I think "what to call it" is the least of the problems facing a Western release of Kenzan / Ishin, just scale the cover art down slightly, put "from the creators of Yakuza" (using the Western title logo style) at the bottom.

EDITED AGAIN TO ADD: OK another search turned this up, someone from SegaBits collared Scott Strichart at E3 earlier this year & asked about the samurai spin-offs & he pretty much repeated the previous year's comments:

I would love the chance to work on those, and I know I get a lot of flak for not having done that yet, but the reality is that we're so focussed on getting the games that are coming out now to you in a more reasonable timeframe than say, Yakuza 5 where we made you wait three years, Yakuza 0 we made you wait two years, Yakuza 6 was one year, and Kiwami 2 is now down to about six, seven months. So we're making strides and if we were to set ourselves up to have to do something from the back catalogue that isn't in the new release map, we would be pushing new games back and I really think that's not what the fans kinda want. So we're looking for a window. As soon as we find a window we can re-examine that project.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5inbRvTcBRY (around 9:40)

[Gyoza]

I'd love to play both of them.

[dancingstar93]

Originally posted by jqtaxpayer:

Originally posted by Gyoza:

I'd love to play both of them.

Same. Imported Kenzan on PS3, but not knowing Japanese takes a lot of the fun out of it. Unfortunately, I see no way that this will ever happen.

I'm in a broadly similar situation, having to spend 5 minutes with a kanji dictionary for every other line of dialogue does make following the story kinda tricky. At least with RgG 1 & 2 HD, I've played the Kiwami games so have a reasonable idea what's going on.

The last I heard was, work on the Kenzan translation patch was resumed after stalling for a while owing to the team making it not actually including any dedicated translators & the game is fully runnable on PC using the current build of RPCS3 (& obviously you'd need to be running under emulation or using a hacked / modded PS3 to actually apply the patch).

[JC Vandamme [FR]]

I have played way of the samurai 4 on PS3 and this game deals with nationalism, racism, homosexuality, love story with an underage girl and sado-masochism to make it short. some heavy topics but nobody complained about it in western countries. the so-called excuses from sega for kenzan are irrelevent.

the steam market is now crowded with japanese hentai-ecchi-fanservice-lolita games. and even in that case, nobody complains. kenzan must be translated by sega because we are ready to play heavy topic games.

[dancingstar93]

Originally posted by JC Vandamme FR:

I have played way of the samurai 4 on PS3 and this game deals with nationalism, racism, homosexuality, love story with an underage girl and sado-masochism to make it short. some heavy topics but nobody complained about it in western countries. the so-called excuses from sega for kenzan are irrelevent.

Source for Sega (as opposed to randoms on reddit) ever citing concerns about content or themes / fear of ratings boards / worry about being crusaded against by irrelevant radfem bloggers who would in any case object to the entire Yakuza / RgG franchise, as opposed to straightforward business & marketing concerns (or vague PR language like "it was going to be complicated and the expectations were not high at the time"* that basically translates as such), as a reason for not localising Kenzan?

the steam market is now crowded with japanese hentai-ecchi-fanservice-lolita games. and even in that case, nobody complains. kenzan must be translated by sega because we are ready to play heavy topic games.

Steam releases can ignore ratings boards & Sony content policies. What they can't ignore is the commercial realities of porting and localising a game. They may have managed 6-figure sales here [EDIT: that's if you take the SteamSpy estimates seriously] on a $20 port of a cross-gen game that had been a major commercial success on PS4 in Western markets and had already been localised -- RgG Kenzan is a less well-known title, would need to be localised from scratch in a way that preserves the story & characterisation while making them intelligible to people not up on the finer points of life in early Edo period Japan, ported from PS3 which due to its eccentric system architecture is generally reckoned harder to work with than current gen & good luck asking anything over $20 for a port of a decade-old game round here.

[Director Bison]

I care allot, I wish every single Yakuza game can come to steam, inculding the HD versions of the original 1 & 2 as well as Dead souls. I'm just hoping that since they've already been remastering 3 4 and 5, that they will do Kenzan and Dead Souls since those are on the same engine anyway.

English versions of those PSP games about Nishiki would be cool too, but I get that those ones are the least likely of any of the games to get translated by this point

It would be great if the whole series could be on Steam, I know I'm going to buy every single game day one when they come.

[Hirate Yurina]

Originally posted by Director Bison:

I care allot, I wish every single Yakuza game can come to steam, inculding the HD versions of the original 1 & 2 as well as Dead souls. I'm just hoping that since they've already been remastering 3 4 and 5, that they will do Kenzan and Dead Souls since those are on the same engine anyway.

English versions of those PSP games about Nishiki would be cool too, but I get that those ones are the least likely of any of the games to get translated by this point

It would be great if the whole series could be on Steam, I know I'm going to buy every single game day one when they come.

1&2 HD aren't even translated, they're never coming to the west much less PC. I wouldn't count on the HD remasters of 3/4/5 either. If we get Kiwami i'll be happy. If that doesn't sell a lot more than 0 did, I don't see anything else ever coming out on PC. I bought a PS4 a few days ago because I can't be bothered waiting anymore. I'll give it until February for Kiwami to come out on PC, otherwise i'll just buy it on PS4 (got plenty of other games on it in the meantime).