Buying Japanese Games

[mattfabb]

Yes Ill be in Japan until the end of January. I bought Ninokuni and DQ9 for the DS and to be honest its just hard work to read through all the text, even with furigana it take me ages to get through it and after a while I just cant take it anymore.

[Asura]

Seems you're new to this Mattfabb so I'll give you some advice, from my own experience when I lived over there back in 2008.

Japanese/Euro Xbox 360 cross-compatibility is a complete lottery. Back when the machine was new, most games were multi-region, but gradually the number of locked titles became more numerous. Worse still though are language options. Play-Asia's guide (which has already been linked) is a reasonable place to go for compatibility, but resources about language options online are few to none.

For example, Halo 3 (the Japanese version) can be set to English, but whilst all of the cutscenes and text will be in English much of the incidental dialogue is in Japanese (with no subtitles). This is just an isolated example but it's indicative of the problems you'll likely encounter.

Some games have no language options, whereas some (like Gears of War, IIRC) have full English and Japanese versions on the Japanese disc.

The general sensibility if you want to just risk it is that games which have different publishers in different territories are usually region locked, though this will not be correct in all cases. An example would be Armored Core 4; published by From in Japan, Sega in the US and 505 in Europe - it's region locked on 360 for that reason.

If you're worried about the language barrier, avoid RPGs. It might be presumptuous for me to deal in absolutes but I'm willing to say you'll never find a Japanese RPG with English text/speech, and you have to be some kind of masochist to flog yourself through one without reading at least a bit of Japanese.

Instead, stick to arcade titles - look for fighting games, 2D shooters and racing games, as usually you'll be able to play those no problem without any Japanese skills at all.

[nakamura]

The only Japanese RPG with English text I know of is Final Fantasy X International on PS2.

[J0e Musashi]

The Mass Effect games, Nier Gestalt and Star Ocean 4 are full English on Xbox 360.

[Asura]

The Mass Effect games, Nier Gestalt and Star Ocean 4 are full English on Xbox 360.

Interesting. Nier too? I thought that game had really different versions (didn't the Japanese version have a typical Squaresoft feminine guy as the hero, but the western one had a muscular, gruff bloke?).

I stand corrected in any case. Still, what about others like Infinite Undiscovery or Enchanted Arms? Were later JRPGs in general in English then?

[J0e Musashi]

I think those three are it TBH. I've not played the Western version of Nier, so I can't actually comment on any changes. English support is hit and miss with Japanese titles. You even get games in the same series, but only one title will support English.

[Brad]

Re: Buying Japanese Games

Japan had different versions for Xbox and ps3. Ps3 was called Nier Replicant. Elsewhere it was Nier Gestalt on both platforms.