The Shin Megami Tensei series has always prided itself on attention to detail in its accurate and careful use of world mythology for instance, if you know the backstory behind the various demons in Nocturne, that right there is enough to draw a few conclusions about the factions they side with. The second is the greater attention paid to the proper names for the Personas and demons. So whereas he was Mark due to sweeping translation changes on PSX, on PSP he’s Mark out of fidelity to the original. Strange to say, but in the Japanese version of Persona, a few characters went by nicknames, and Masao Inaba was called Mark by his friends throughout the game. Here, the trouble starts in the city of Mikage, and you’ll need help from your friends Maki, Nanjo, and… Mark. Whereas the PSX release maintained the polite fiction that the game took place in the American city of Lunarvale, where you and your friends Mary, Nate, and Mark were off on an adventure, for the PSP release we’ve kept everything true to the Japanese roots.

The first is the retention of all the original Japanese names and locations. All the dialogue has been touched up to read more smoothly and naturally than it did even in the PlayStation original, but there were three key areas where the re-localization will pay off most for recent converts to the Persona series. who’d played the game 13 years ago were nearly salivating at the chance to polish the original Persona up the standard we’ve become known for with games like Odin Sphere, Persona 3 and 4, and Knights in the Nightmare.

When we learned that our parent company was remaking the game for the PlayStation Portable, though, those of us at Atlus U.S.A., Inc. As for the changes made to the rest of the game… well, at the time, there was nothing else in the series available in English, so it might not have been the highest priority to make sure it upheld series traditions like the modern-day Japanese setting or the mythological underpinnings of Personas and demons. The translators and editors at 1996-era Atlus actually acquitted themselves fairly well when it came to the dialogue: major story beats were properly conveyed, and the personality of the nine playable characters shone through pretty well. The localization standards of the day meant it was compromised in a few respects some major, some minor. I was there in 1996 as the original game was released on PlayStation to an audience of RPG fans who needed something to play until Final Fantasy VII’s release, and to my surprise, the “filler” game ended up making as much or more of an impression on me as what I bought the system for.īut it wasn’t perfect.

Like the president of the Hair Club for Men who’s also a member, I’m not just part of the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona localization team, I’m also a fan.

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