Want To Play Atelier Sophie 2 With An English Dub? Let Koei Tecmo Know

JP voices are the way to me.

I don't, but I never mind the dub, as long as it doesn't come at the expense of axing the original voicework.

No matter if you prefer dubs or subs, surely we can agree:
giving people the option to choose is the way to go.

Yeah maybe I’m a weeb deep down, but original language is fine/better.

Yeah I definitely prefer to understand what the characters are saying without having to read the subtitles

Whether you like dubs or subs doesn't matter. The option should be there if possible, more options is never a bad thing.

What people don't realize that if you ever watched Japanese anime and en text. You get more vocal/emotion through Japanese voice and have better understanding of Japanese language and you get a education in Japanese language that you can use in real life abeit only from Anime. But you definitely get Japanese language grammer education in return and understand the finer points of Japanese language. Reading en TxT is not the end all - that's a cheapskate talking point. My games and anime when choice is given is Japanese Voice/En text. This allow me to follow and understand body language/voice what it means and identify words and spoken text.

I won't purchase games or watch movies without an English dub. Like Miyazaki himself, I find Japanese voice work abhorrent.

At the risk of dating myself, the last time I had an interest in the Atelier series was Iris.

And sadly I was never able to get a copy of the game for one reason or another. It's rather shocking how many entries the series gets.

@Thoughts As someone who can understand a decent amount of Japanese it can be distracting to notice the clear gap and changed nuances.
That's the problem for me not knowing Japanese language in it's entirety. But, I've heard En voice translated that was horrible and has no emphasis of meaningful translation to it.

@Browny And sadly I was never able to get a copy of the game for one reason or another. It's rather shocking how many entries the series gets.
Sadly your missing isn't no one faults since you aren't one that likes these types of games. So no one is at a loss because you don't like those game series.

I want a Latin American Spanish dub. Where do I sign?

@MostHandsieBoy Sad that for all kind of animation movies and games, English dub is subpar a lot of times, with some exceptions here and there. It seems like voice actors are not paid enough to show feelings/emotions when recording.

I didn't know they stopped dubbing them, that is so dumb imo... I wanna play the game and understand what they are saying without having to read, if is not gonna be dubbed then that defeats the whole purpose (to me) of having the game with voice acting in the first place! 💢

This has me triggered... I live the Atelier series but this is really killing it for me, I won't be able to immerse myself into the game as much now, how extremely disappointing.

I play the entire game in English and then later if I decide to do a new playthrough or during post-game stuff, then i change it to Japanese, because by then I already beaten the game and can change it up as much as I want to mix it up a little. This really is bumming me out to know that the past 3 games don't have any dub...

@Olmectron this is true. But often time the dub is vastly superior to the original. Examples are each and every Miyazaki movie, Cowboy Beebop and One Punch Man. For the last one I find OPM completely unwatchable with Japan VA. Over-the-top where no matter what is happening it sounds like week-long constipated person trying to make a bowel movement. Or a breathy female who sounds like she just walked out of a bedroom session for every female or a squeaky 3 year old Disney character for every girl under 14.

Redundant and ultimately boring to me. Weeaboo fascination with bad voice work in Japanese cartoons always seems disingenuous as best - an outright lie at worst. It is mostly all bad.

@MostHandsieBoy I agree. And those are some good examples of good voice acting. My point stands.

It's sad there's not more money given to English voice actors (who aren't "celebrities"). That's surely a big part on a lot of games and animation acting sounding so lifeless.

I prefer English dub in my games but if its not an option then that's fine, rather have Japanese voice than no game at all.

Only games with Japanese voices I don't like are the musou style games that have conversations mid fight.

If the game will support dual-audio option - then okay. I don't care about English voiceovers in Japanese videogames. I found English voiceovers in Japanese videogames abysmal. But, I like English voiceovers in Point-and-Click games, for example - The Shivah (Kosher Edition), Gemini Rue, Broken Sword, Yesterday Origins and Primordia. Also, almost all of English voice actors are nonames for me. I remember only four voice actors because I know their roles in the games(and I played NMH and TF2). Robin Atkin Downes(No More Heroes, Team Fortress 2), Steve Blum(No More Heroes) and Yuri Lowenthall(Tales of Vesperia) and Trina Nishimura(Steins;Gate). But I remember many seiyūs whom I heard in the games - Asami Imai, Eri Kitamura, Tomokazu Sugita, Daisuke Endō, Jōji Nakata, Takashi Kondō, Miyuki Sawashiro, Megumi Ogata, Akira Ishida, Manabu Sakamaki, and many others. They don't work only as seiyūs, but as singers as well. And some of them even work as actors and etc. They have more personality and recognition than (regular) English voice actors. Buuut... It's just my opinion.

I'd rather have a few extra free in-game costumes instead of English VA's, I'm used to playing the games with Japanese VA's at this point.

God I hate that people can make a statement like "3 times in a row no English" and not get immediately corrected with fact. The response from the guy who "talked to sources" is completely wrong and obviously made up as soon as you look a the actual truth. Instead, we spin our wheels and talk about the problem and solution based on whatever BS people "think" is true. This is the way we do everything now, where saying something on the internet and getting more likes then other people makes what you said "true". Here is what's really going on.

There has NEVER, not once, been a English dub for a release in the Atelier series. They have ALL been added after the fact as part of a port or the DX upgrade.

Not only do I doubt the statement that "most people play without dubs", but I own every game in the series and NONE of them send back telemetry. Where would they get this information? The information would also be meaningless ... you sell 2 million copies of a game before English is added and 500,000 after English is added and MOST PEOPLE played that game without English turned on? What's more important is that all these games enjoy a serge in sales when English is added.

It's also clear the GUST understands the value of English dubs because the voice talent they use is all top tier A listers. Christine Marie Cabanos dubs Sophie, who's in 100s of things and voices some key roles, including Sailor Saturn and Nepgear.

Even if you're marketing data tell you most people don't use the English dubs you don't dump it all together, you just spend appropriately. English voice acting only getting as $500,000 in new sales? Cool, do the dub for less then $250,000. The fact that the English voice acting so far spares no expense and they have added English to (at least) NINE games shows the exact opposite. They have data telling them English dubs are well worth the effort.

So what's the "real reason"? Well it starts with the insane misconception about how much time and effort it takes to record the voice work for a game. A fully voiced game is going to take as long, if not longer, to voice then every other aspect of development combined, and you can't start it until you have your script. We also completely underestimate how expensive, time consuming, and difficult localization is. Because of how long both these projects take and the fact that one can only start when the other is finished, you're generally looking at the option of sitting on the completely finished Japanese version without releasing it for months if not years while you wait on the English voice work, or you don't do a global release. Ryza sold extremely well in the West and a lot of that had to do with the games releasing only 1 month after the JP release. For Sophie, a simulations release was the goal from day one. It's simply not viable to localize you game, then send that localized script for recording while targeting a WW release unless you have tons of money to burn. That's all it is.

Will we get a DX version of Ryza and Sophie with English dubs, or will English be added at some later date to drive Western sales? YES. Obviously. Why would you add English to the games that no one outside of Japan is buying but NOT add it to your first set of games that is seeing any sort of momentum in the West?

I’m probably gonna get mobbed by the weebs but I usually prefer English dubs since it would be easier to move through the texts a lot faster although I usually do use subtitles when I watch movies when it comes to stuff like cartoons or anime however I use the English dub. Although I do still call hailey Ann by her JPN name because I got more used with it.
Also I did watch yooka I watch for a bit with English subs so I could understand it a bit. Also I call characters by their English names. (Except for hailey Ann. I still kinda call her Inaho)

If a game has Japanese only audio then I eventually turn voices off completely, so, uh....yeah.

I prefer to have audio in the original language and actual subtitles, not dubtitles. They can include a dub if they want to, but please let me set the audio to Japanese BEFORE I start the main game.

I loved playing Blue Reflection Second Light in Japanese but the option for an English Dub would have been really nice for a second playthrough

Just say no to English dubs. They suck in anime also.

Gust game dubs historically suck. I’m not even talking about the dub voice performance which is hit or miss depending on the game. They don’t even English voice dub as many scenes/lines compared to the Japanese voices. They always half assed it. Which is why I didn’t care when they largely stopped doing dubs because it was not worth the added cost/localization time for a half assed dub project

Anyway no English dub doesn’t impact my purchase or a lot of others that play niche Japanese anime games that includes Atelier that is fine with the Japanese voices.

I rather the money go to other things to improve the game as I put down in the survey. The faster localizations thanks to skipping an English dub is also very nice.

I would much rather have a good dub than it just being subbed. In fact, I rather have no voice acting at all than just subbed. I don't even pay attention to the voice acting during subbed games anyway, as it is just a distraction while reading. I'm not a fan of the overly cutesy girly voices that are prominent in Japanese voice acting, or the childish boy voice acting. It almost feels like it's either one of those two or the husky woman/manly man for a lot of Japanese voice acting. I know that's an oversimplification, but it's just prominent enough to turn me off of subs. Overall, I would prefer both, just to satiate the subz crowd, but I don't use subs for games or anime. I've skipped over many a game/anime for not providing a dub. I would rather read books/manga, not anime/games/movies. Also, slightly related: if the english dubbing for Kung Fu Hustle doesn't put a smile on your face, then you are a soulless human and I don't want to know you. 🤣

I copied my response in the survey that I put in the suggestions at the end:

"The sub over dub crowd sucks. Just do both, please. I've skipped over many games that didn't provide an english dub, especially ones that already have an english voice cast to work with, like the Fairy Tail game. Also, if you want people to use the dub more, spring for good voice actors. When you localize games with a dub, it's easier to tell when the voice acting is bad. I can guarantee you that "more people just use subs" because they don't know what bad Japanese voice acting sounds like. Food for thought: If Dragonball games were not localized with a dub, I would never buy them because Goku's Japanese voice acting is terrible. I'm sure she's a nice lady, but I would rather not hear that voice any more than I absolutely have to in life. Fun fact: I use that voice acting as a prime example of dubbing supremacy to shutdown the subs over dubs crowd whenever its rears it ugly head."

I used to prefer subs over dubs, but as I get older I have pretty frequent migraines so dubs can be really handy especially when some Switch games have super tiny text even when playing docked. I ended up struggling through Ryza because of this and having to read everything. It's always nice to have the option for people with vision or other issues. There are those with worse vision issues than me and these things aren't always a preference for 'which language sounds better' but more of an accessibility thing for some.