[Guest]

It helps to just get them right, but eventually they ask pretty Japanese-centric things that the average person here simply wouldn't know. I guess that's what the Internet is for.

But like Jack_frostFTW said, there's tons of ways to make up for it. You'll see in the status menus that there is a chart displaying how high your Academics, Charm and Courage are... once they get to the max level, they don't go back down. So it's not quite as bad as it seems. Through normal playing I had them all maxed out just before Summer break.

I would honestly say you're better off buying the full Japanese soundtrack for both games. I think it's around $30 or so. The one the US version comes with is just a sampling anyway.
 

Just to avoid flooding, I will use this topic. I'm also searching for Megaten games. Well one to be precise. It's Revelations: THe Demon Slayer. But I want a complete copy with box, manual and cart. But I've been looking for one year on eBay, and all they have is cart-only deal. It's the last domestic release of a Megaten game that I need (except for Jack Bros., but I don't know if I will buy the US release for this one yet), and I really need to know where I can buy one (complete of course like I've said, else, I would have it since a long time)

I think eBay is your best bet, unfortunately. Just keep trying and check out the eBay stores as well. I've seen them on there complete, but very rarely.

Despite announcing SMT for PS3, I'd not be surprised if they went with the Wii for a majority of their titles. They're not a massive company, it would save them money and the Wii (for better or worse) is just way too popular there to ignore.

Well, personally, none of my point had to do with intelligence or anything else . I watch foreign films on a regular basis, it's not really a difficult thing.
 
Yet, you have to admit that the average person has far more of an emotional connection with their own language for a variety of reasons. I don't know Japanese, so what I get out of that specially in a video game (as opposed to a film with full facial reactions and body language) in that language is simply not as strong as what I will get out of it in English. Even here, direct comparison of a 2 hour movie to a 80 hour game is pretty difficult... particularly combined with a novel's worth of text. It just forms more of a "comfort zone".
 
For me, most of this comes down to company choices and simply that if the choice has to be made the average company is going to realize that the average person is most comfortable with their own language. This is true of any country. Japanese games have English or French characters speaking Japanese, they translate English games into their own languages. Certainly there are exceptions on both sides. In Japan's examples should one say "God Bless Japan!"?
 
As small as Atlus is, every one knows they want to sell as many copies as possible. It seems clear that 1.) Sony expects English language in their games and 2.) something prevented Atlus from putting both in here. They've done both before, Disgaea is an example of that.
 
Assuming they cannot do both, a US company publishing a game in the US is simply going to go with an English only dub as opposed to a Japanese only dub. I certainly would prefer to have the choice, but a company is never going to go with Japanese only in any country other than Japan if they want to try to appeal to the mass market. And considering they did an exceptional job with it, the implication by the creator of this patch that anything else simply "sucks" by default is, in my opinion, at least as short sighted and oblivious as someone wanting only extreme English localizations (I've read reviews wishing even the names were Americanized, which I'm not supportive of).
 
Doesn't mean I just want English or I just want Japanese. It doesn't mean I expect companies to appeal to my non-existent "ENGLISH RULES FUCKING FOREIGNERS!" mindset either and do nothing else. It just means from a business perspective I certainly understand the reasonings for going with the former here if they're not going to (or able to do) do both of them. Both is definitely the best way to go, I would say.
 
Beyond that though, people can prefer what they want to and I do think this was a cool thing to do. I just don't think the "dubs always suck!" mindset is necessarily smart, but neither is the "subs always suck!" mindset either lol.

Well, Mysterious Boy and Fuuka are up for large debate.

Well, whether or not you simply just like the voice of Mysterious Boy is not what I was getting at. I think it fits him, but people get a weird vibe from it (which is purposeful, I'm sure). The point was more that it basically sounds extremely similar to the Japanese voice actor, which I imagine is what would be the best to strive for if you want to remain more "true" to the Japanese version.

Fuuka I wasn't too fond of at first, but she kind of warms up to the role as the game wears on I think.

>Also, if you want your Persona's to level up faster, spend all the weeks working on S. Links, so you can get extra experience at levelling up like Tony mentioned and then spend the day before going to event boss at Tartarus since you get unlimited time, meaning that your team mates never get tired.

I want to quote this because it was not made very clear by the game. I don't have a manual, maybe it's discussed more.

I'm sure fan reviews will pick up... largely because I would hope anyone who picked this up on the 14th would realize that they couldn't have gotten far enough to have a full picture of the game to do a review for lol. We'll see.

I think that'll change exponentially as time goes on.

I have actually seen more posts about this game on random forums than any other recent SMT-related title.

Yeah, I'd not get worried either. It's up in the top segment of game voice acting easily to begin with... and from what I've personally heard the voices are pretty good matches to their Japanese originals. Even the weird Mysterious Boy.

I'd pretty much stress that the dubbing is not bad myself. I think we're also talking about someone who would find any dub to be unacceptable, though lol.

I always am amused by how those that desire these things feel that the want for a subbed version somehow surpasses the desire for a dubbed one. Where were they during the dubbed vs. subbed VHS anime situation before all of that stuff exploded? Even when that was niche, subs weren't exactly a majority preference.

Do they really think a company such as Atlus is going to do a secondary "special" print run so that a couple hundred people (if that) can have a Japanese language version? There's a very large discrepancy between those who will just download something and those who will pay $50+ for something. To some of these people offering only the Japanese track is the way to go, but we're not in Japan (regardless of the game's locale) and it seems as though Sony has some rules about that stuff.

That said it's a pretty cool offering. Personally, however, given that I don't understand Japanese it's pretty hard for me to sit and listen to this and really be like "well they're definitely better voice actors!". If you understand it, why not just buy the Japanese version and read it "the way it was meant to be!" read too? Although that's obviously far less feasible.

Hopefully this will just become a non-existent issue as we move to larger storage mediums. If this still happened on PS3 with Blu-ray or some other system in the future, I think there will be a lot more room for complaint.

I guess it's time to fuse and get a new batch of Persona. I think I need to concentrate on getting my S. Links up or something

Bingo. If you're sticking with Orpheus and Pixie you're wasting your time. Leveling up Persona, particularly early on considering you get very little experience (this will change, particularly as experience cards during Shuffle Time will be larger), is a pain in the ass and it's not a worthwhile endeavor.

You need to build up your Social Links and then try to fuse Personae within that Arcana. It's the quickest way to level any of them. Level these up, fuse some Personae (who will probably go up a few levels and learn at least a few moves) and use those until you're powerful enough to summon (or find) other ones.

Essentially, you're going to be dropping ones all of the time for better ones that come along. The game lists all the moves they're going to learn on the right (either by name or with a ?), once that's gone they're not going to learn anything new unless an old skill changes to something else (which is entirely random).

I'd like to fuse a demon that's got all the basic elementals: Agi, Bufu, Zio, Garu, with a couple buffs and debuffs. That way I won't have to have so many Persona for every little thing and I can save space for experimentation and fill up my Compendium.

That's not really possible, at least not early on. You can transfer over skills (and if you're not happy with what's being transfered, try redoing the fusion -- the skills might change), but to get an all around demon like that would require absolutely perfect skill transference, which basically is impossible because some will always be dropped. My best luck with this was a Power Persona, which had Hama, Garu, Zio and Agi.

A lot of the best Buffs aren't even really carried by some of the Persona early on naturally... but they can be brought over through fusion. Orpheus is mostly useful early on for Tarunda, for example.

That's kind of a lot of the point of letting you carry several Personae around with you. You have to switch them and you have to have them complement each other. You won't need a Persona that knows fire and ice if you have one that's extremely suited for ice and one that's extremely suited for fire.

Remember that your character can switch Persona during battle without ending his turn. So you can, for example, knock down a few enemies with Jack Lantern's Agi and then switch to King Frost to Bufu the rest and then do an all out attack.

There's an older zip of all of the artwork ripped from the game floating about. If anyone wants to post it, feel free. I can do it later, if necessary.

Unfortunately, you can't really assume anyone has done these things you have... new people find the series all the time.

So just put spoiler tags around the things that might not be common knowledge to every one. It's just [spoiler ] and [/spoiler] without the spaces.

16 hours in already, so awesome. I just can't resist Chihiro even though I want Mitsuru.

[SPOILER]Seriously, Mitsuru is so far off by comparison (you really have to work to get to that point) that you could probably finish all of Chihiro's segments before it's even an option lol.[/SPOILER]

Personally, I'm mostly a fan of Yuko.

There's a drink in the game called Cielo Mist. And it's imported straight from Jamaica XD.

Yeah, I liked that one.

Early game spoiler:
[SPOILER]
There's also that scene early on where Yukari tells you to not tell anyone what happened last night in front of Junpei. There's this sudden manga frame shot of his face and his reaction is pretty good. I really like Junpei, he gets pretty nicely developed as the time goes on... It's not super complex or anything, but I think it's very, well, normal. That's pretty rare in these games.[/SPOILER]

About 25+ hours or so in?:

[SPOILER]Some of the beach scenes are funny as well, but I doubt most anyone that isn't a robot got there yet lol. Aigis has her moments too.[/SPOILER]

Weapons are bought essentially with the Protagonist's skills in mind. You'll have to kind of remember what you gave to your teammates, from what I've figured out with it. The Protagonist can equip essentially any weapon in the game, but you have to actually give these weapons to your teammates in Tartarus.

You'll eventually have so much money that it won't be a concern. Fortunes help, but so do cases in Tartarus, money cards after fights, selling weapons you get from cards, selling items after defeating guardians and doing quests. It's pretty typical even like 20 hours in to have a good 200,000 plus Yen. The thing to keep in mind is that buying Personas you've registered can add up very, very quickly.

Social links open up significantly as time goes on. You can't really form any with your actual SEES friends until several months have passed, some are only available on certain days or if you've reached certain levels with other Social Links.

Through normal playing I'd guess you'd probably find out about all of them... there might be one or two that could be missed depending on your choices.