Japanese Niche Games Deals & Discussion Thread 4.0

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shivan128

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Welcome to the Japanese niche games deals and discussion thread!  Feel free to talk about local and import Japanese games here.  Our goal is to maintain a thread dedicated to active deals on niche games including RPGs, Visual Novels (VN), Shoot'em ups (Shmups), Musou, etc.  Also maintained are pre-orders for standard, limited and collector's edition games with key release dates provided.

I've wikified the thread to make it more friendly and open to others that can actively update with important information. You can find the wiki post directly below this one.

NOTE:  Please, leave the censorship discussion away from this thread.  It's common for japanese games to have questionable content outside of the country.  We want to keep discussions to the game itself and not about cultural/societal tolerance.

A message from Thorbahn:

Our CAG Japanese Niche Games Thread also has a community on PS4, where you can interact and game with other members of the thread.

Our moderators are: Draekon, Las_Hole, and Waffleswanton

You can basically friend any of our members, or any moderator, and you will be able to request to join the community under "Communities friends are in" tab, and a mod will approve your request.

You can also leave your PSN ID in the thread, saying you want to join, and we can invite you directly as well.

As always, have fun and enjoy your stay!

 
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Covnam said:
Yeah, it is P5 after all. I wouldn't have expected it to come with dual audio, though maybe we'll get it as DLC or something, just not counting on it.
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It definitely won't come with Japanese audio. Atlus USA are so far up their own ass at this point, that I just can't stand them. Much smaller companies than them manage to have their games have dual audio and not cost a fortune. Why can't they?

 
I know other residents of this thread picked up the Atelier Sophie Limited Edition. Just to confirm, it's not supposed to make a noise that sounds exactly like it has a loose disc when handling it, right? I don't think anything amongst the contents would make that telling plastic thwack noise...

The Dead Texan said:
Importing and playing with Google Translate it is.
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Or you know, you could just learn Japanese. It'd be good for you, you'd enjoy your games more, and you wouldn't need to waste your time making posts that make you sound like a idiot.

 
Kstyle said:
its been over month,

they still have it in stock, so I made 2nd purchase..

I contacted amazon, but they dont know where my shipment is,

from warehouse to shipping center package got missing.. and they can't find it.

also refuse to get a new copy and send it to me..

they reimbursed me good amount,

but still .. waiting..
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That happens sometimes with them.. My friend and I both pre-ordered PS4's and they were lost for a week or two when promised release day delivery. He got like $300 in Amazon gift cards and a year of Prime, and I got mine for free.

At least they're nice when they derp.

 
elessar123 said:
tumblr_mkwo3a22wt1s34tygo1_500.gif
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My favorite version of Heavy Arms. Trowa was also my fav character in Gundam Wing

Covnam said:
You're welcome :)

Yeah, it is P5 after all. I wouldn't have expected it to come with dual audio, though maybe we'll get it as DLC or something, just not counting on it.
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Asia might get a Eng Sub Asia ver. If that happens, I'll import that and when the NA ver. comes out, I'll play it again.

 
The Dead Texan said:
It definitely won't come with Japanese audio. Atlus USA are so far up their own ass at this point, that I just can't stand them. Much smaller companies than them manage to have their games have dual audio and not cost a fortune. Why can't they?
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Some of the JPN voice actors for Persona 5 are pretty top tier and they have to negotiate with their agency for the rights to use their voices. And all of them have to agree.

 
ragnar14 said:
you wouldn't need to waste your time making posts that make you sound like a idiot.
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I'd say you should focus on mastering English first, champ.

Olengie said:
Some of the JPN voice actors for Persona 5 are pretty top tier and they have to negotiate with their agency for the rights to use their voices. And all of them have to agree.
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Seems strange that they can't afford to do it despite Aksys doing it for the Persona fighting games, and that's for every single character from P3 and P4 with new ones to boot. There's just zero excuse at this point. Especially with countless other games by much smaller companies being localized with dual audio.

Not to mention that the Japanese voice actors don't get paid by Atlus USA. They're negotiated to work on the original release, and any company that localizes it afterwards pays a flat fee for the rights to the international release. This is why so many niche companies offer dual audio with bigger name actors. Atlus USA just dance around the issue and never give a legitimate answer to these questions. They'll say it's some behind the scenes complications, when they just don't want to do it.

 


You have to understand that most of the time (pretty much 99% of the time at this point, really), when the original Japanese voice-acting is removed from a game during localization, it's done out of necessity, NOT by choice. NO publisher is going to remove the original voice track if there exists an option to keep it -- there'd be no reason to, after all! But I speak from personal experience when I tell you that there are many, many times where publishers aren't given any choice in the matter whatsoever. Technical limitations and storage space aren't the only factors, either -- there's also that dreaded specter known as LICENSING. Sadly, everyone who's ever spoken a line of dialogue or sung a phrase of music in a video game signed a contract of some sort... and some of those contracts, ESPECIALLY in Japan, can be pretty draconian when you get down to the fine print. It's not at all uncommon for a Japanese voice-actor to record his/her voice for a game under the stipulation that it ONLY be used within the country of Japan, making it ILLEGAL to use those lines anywhere else in the world.

I'm not able to comment as to whether or not this is the reason we've removed Japanese voice tracks from some of our past titles, but I can give a relatively well-known example from the world of anime: Kodocha. When that show was brought to the U.S. by The Right Stuf, there were major licensing problems associated with the first opening theme, "19 O'Clock News" by the band Tokio. Not only was that song originally used as the opening theme for episodes 1-51 of the show, but Tokio's lead singer Mamo made a cameo appearance in episode 1 as himself, exchanging a few lines of dialogue with the series' main character Sana. And when the show was brought over to North America, absolutely NONE of that could be used due to licensing issues. Not only did Right Stuf have to substitute the second opening theme (originally used in episodes 52-102 of the anime) in place of the first, but they had to bleep out all of Mamo's lines from the Japanese language track on the DVD, and I think they even had to bleep out Mamo's NAME when Sana spoke it!

Now, that's a pretty extreme example, but it just goes to show you that Japanese contract law can be a HUGE problem, oftentimes leaving publishers with only three choices: release the game with dubbed voices, release the game with NO voices (bearing in mind that most games featuring English voice-acting also have an option to TURN OFF the voice-acting, so there's no reason dubbed voices are any worse than no voices)... or don't release the game at all.

And while I do understand your passion for playing things in their original language, I would urge you not to avoid supporting games simply because their language tracks have been dubbed. Remember, when you pay for a game, you're compensating the publisher for all the work they did to translate it, edit it, test it, master it, produce it, etc. We do a tremendous amount of work to make sure these games are playable and enjoyable in our own language, and it's extremely disheartening to hear that anyone would choose NOT to support us, even if it's a game they really want to play, simply because we were forced to dub the voice track into English. Especially since, quite honestly, I think most publishers would prefer to leave EVERY game in its original Japanese -- dubbing a game's voices is a time-consuming and costly process, and electing not to dub something invariably makes it take less time to release AND cost less money. And what publisher WOULDN'T want that?!

So yeah... bottom line, if you're going to "vote with your wallet," as it were, please make sure you know what you're voting FOR. By not supporting games that publishers had no choice but to dub, you're not sending the message that you want fewer dubs... you're sending the message that you want fewer games of that type released in English, period. And I'm pretty sure that's NOT the message you're trying to send.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=50395479&postcount=1
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Olengie said:
You have to understand that most of the time (pretty much 99% of the time at this point, really), when the original Japanese voice-acting is removed from a game during localization, it's done out of necessity, NOT by choice. NO publisher is going to remove the original voice track if there exists an option to keep it -- there'd be no reason to, after all! But I speak from personal experience when I tell you that there are many, many times where publishers aren't given any choice in the matter whatsoever. Technical limitations and storage space aren't the only factors, either -- there's also that dreaded specter known as LICENSING. Sadly, everyone who's ever spoken a line of dialogue or sung a phrase of music in a video game signed a contract of some sort... and some of those contracts, ESPECIALLY in Japan, can be pretty draconian when you get down to the fine print. It's not at all uncommon for a Japanese voice-actor to record his/her voice for a game under the stipulation that it ONLY be used within the country of Japan, making it ILLEGAL to use those lines anywhere else in the world.

I'm not able to comment as to whether or not this is the reason we've removed Japanese voice tracks from some of our past titles, but I can give a relatively well-known example from the world of anime: Kodocha. When that show was brought to the U.S. by The Right Stuf, there were major licensing problems associated with the first opening theme, "19 O'Clock News" by the band Tokio. Not only was that song originally used as the opening theme for episodes 1-51 of the show, but Tokio's lead singer Mamo made a cameo appearance in episode 1 as himself, exchanging a few lines of dialogue with the series' main character Sana. And when the show was brought over to North America, absolutely NONE of that could be used due to licensing issues. Not only did Right Stuf have to substitute the second opening theme (originally used in episodes 52-102 of the anime) in place of the first, but they had to bleep out all of Mamo's lines from the Japanese language track on the DVD, and I think they even had to bleep out Mamo's NAME when Sana spoke it!

Now, that's a pretty extreme example, but it just goes to show you that Japanese contract law can be a HUGE problem, oftentimes leaving publishers with only three choices: release the game with dubbed voices, release the game with NO voices (bearing in mind that most games featuring English voice-acting also have an option to TURN OFF the voice-acting, so there's no reason dubbed voices are any worse than no voices)... or don't release the game at all.

And while I do understand your passion for playing things in their original language, I would urge you not to avoid supporting games simply because their language tracks have been dubbed. Remember, when you pay for a game, you're compensating the publisher for all the work they did to translate it, edit it, test it, master it, produce it, etc. We do a tremendous amount of work to make sure these games are playable and enjoyable in our own language, and it's extremely disheartening to hear that anyone would choose NOT to support us, even if it's a game they really want to play, simply because we were forced to dub the voice track into English. Especially since, quite honestly, I think most publishers would prefer to leave EVERY game in its original Japanese -- dubbing a game's voices is a time-consuming and costly process, and electing not to dub something invariably makes it take less time to release AND cost less money. And what publisher WOULDN'T want that?!

So yeah... bottom line, if you're going to "vote with your wallet," as it were, please make sure you know what you're voting FOR. By not supporting games that publishers had no choice but to dub, you're not sending the message that you want fewer dubs... you're sending the message that you want fewer games of that type released in English, period. And I'm pretty sure that's NOT the message you're trying to send.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=50395479&postcount=1
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Good post.

I feel like a similar thing applies to people who won't buy games that are digital only. I'm pretty sure not buying a game because it's digital only isn't sending the message you want to send. In fact, it likely sends the opposite message.

 
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The Dead Texan said:
I'd say you should focus on mastering English first, champ.

Seems strange that they can't afford to do it despite Aksys doing it for the Persona fighting games, and that's for every single character from P3 and P4 with new ones to boot. There's just zero excuse at this point. Especially with countless other games by much smaller companies being localized with dual audio.

Not to mention that the Japanese voice actors don't get paid by Atlus USA. They're negotiated to work on the original release, and any company that localizes it afterwards pays a flat fee for the rights to the international release. This is why so many niche companies offer dual audio with bigger name actors. Atlus USA just dance around the issue and never give a legitimate answer to these questions. They'll say it's some behind the scenes complications, when they just don't want to do it.
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Love how this post comes off as he knows more than the publishers an such do.

I would like to point out in the majority of games with dual audio the are super niche rpgs that barely have any voice work to begin with. Like atelier disgaea ect.

Larger voice work quantity wise the titles with dual audio are fewer and farther between. Tales of symphonia is one of the few that comes to mind. And that only came about years after the original release.

Fighting game wise its more than likely they were able to get a cheap contract as a result of the region locking and it possibly having less voice work than the main games do.

 
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It could be ATLUS USA being assholes. Or it could be completely what Tom from XSEED described. And Tom's answer seems to be more believable that ATLUS USA not wanting to do it.

whoknows said:
Good post.

I feel like a similar thing applies to people who won't buy games that are digital only. I'm pretty sure not buying a game because it's digital only isn't sending the message you want to send. In fact, it likely sends the opposite message.
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I am part of the problem for that.

 
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Olengie said:
It could be ATLUS USA being assholes. Or it could be completely what Tom from XSEED described. And Tom's answer seems to be more believable that ATLUS USA not wanting to do it.

I am part of the problem for that.
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well to be fair digital only games are over priced so what do they expect people to do? I'd be far more willing to buy digital games if they were released at the 20$ range an had demos for them. I'm not trusting of digital since if I don't like the game I'm screwed where at least with physical I can get a refund or resell to make up some of the cost. Besides that digital titles have other issues like hard drive/memory card space. Its the whole reason I imported cyber sluts

 
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shadowysea07 said:
well to be fair digital only games are over priced so what do they expect people to do? I'd be far more willing to buy digital games if they were released at the 20$ range an had demos for them. I'm not trusting of digital since if I don't like the game I'm screwed where at least with physical I can get a refund or resell to make up some of the cost. Besides that digital titles have other issues like hard drive/memory card space. Its the whole reason I imported cyber sluts
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Not really. The same amount of work went into making the game whether it gets a physical release or not. Besides, I bet a lot of people who would buy a game physical and not digital would never end up playing the game anyway. Regardless of there being a demo or not, there are a tons of ways you can figure out of the game is something you'd like or not, it's not like the PS2 era and before.

Look at a game like Project Diva f. Digital only on Vita, but it sold well enough to convince Sega to release f 2nd physically on Vita. Not buying a game because it's digital only simply tells the company there isn't enough interest in those kinds of games to release more in the future, just like not buying games because they're dub only tells the localization company to not bother in the future.

 
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"Not really. The same amount of work went into making the game whether it gets a physical release or not"

Yes but that does not justify charging what the average game costs at retail when normally the retail price is raised so they can take their absurdly large cut. Along with the other added costs to physical releases we aren't be reimbursed for such as manufacturing, printing, shipping, stocking ect.   Especially when unlike with retail there's not much you can do to get your money back.

 
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The Dead Texan said:
I'd say you should focus on mastering English first, champ.
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Why? My understanding is perfectly sufficient to play the games I intend to enjoy.

Or was that just some petty insult without even the competency a grammar Nazi would employ?

whoknows said:
I feel like a similar thing applies to people who won't buy games that are digital only. I'm pretty sure not buying a game because it's digital only isn't sending the message you want to send. In fact, it likely sends the opposite message.
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Hmm? I don't care what message I send (or don't send) by skipping digital games. I simply don't care for them, so I don't buy them. If a market (digital, dubs or whatever) collapses simply because it doesn't have my unwavering support, I don't care. Games should be bought for yourself and suit your own tastes, not to send messages.

 
shadowysea07 said:
Larger voice work quantity wise the titles with dual audio are fewer and farther between. Tales of symphonia is one of the few that comes to mind. And that only came about years after the original release.

Fighting game wise its more than likely they were able to get a cheap contract as a result of the region locking and it possibly having less voice work than the main games do.
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There's plenty of dialogue heavy games that come with both as an option, too. Virtue's Last Reward and both Danganronpa are good examples. Even the third game offered the Japanese track as a free download. These games are nothing but spoken dialogue.

I'd agree with you on the fighting games not having lots of dialogue, but both Persona fighting games have about 20-25 hours worth of story with plenty of spoken dialogue. It's not as heavy as any of their RPG counterparts, but it's stacked to the brim with all the voice actors from both games that obviously had to be paid.

I say speaking with your wallet is a good way to do it. I still play the games via import or what have you, but if you have legitimate issue with the way something's handled why should you just blindly support it? I didn't like that Atlus wasn't even keeping their dubs in order for Dancing All Night so I just bought the Japanese version. The last Atlus 3DS game I bought was SMT IV, and that was it for me because I don't know why they get to charge more for their games.

I love the XSEED post because they give you a semblance of transparency in what goes on with smaller companies like them. It's just a little harder to believe that the same goes on for Atlus USA when their parent company is the one calling the shots. I'll never assume to know more about game licensing than actual people working in the industry, but even they admit that it's easy for people to misconstrue a situation when the obvious solution isn't the one that happens when a game is localized.

I've mentioned this a couple of times, but I had a music industry job a little under a decade ago, and came very close to releasing the Persona 4 soundtrack in America via my friend's record label. If you think game contracts are a headache, you should see the mind numbing minutia of international music licensing.

 
The Dead Texan said:
I've mentioned this a couple of times, but I had a music industry job a little under a decade ago, and came very close to releasing the Persona 4 soundtrack in America via my friend's record label. If you think game contracts are a headache, you should see the mind numbing minutia of international music licensing.
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ikr. That's why we didn't get a localized version of IA/VT.

 
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The Dead Texan said:
I'd agree with you on the fighting games not having lots of dialogue, but both Persona fighting games have about 20-25 hours worth of story with plenty of spoken dialogue. It's not as heavy as any of their RPG counterparts, but it's stacked to the brim with all the voice actors from both games that obviously had to be paid.
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P4A had full dual audio and was region locked due to that and the release date. Not that that personally affected me, but just thought I'd note it.

P4AU only had dual audio for the fights, the story mode and everything else is all English only. I believe region locking would have been one requirement for that (though I'm sure there's more to it than that), and it was a point of contention for the original release.

At least that's what I found when I was looking it up earlier when dual audio was first brought up.

 
Don't give me that shit about how it's hard to have dual audio in 2017.  You looked at cost/benefit and you made a business decision.  Own it.

 
They have owned English only audio. They say it's English only audio. They've had English only audio since 1996. Aside from a fighting game (the first was region locked) the games have never had Japanese audio. The US releases of Persona 4 the Animation only had JP audio on the region coded DVDs and not on the Region Free Blu-Ray disks because of rights issues. Persona 4 Golden the Animation and Persona 3 the Movie aren't even being offered by a localization company and have to be bought from Japan directly at Japanese anime prices.

The people who own the JP audio rights know they have a hot commodity and are charging a rate that western localization companies won't pay. 

For that matter, they also won't pay Screen Actor's Guild union rates and let talent go from their English dubs in order to pay the least amount possible.

 
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Tom from XSEED's quote seems oversimplified, at best. 

While I'm certain that licensing can prove an obstacle to providing language tracks, I don't know of anything that would prevent new licensing rights from being negotiated (barring the owner of the rights refusing to negotiate under any circumstances).  A company saying that licensing precludes them from doing something is really saying that they don't think the feature being precluded is going to generate enough revenue to justify the effort.

As to voting with your wallet sending the wrong message, this again seems oversimplified.  If translated Japanese games with dual  audio tracks consistently sold remarkably better than games with only an English dub or no dub at all, companies would get the signal pretty quick.  Of course the downside of this is that games where the Japanese language track couldn't for some reason be brought over might simply not be translated.

 
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It's hard for small companies like XSeed to deal with rights issues.  It's not hard to secure the rights up front when you own the entire pipeline, from hiring the voice actors all the way to localizing and publishing overseas yourself.  They made a choice.

 
Olengie said:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=50395479&postcount=1
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This is actually a pretty informative post to someone who is completely uneducated on licensing issues. It does not, however, change my attitude towards (terrible) dub only Japanese games.

Yes there may be difficulties in licensing, but nothing is impossible given enough effort, and more importantly, why not just include this precaution when hiring the VAs from the beginning? Negotiate with developers etc. It's not like Japan has a lack of tremendously talented VAs. The only reason I can think of is that they consider the west as a secondary market compared to the Japanese market, which I have no doubt is a sound business decision. As a result, I do choose to vote with my wallet until they correctly acknowledge the western audience, so Tom from XSEED: yes I do know what I am voting for. I do import and play with my extremely limited Japanese if I have to though.

Someone mentioned Danganronpa, and that is a perfect example of a well handled franchise that preserves the original language. Can't imagine hearing Monokuma in English when the voice is so iconic (especially growing up with Doraemon, hope he can live out the rest of life in peace). Again, I do not know licensing, but I do know that if some publishers can do it, so can every publisher.

 
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shadowysea07 said:
well to be fair digital only games are over priced so what do they expect people to do? I'd be far more willing to buy digital games if they were released at the 20$ range an had demos for them.
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Exactly. I don't get why people don't understand this. Physical editions drop in place and have resale value. I rarely spend full price for any game and I'd never spend full price for a digital edition. If digital were cheaper than physical then hell yeah, I'd buy in an instant.

 
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TooPoor said:
This is actually a pretty informative post to someone who is completely uneducated on licensing issues. It does not, however, change my attitude towards (terrible) dub only Japanese games.

Yes there may be difficulties in licensing, but nothing is impossible given enough effort, and more importantly, why not just include this precaution when hiring the VAs from the beginning? Negotiate with developers etc. It's not like Japan has a lack of tremendously talented VAs. The only reason I can think of is that they consider the west as a secondary market compared to the Japanese market, which I have no doubt is a sound business decision. As a result, I do choose to vote with my wallet until they correctly acknowledge the western audience, so Tom from XSEED: yes I do know what I am voting for. I do import and play with my extremely limited Japanese if I have to though.

Someone mentioned Danganronpa, and that is a perfect example of a well handled franchise that preserves the original language. Can't imagine hearing Monokuma in English when the voice is so iconic (especially growing up with Doraemon, hope he can live out the rest of life in peace). Again, I do not know licensing, but I do know that if some publishers can do it, so can every publisher.
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as far as japanese market being held to number one, its just easier to try and sell for them their , as clearly sales and money wise those japanese first westerners are third mentalty is the real reason they refuse to bring over or do anything since we are looked at like trash even though majority of their money made comes from sales in the west so they just think us dumb westerners will buy what ever trash they send over, case in point of caring is them giving us the bottom barrel of gundams games, not bothering with phantasy star since they and sony or nintendo will have to beef up their servers to acceptable standards or how nintendo region locks or their business practices with how they do things

SolidSnake86 said:
Exactly. I don't get why people don't understand this. Physical editions drop in place and have resale value. I rarely spend full price for any game and I'd never spend full price for a digital edition. If digital were cheaper than physical then hell yeah, I'd buy in an instant.
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i always get physical for that very reason since most of the time the game is too short or poorly done then at least i can get some money back from it, the fact they keep digital prices up so high especially when its a bad or very old game is ridiculous, only gone digital when it was on sale and less than 10 or free just to get something from resaling the physical

 
whoknows said:
Good post.

I feel like a similar thing applies to people who won't buy games that are digital only. I'm pretty sure not buying a game because it's digital only isn't sending the message you want to send. In fact, it likely sends the opposite message.
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That's a good point. When I put off buying something that's digital only it's typically just a matter of my consumer preference and less that I'm trying to send a message. I'd just rather buy most things that are physical first and eventually come back to the digital copy as a lower priority.

Biggest exception was the first Miku game on Vita. I absolutely bought that, and magically sales were good enough that we get physical versions now. Hooray!

 
Hoping one day to actually have a Fairy Tail musou game similar to One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 but odds of that happening seem to be next to 0.

 
 
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I could've sworn this was old news.

And even if it wasn't, not sure why anyone would be surprised. :D....:*(

 
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