Ar tonelico impressions

Originally posted 2007-02-07.

• I had hope for the voices. I really did. I believe in my heart that it’s possible for people speaking English in a video game can sound cool and captivating. But once again, I found myself rushing to switch the audio to Japanese, to avoid embarrassment in front of my coworkers.

  • Within 10 minutes of starting the game, centuries-old solemn protector Shurelia said the line “cut the chatter”. We’ll see if that was a fluke or if this is going to be another game where every character sounds like some flippant young dude. It’s hard to tell yet because most of the dialogue so far has been between Lyner and Jack, two flippant young dudes.

  • So far the localization has been solid, so maybe that line was not indicative of how Shurelia is going to speak for the rest of the game. Most lines are translated just about the same way I would have done them myself, with about 75% emphasis on saying exactly what the original line said, and 25% on making it flow naturally.

  • NISA gets some credit for sneaking zombo.com references into the story. I thought the “unattainable is unknown” line might have been a coincidence, until “the only limit is yourself” was said about the same topic.

Of course, I’m thrilled to be playing through the game again. NISA gets mountains of thanks from me for bringing this to the USA.