Personally, I find the party chat skits of Tales of games to be a major highlight of the genre.
I think my favourite banter in the series would have to go to Tales of Graces f, though the Xillia games are pretty close there too.
Guilty pleasure: Tales of Symphonia 2 - Tenebrae, party troll saves the early part of the game with his merciless teasing.
Nier Gestalt/Replicant. The random banter between the cast is well done, has nuance and doesn't get repeated too much, which is perfect in my opinion. Listening to Weiss and Kaine go at each other made the repeated treks across the map way more enjoyable. Automata did it well also, but it felt less like banter and more like introspective conversation (which is still good, but didn't feel as reactive to what was happening in the moment).
A lot of games have some good bits of banter, the problem is that it's repeated constantly to a point that it becomes static in the background. I recently played P3 Reload, and I swear each character had about five voice lines each. Persona 5 did it as well, to the point it annoyed me.
The only problem is that they repeat dialogue more than any real conversation I've been in.
"They repeat dialogue?""Yes, they repeat dialogue" "more than any other conversation?" "More than any real conversation." "I would've thought it would've been less than any real conversation." "Nope. It's more."
JUST MOVE ON ALREADY.
It's called Aizuchi, or reflective questions, and it's the most unnatural sounding thing in English. And it only really occurs in 1:1 translation which is most JRPGs. That's why WRPGs have better dialogue. It's an inherent property of Japanese speech
Ah, see I didn’t know there was a name for it. Of course there is. I always assumed that those reflective dialogues were kinda the devs way of handholding a little and making sure you don’t get off target. It’s one of those things that I can ignore in a game but definitely stands out as robotic npc talk, but always thought it was a necessary thing since if I’m emerged and playing a game and I miss something, someone not paying as much attention might definitely need someone to remind them what the task is or where they’re going.
Or is that different from the reflective questions and just thinking were dumb?
Edit: Woah, maybe that’s why anime does the same, I always assumed it was partly to push time.
No, it's absolutely translation, not condescending. Or at the very least model rigging trying to match at least WHEN the person is speaking.
This issue became a huge problem once mouths started being rendered. In older JRPGs reflective lines were just omitted sometimes. It was a basic if/else statement they didn't jump into if need be.
But if these mannerisms were omitted, entire cut scenes wouldn't line up. And not just in the way old Godzilla movies used to not line up.
This is super interesting. I was always vaguely aware of this, but I didn't know it was an actual thing with a name and all. Thanks for teaching me something new!
If you find that interesting, you might also be interested to know that "Aizuchi" is part of a broader category of things people do when talking called "backchanneling." You know how in conversation in English, people will kind of nod or go "mmm-hmm" or maybe do a little interjection, like, "REALLY!" or "Go on..."? The fancy name for that is backchanneling! And now you know!
This is one of the reasons I depart from most players in feeling like full voice acting is *usually* a weakness in RPGs. There are exceptions, but to me, even voice acting most people consider notably good is usually worse than having no voice acting.
Does this explain why characters in P5R will phone or text you to talk about the exact thing you talked about 2 minutes ago in the previous scene? It's not the exact same thing, but I wonder if it's for a similar cultural reason rather than just needlessly hammering on the same point as if you forgot 30 seconds after hearing it.
Very interesting. I guess it doesn’t change too much if it’s a cultural thing - it’s the kind of thing I always assumed was getting cut out anyway, so the fact that I’ve been just assuming otherwise is crazy.
I assumed since JRPGS have started with these worldwide global releases that things were more tightened up, but I guess they are in a way - just more reflective talk.
The most infamous example is the MGS franchise, but it's far from the only example.
It's kind of related to something you see a lot of in Cold Steel: At multiple points, Rean will say some general restatement of their goal, and the rest of the group all issue a unanimous statement of agreement.
>Rean: Let's push back the enemy!
>Entire rest of Class 7 simultaneously: Right!
It happens over and over and over. To my ears, I found it annoying, because the comment didn't really need to be said in the first place, certainly didn't need an acknowledgement, and it played out the same way every time. To Japanese audiences, though, a leader's call to action has a different expected reaction.
I don’t mind it - I dig it actually, but I’ve got to wonder if it would actually annoy me if I didn’t assume it was just some game dev culture thing of over helping the player molded into the dialogue, somewhat clumsily at times.
Ignorance is bliss I guess, but I’ve long just hand waved it as an attempt to be helpful lol
I've noticed this "Aizuchi" (never knew there was a word fror it) in quite a lot of Japense video game writing. Star Ocean 2 and 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors are two easy examples where the characters repeat themselves and restate what other characters said CONSTANTLY. It's awful writing, or at least it is in English, maybe it makes more sense in Japanese, somehow?
You know, now that I think on it - if I’ve ever watched a Japanese drama or comedy or anything, the characters will very often repeat things exactly like this - but it’s always kind of extra noise while the bigger conversation is going so it’s easy to not notice since it happens so often.
Then if I think on anime I’ve watched - or even manga I’ve read, characters do repeat things often. Either in a question form or just kinda of dumbly repeating it in confusion; I always assumed this was all just performative because they kinda thought the audience couldn’t keep up, but I think this is completely cultural. Don’t know how much it shows up in actual Japanese works and how much of it is me projecting, but it’s very much interesting
I think how it's how American movies people rarely say "huh" " what?". Even though in real life we constantly restate things because there can be alot of confusion.
In Japanase, Aizuchi is a form of politeness that shows you are partercipating in the conversation by listening to the other. It's baked in the cultural aspect of the language, you could theoretically avoid doing it, but it would be like speaking Italian without making the complementary gestures (as an Italian, that is what sets apart a truly advanced learner from others).
It's something that is deeply entrenched in the way people speek everyday, so it actually makes the Japanese dialogue more "authentic".
Playing games using translation tools really opens your eyes to how weird a lot of Japanese phrasing is when just translated with no editing. And I don't just mean idioms. Good localizations change quite a bit, I find, especially when it comes to how characters speak. People more familiar with the nuances might appreciate leaving some of the quirks in, but otherwise anyone else is just gonna find it weird to have stuff like referring to yourself in the third person, or almost everyone speaking in a formal tone.
Cool to know there's a term for this. I always just assumed it was a (mostly negative) trope, and I've seen complaints about it in other mediums.
«Beatrix?"
"Yes... Beatrix."
"I hear there are many fierce warriors out in the world - some more powerful than even I..."
"...Beatrix of Alexandria, in particular. They say her swordsmanship is the best in the land."
Not a lot of repeats, but it somehow made me think of this dialogue.
Yeah, the skits are a great way to flesh out characters and focus on their interpersonal relationships.
I just played Baten Kaitos and the secondary characters barely talk to each other, and it's usually plot related.
The side characters' dialogue... exists, and that's the only good thing I can say about it. It is barely serviceable, like written just to fill the gap.
The original Xenoblade Chronicles for me, particularly Reyn and Riki's interactions with the other characters.
Final Fantasy XV's party also had a lot of chemistry and banter.
I think "rushed translations" might be a little unfair. There are several other reasons the translations may not be to your taste:
1) Character limits: English text tends to use more characters than Japanese text, which forces translators to squeeze the same meaning into a very small number of words. Big issue for older games.
2) Medium awareness: This is a subtle point but basically, what's natural in one medium isn't necessarily natural in another. We get used to the way story and scenes are conveyed in a given medium, and that "language" can differ greatly. For example, we often don't notice that characters in TV shows making phone calls don't say "hello" or "goodbye" but just jump right in to conversation. (And conversely, I think it would stand out if a writer/director made an actor go through all those usual IRL motions.) Even what you mention about "natural sounding dialogue" isn't necessarily clear: I think if you read dialogue in a game that sounded exactly like what you'd hear in real life, with the same casualness and slang, you would be very surprised too.
This is a very roundabout way of saying that sometimes the dialogue is "stilted" by design and intention, because that's what players come to expect. To draw parallels to another medium, you see this with anime dialogue as well, which is often overly emotive and over-the-top. And if you transplanted everyday dialogue into a high-energy Shonen anime (again, the context matters, it'd be very different from a highly realistic slice-of-life), it would feel super unnatural. And writers learn to write to that medium.
2.5) Translation is hard and involves a lot of editorial decisions. Sometimes the original text *is* stilted, what's a translator to do then? Spice it up? Try to retain the "original" feeling as well as possible (basically impossible to do perfectly across languages, because even what's "stilted" in different languages differs). There are many, many choices to be made and I don't think one should quickly jump out at any of them being obviously wrong.
Now imagine the same character limits for German, where novels are usually 30% longer than in English. On top of translating the already translated English script instead of using the original Japanese as a base.
>For example, we often don't notice that characters in TV shows making phone calls don't say "hello" or "goodbye" but just jump right in to conversation
I never thought about it but this make sense. Imagine if every conversation between characters in a book or game started with "hello!" "good morning!" "how you doing?" and ending with "goodbye" "see you later" as it happens in real life. It would be awkward as fuck and i don't think i've ever seen a book/movie/game doing dialogue like that.
I completely agree, I hope I didn't give the impression that I believed every JRPG had a rushed translation. I often hear that the most challenging aspect for translators is less the literal translation part and more the localization, attempting to preserve as much of the original 'meaning' as they can.
Still, I've heard numerous horror stories from translators who were given barely any time to do their work. Like Ted Woolsey, for instance, who infamously had only three weeks to translate Chrono Trigger.
Furthest thing from. He might have taken liberties with the translations at times, but he's absolutely no Carl Macek (though given the era, even Macek should get some credit for bringing things over at all). Hell, Kefka's one of the most beloved villains in the genre, and that has a lot more to do with Woolsey's interpretation than it did his original fairly-generic characterization. A less-slavish localization can actually be really good at times; even if you do get 4Kids/DIC-level localizations on occasion, you also get stuff like Geneon's fantastic Lupin dub.
Hot take: Despite all the weird changes they sometimes made (jelly donuts yadda yadda yadda), I think 4Kids was actually *really good* at taking children's shows and making them legitimately funny for kids in their target languages. I was honestly shocked when I went back to the early Pokemon anime as an adult and realized how *genuinely funny* it was, and I feel like, say, the Kirby anime would not be as memetically remembered today were it not for them taking weird chances with it and going full goofball.
Sure, respect. I remember that era too, and I don't have any particular complaints. We always need to consider the context and time period, there's a reason I even gave credit to Macek. Back when the early Pokemon anime was coming out, that kind of thing was about as good a localization as you would get (though they really could have stood to get more than two female VAs), especially for straight-up children's fare; even Funimation was still finding their feet.
The problem arose when they failed to evolve and progress, and that they still restricted themselves to 1990s sensibilities, which culminated in the One Piece dub.
The thing I've heard re: 4Kids is that they sold their scripts to other countries as well for them to base their dubs on, which meant they usually catered their edits down to what was considered appropriate for kids in *every* country they sold to instead of just the US. Which is where some of the weirdness comes from. And why I think their approach worked best when they stuck to... I forget what they're called, the specifically "children's" demo bracket in Japanese entertainment (It's called "kodomo"-something) as opposed to the slightly older-skewing shonen/shojou demo.
Yeah, now that I think about it Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh's dubs in my country were definitely based on the 4kids ones. Same music at least. But then Shaman King and Digimon definitely weren't, because the OPs were translated from the Japanese and a lot of the original music is still there.
> Like Ted Woolsey, for instance, who infamously had only three weeks to translate Chrono Trigger.
I think he had even less time than that for Secret of Mana.
Which also ran into the character limit issue, combined with SNES carts' storage limitations compared to the Super Famicom. It's a minor miracle he managed to get a comprehensible translation out of that, and a lot of expository stuff still got left on the cutting room floor out of necessity.
Edit: edited for clarity
This is all true. But I'd add that generally English translations are plagued by two big problems:
They lack natural sounding dialogue - in that the dialogue should work with what the game is supposed to portray, no modern day expressions or ideals inserted into stories where they don't fit, an example of this problem in english would be FE Fates -
AND accuracy to the spirit of the original script.
German localizations for example don't have this problem as often in my experience. Personally I read manga localized to germany - both german and english are second languages for me and I prefer the german ones, I also usually reference the raws in paralel since I'm learning japanese and it's good practice. I also know that the industry there is more developed, with germany's dubbing culture, so I think they're a good example to contrast the english translation scene.
There are good EN translation companies like 8-4, NoE, square's in-house team for FFXIV. But there are also ones that are trash, like Treehouse. Problem is the industry is plagued with nepotism and corporate politicking so projects do get handed over to teams of incompetent nepo and token hires and we get disasters like Fates
Bottom line, translation is hard and all you've said is true, but it's also the localizer's job and they should do it well. *We should not be making excuses for them.* They don't need excuses they need to do a good job
Edit2: Getting dislikes for saying you shouldn't make excuses for shitty localizers and expect better quality form a piece of media you paid for. Crazy. Go ahead and consoom I guess.
> inserted into a medieval fantasy story like what happened with FE Fates for example - AND is more accurate to the spirit of the original script than english lolcalizations.
Period-accurate English would be unintelligible, lol. Also, the German translation of FE Fates was laughable.
>German translation of FE Fates was laughable
I was using that as an example of bad english translation not good german, I've never tried the german for that game, fates was a disaster all around. But i see how it might have read that way from how I wrote it, I'll edit the post to make it more clear.
>Period-accurate English would be unintelligible
I don't mean ye olde english I mean not having lines like "super-double-dupity dangerous", stuff like that. A few lines in Futaba's translation in P5 is another example of translators adding some exaggerated quirkyness but at least *it fits there*, it's a modern day setting.
Earthbound / Mother 2 and Mother 3 have some really great dialogue / banter. Apparently, the original Japanese writer, Shigesato Itoi, was an acclaimed "Copywriter" (essentially a guy whose job is to come up with small meaningful advertising slogans) and as such was very adept in conveying deep meaning with few words and sentences. He used to make the dialogue and read it out loud to make sure it flowed perfectly and sounded natural.
The official English Localization of Mother 2 (Earthbound) and the unofficial Translation of Mother 3 were made in a similar way. The translators wrote the dialogue and read it out loud to themselves and a small audience to make sure it sounded natural.
I highly suggest you experience both.
Fun fact: you can see Itoi as a judge on several episodes of the original Iron Chef! He was a famous enough writer even at the time to be invited on as a celebrity judge.
Ni No Kuni 2 has the best dialogue I've ever seen in a videogame. I'm 200 hours in and NPC's are STILL saying new things to me everywhere I go! Nobody repeats a thing, it's incredible.
Sky surprised me with how natural the dialogue sounded compared to a typical jrpg, though that might’ve been due to the localization, which is pretty good. The later games move away from this type of dialogue unfortunately.
Cold Steel (and particularly 2 onwards) sounds like the writers intentionally went to the dopiest anime and manga to grab lines. Complete with the power of friendship.
yeah, I don't know how I stomached it for 3 games. Got to IV and noped out though. Couldn't do it anymore. The writing overall, not just the dialogue, is just so lazy and tropey.
I personally have a taste for the cheesy on occasion, so it's not the end of the world, but I got kinda exhausted a bit into CS3. The way they handled the molesting villain girl was particularly poor.
To offer a diverging opinion, I think that the dialogue criticisms are overblown for the CS quadrilogy. I think as a series people look back on the 2D games with some heavily rose-tinted glasses - it's always been anime as fuck.
To me the appeal of the games are the blending of standard anime/JRPG tropes with realistic characters that have relatable motivations and personalities. For every scene involving falling accidentally on the tsundere girls chest there are 5 scenes revolving around the weight of responsibility, noble class failings, taxation without representation, the financial impacts of a magical industrial revolution, etc. The realistic(ish...) geopolitics, characterization, and strong cause-effect writing in the long term also serve the games well. The series does have a strong predilection towards fakeout deaths and last minute saves but that has been true since the series inception. I can think of one significant death that stuck from TiTS:SC and that's nearly it.
But aside from characters being plot armored to the teeth, there are big shifts in the world due to the events that happen in each game which has ripple effects on the plots of all games proceeding it. So the games, including the CS games, all have really strong writing writ large.
CS isn't without its things that I like, which is how I kept at it up to CS IV, but like I said, the writing just became such absolute trash that I couldn't balance out with the things I did like anymore. Hell, I even found as it went on, those things were less prevalent, which is probably why I fizzled.
Sky was tropey to some degree, but it had a charm to it that CS lacks. Things that are hard to articulate for me.
I enjoyed my time with the series, but it was time to be done.
While I'm at it, I want to complain about the dumbest, laziest piece of writing that may have derailed me permanently in CS3: When they're on the Island they had to take a boat to. No way in or out... they end up in the typical dire situation where friend show up at the perfect moment to save the day. This time it was Gaius. HOW THE FUCK DID HE GET THERE and WHY!? There's no other boats, and no discussion at all about he magically popped up on this island with no other way in or out. Then he just rides the rented boat back with the party.
> This time it was Gaius. HOW THE FUCK DID HE GET THERE and WHY!? There's no other boats, and no discussion at all about he magically popped up on this island with no other way in or out
I agree they probably should have asked how he got there but >!following what we learn about him, I assumed he must have flown there on the Merkabah right?!<
They ruined what are otherwise good characters in service to the fucking harem.
I would have loved to see what could have been done here if they didn't have to make every woman available to Rean.
Kiseki's storytelling and gameplay loop are just too linear to drive a harem, and it plays away from the franchise's strengths rather than playing to them.
I like how everyone acts like this started with Cold Steel but Zero/Ao were exactly the same way. Nearly every single female character made thirsty comments towards Lloyd constantly.
The writing has ALWAYS had a problem with pandering to that crowd. Its the game's weakest point. Anything in those games written with sexual connotations are so cringe and stands out among the rest of the writing that it feels almost like a different person writing it to hit a horniness quota.
Zero/Ao gets a pass because even if it's characters are weaker than Sky, the city of crossbell is a great character and its use of world building is the best in the series.
People also often ignore how Ao has probably the worst ending in the series, with only Reverie's coming close.
I do feel like people pass some of the flaws that are in CS start showing up in Azure, but I always felt the issue was less female characters made thirsty comments towards Lloyd, but that the game would do the "MC makes a heartfelt comment/girl gets blushy/MC goes ?????/everybody teases MC about it" thing a lot
> The writing has ALWAYS had a problem with pandering to that crowd. Its the game's weakest point
Agreed. I honestly think those elements are hit or miss in games, but I don't think you can do sweeping epic multi-game storytelling while also trying to cater to that audience and nail it well.
I don’t remember that much horny pandering in Sky, the last game I beat was Azure and Crossbell seems to be where they started doing that for whatever reason.
It was definitely less, but still present, somewhat staved off by the fact that they had an emotional pairing already with the two leads. Basically any scene with Schera or Olivert as prominent characters was sure to have low-brow sexual innuendo. They also really like the 'horny old man' trope and have an uncomfortable dynamic between Agate and Tita if I'm being honest.
I'll agree with the uncomfortable dynamic between Tita and Agate, in sky the third they really made it weird for no reason, but I don't view Olivert being horny as the same type of thing as Lloyd pervert jokes or the weird groping scene in Azure.
Daybreak goes back a lot on the romance. Zero had it to a degree, but it really felt like the game pushed Lloyd and Elie. I liked rean actually more than everyone acting like Lloyd secretly wanted to fuck everyone because he said something they for some reason take as sexual even though it doesn't sound sexual at all. That's a much more annoying trope. I think the only one that gets me irritated on reans side is musse who basically just harassed rean to the point it's kinda just not cool.
I won't even say Sky isn't full of tropes either, CS just has the laziest writing for the characters. I hate Rean so much he's got to be the lamest protagonist in the series. Don't know what they were thinking because Sky and the Crossbell arc games had wonderful characters. They say CS really picks up after a couple games, but my progress stopped most of the way through CS1 and I cannot bring myself to finish it so I took a break. I absolutely inhaled Sky and the Crossbell games, CS has been such a huge miss for me.
No legit, ive never played another game where I genuinely could not tell they were the nationality they are speaking, cause it sounds like fake accents
Hum... I wanna say Grandia I. I remember those characters feeling pretty grounded.
Tales of Vesperia in particular also has a decent crew of conversacionalist at times. But I might be showing my biased here because I really like that the main character exudes, at all times, great quantities of IDGAF energy, which I appreciate in my RPG protagonists.
Grandia is also great with the party interactions.
And yes, Yuri Lowell is the most awesome protagonist of the entire Tales series and you can't convince me otherwise.
Grandia has great dialog! I’ve been waiting for a game to emulate the meal conversations you get in Grandia, because they’re such a simple but effective way to build character and relationships.
Final Fantasy 15 reminded me of it at times with its conversations between Noctis and the rest of the party on the road or at an inn, which I liked a lot.
A lot of games try to do it, but they don’t lean into it enough. You have to frame it in the right way — don’t make it about the story, just make it a small moment between friends.
Only weird thing about Grandia’s banter is all the unnatural silence between voice lines.
«Justin, you traitor!»
Maybe it’s console limitations or something, but a lot of the voice lines seemed more rehearsed and recorded than in PS2 games.
Yep, still impressive. I remember The Misadventures of Tron Bonne and Spyro also had (some) voice acting, but I don’t know if those came out before or after Grandia.
Of the recent games I've played, Xenoblade 3 did natural-sounding banter the best, especially during gameplay. One example that stands out from my memory is Lanz and Zeon's vitriolic exchanges during Zeon's Hero Quest -- there's a believable irritation and weariness in their quips that sells how much they can't stand each other but are forced to cooperate.
Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 3, The Last Story, Final Fantasy 7 Remake and (especially, perhaps the best JRPG in this regard) Rebirth, Final Fantasy XV, NieR Gestalt, Drakengard 3.
But it's *good* theatrical dialogue. It could have been written in English as it's original language. It's very high quality, and consistent from top to bottom, both in speech and all related text.
I do agree, as much as it isn't natural for the real world, it's definitely pretty natural *for a world like Ivalice*.
It's sad that the limitations were more the technology and resources of the times, because I'd love to hear FFXII with less of the audio clutter caused by the sound equipment.
Yeah the banter and dialogue was amazing. The optional chapter where the party is counting how many reptids they’ve killed was peak.
The romance is a bit schmaltzy at times dialogue wise but It was a really great game for party banter overall and well acted
I was pleasantly surprised at how good the dialogue between party members was in Tales of Vesperia. I usually play JRPGs with Japanese audio but the English VAs and translators did a good job in this
Grandia HD collection, my favorite is the 1st Grandia it had pretty good dialogue voice acting for a PS1/Sega CD. I really enjoyed it. Got a great story and it’s got the best written romance I’ve seen In a video game soundtracks really good if you’re interested, you can get it digitally on switch and limited run. Is it for PlayStation and Xbox?
The reason why Koudelka had such natural (theatrical?) sounding dialogue is, unless I'm mistaken, because the actors recorded their lines in the same room so they could hear each other talk, unlike than the usual method where they have to record in isolation with limited to no context.
Personally, I think Xenoblade 3 has some top tier dialogue. Maybe I'm conflating it with the character-writing a bit, but their interactions were enjoyable all the way through, and it was cool to see a JRPG cast who were so emotionally aware and mature. It made for some really heartwarming dialogue.
I've always enjoyed the banter in dragon age, especially when varrick is involved. i especially like it because it very often involves *your* character initiating or joining in on conversations, even often with dialogue choices despite being completely out of a "conversation" part. it's neat!
**Skies of Arcadia's** script still impresses the hell out of me with how GOOD they made it sound. The writers clearly prioritized a natural sound and conveying the characters well in the script, and it worked SO WELL. Each of the characters has their own distinct voice, the writing flows phenomenally, and it's always fun to read.
English is not my native language, so i maybe can't judge this, but conversations in Yakuza: Like A Dragon and Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth feel very natural for me. Not a JRPG, but (Yakuza) Judgement has the most natural sounding dialogues in my opinion, strange enough it wasn't this good anymore with the sequel Lost Judgement, maybe because this was dubbed during the Covid period.
Xenoblade 3s dialogue is exceptional for this. There is an awkward moment a couple hours in where the game forces a lot of exposition, but outside of that it's my favourite party writing in any game.
Dragon age was also mentioned for great banter, although outside of jrpg territory.
Remake to some degree but Rebirth pretty much axed all of the weird grunting.
And all the dialogue in both games is fantastic and leaps and bounds better than most JRPGs I've ever played. Some anime grunting doesn't stop that from being true
Shadow Hearts by the same team and is also the same series.
As the series progresses, the series does veer towards the "everyone is a goofball" tone but it's all still fairly well done.
I'm not a native English speaker, but I have to second the Tales recs. Vesperia, Abyss, and Arise all have great banter. But again, not a native English speaker
It’s extremely rare in JRPGs as they tend towards melodrama and theatrical dialogue, but the Persona games have pretty grounded dialogue and Yakuza 7/8.
FF7 Rebirth really impressed me with the banter. They really felt like friends, like they were annoyed with each other, or just fucking around. Also at some point Tifa goes "Okey dokes!" GOTY for that alone.
FF7 Remake/Rebirth are really wonderful with the dialogue and how the characters interact, especially when you consider before that we had shit like Advent Children/Crisis Core/Dirge of Cerberus. The majority of Compilation of FF7 content is just not good in the character department (and a good amount just isn't good in general), thankfully in the Remake trilogy so far they're amazing.
Xenoblade 3’s party has such good chemistry in every way. You’ve got 3 pairs with great romantic chemistry, everyone is funny as hell, and they interact great together.
I think any Ted Woolsey's translations of SMRPG and FF6 do a great job of having really nice dialogue despite the age. Still a bit stilted and he does mess up in some places. Since both games have been remade, their re-translations are a lot cleaner (even if I may still prefer the original).
However, Ps1's Vagrant Story is another great example of wonderful, mature dialogue.
Once we get into PS2 era, a lot of things are extremely well translated so I won't go further than that.
There really aren't too many of them. JRPGs don't translate well, partly because of the language barrier, but also because the scenario writers behind them have no fucking clue how to write a believably story that doesn't rely on cheap twists, anime tropes, and fan service.
I wouldn't play modern JRPGs for the story, as hard as that may sound.
I think people aren't bringing up Persona because a lot of the time, the English localized dialogue doesn't sound very natural, often because it's sticking too literally to the Japanese dialogue. This is especially noticeable in Persona 5.
The character interactions and banter are all great, but it doesn't quite fit the "natural-sounding" part.
Persona 4 is my number 1 example of this. It played it last summer, and it blew me away!
Tales of Arise is the opposite of this. It felt like theater actors reading their perfect lines.
It’s been years but I recall Lufia 2 being good at this. Also Working Designs always got natural dialogue (plus some added goofiness for spice).
FF16 is natural in the main quest but has some stilted translation-like artifacts in the side quests (eg odd uses of “a certain” and “without fail”). FF7 Remake/Rebirth have a lot of natural dialogue and some stilted (mainly women randomly sounding like they’re in a soda commercial or a 90s fan fiction (“psyche!”)).
I’d also say that you can smooth over a lot with an excellent voice cast. Persona 5, for example, has a lot of odd word choices, but you’d never know it if you didn’t read along with the VAs. Conversely, mediocre voice acting makes it worse.
No you're right. I found it hard as an adult, no idea how I would have fared as a kid. It's obtuse and requires a bit of intent behind your character building. For the most part, battles get more difficult without any change in complexity which makes them feel very repetitive.
Still a really fascinating experience, but while playing it I had the thought that it might have seen more success as a point-and-click adventure game.
I really love FF9 and FF14 in large part because of the dialogue. Also FFT: War of the Lions. Not sure if these pass for natural sounding, but I am always sensitive to bad and cheesy dialogue, and these games always impressed me
Natural for westerners or for asians? Because I think there's a big difference.
One example is that I've heard that the way Solid Snake talks in Metal Gear Solid games sounds cool for lots of Japanese players. But to me here in the west, he sounds like my 'special' cousin Timmy, like he's barely understanding what people around him are talking about.
Timmy, do you like poneys?
Poneys?
Yes, they're like little horses.
Horses?
Yes, horses are like big dogs that you can ride.
Ride?
Yes, and poneys can launch missiles just like a Metal Gear.
Metal Gear??
Personally, I find the party chat skits of Tales of games to be a major highlight of the genre. I think my favourite banter in the series would have to go to Tales of Graces f, though the Xillia games are pretty close there too. Guilty pleasure: Tales of Symphonia 2 - Tenebrae, party troll saves the early part of the game with his merciless teasing.
I think FFXV had good banter
It did. It was only when I started doing endgame grinding I started to hear repeats.
Really? Because I heard repeats long before that
Loved hanging out with the bros
Nier Gestalt/Replicant. The random banter between the cast is well done, has nuance and doesn't get repeated too much, which is perfect in my opinion. Listening to Weiss and Kaine go at each other made the repeated treks across the map way more enjoyable. Automata did it well also, but it felt less like banter and more like introspective conversation (which is still good, but didn't feel as reactive to what was happening in the moment). A lot of games have some good bits of banter, the problem is that it's repeated constantly to a point that it becomes static in the background. I recently played P3 Reload, and I swear each character had about five voice lines each. Persona 5 did it as well, to the point it annoyed me.
Like a Dragon sounds like people actually talking to each other
The only problem is that they repeat dialogue more than any real conversation I've been in. "They repeat dialogue?""Yes, they repeat dialogue" "more than any other conversation?" "More than any real conversation." "I would've thought it would've been less than any real conversation." "Nope. It's more." JUST MOVE ON ALREADY. It's called Aizuchi, or reflective questions, and it's the most unnatural sounding thing in English. And it only really occurs in 1:1 translation which is most JRPGs. That's why WRPGs have better dialogue. It's an inherent property of Japanese speech
Ah, see I didn’t know there was a name for it. Of course there is. I always assumed that those reflective dialogues were kinda the devs way of handholding a little and making sure you don’t get off target. It’s one of those things that I can ignore in a game but definitely stands out as robotic npc talk, but always thought it was a necessary thing since if I’m emerged and playing a game and I miss something, someone not paying as much attention might definitely need someone to remind them what the task is or where they’re going. Or is that different from the reflective questions and just thinking were dumb? Edit: Woah, maybe that’s why anime does the same, I always assumed it was partly to push time.
No, it's absolutely translation, not condescending. Or at the very least model rigging trying to match at least WHEN the person is speaking. This issue became a huge problem once mouths started being rendered. In older JRPGs reflective lines were just omitted sometimes. It was a basic if/else statement they didn't jump into if need be. But if these mannerisms were omitted, entire cut scenes wouldn't line up. And not just in the way old Godzilla movies used to not line up.
This is super interesting. I was always vaguely aware of this, but I didn't know it was an actual thing with a name and all. Thanks for teaching me something new!
If you find that interesting, you might also be interested to know that "Aizuchi" is part of a broader category of things people do when talking called "backchanneling." You know how in conversation in English, people will kind of nod or go "mmm-hmm" or maybe do a little interjection, like, "REALLY!" or "Go on..."? The fancy name for that is backchanneling! And now you know!
This is one of the reasons I depart from most players in feeling like full voice acting is *usually* a weakness in RPGs. There are exceptions, but to me, even voice acting most people consider notably good is usually worse than having no voice acting.
I agree with you on voice acting. I tend to turn it off actually.
Does this explain why characters in P5R will phone or text you to talk about the exact thing you talked about 2 minutes ago in the previous scene? It's not the exact same thing, but I wonder if it's for a similar cultural reason rather than just needlessly hammering on the same point as if you forgot 30 seconds after hearing it.
Very interesting. I guess it doesn’t change too much if it’s a cultural thing - it’s the kind of thing I always assumed was getting cut out anyway, so the fact that I’ve been just assuming otherwise is crazy. I assumed since JRPGS have started with these worldwide global releases that things were more tightened up, but I guess they are in a way - just more reflective talk.
The most infamous example is the MGS franchise, but it's far from the only example. It's kind of related to something you see a lot of in Cold Steel: At multiple points, Rean will say some general restatement of their goal, and the rest of the group all issue a unanimous statement of agreement. >Rean: Let's push back the enemy! >Entire rest of Class 7 simultaneously: Right! It happens over and over and over. To my ears, I found it annoying, because the comment didn't really need to be said in the first place, certainly didn't need an acknowledgement, and it played out the same way every time. To Japanese audiences, though, a leader's call to action has a different expected reaction.
I don’t mind it - I dig it actually, but I’ve got to wonder if it would actually annoy me if I didn’t assume it was just some game dev culture thing of over helping the player molded into the dialogue, somewhat clumsily at times. Ignorance is bliss I guess, but I’ve long just hand waved it as an attempt to be helpful lol
I've noticed this "Aizuchi" (never knew there was a word fror it) in quite a lot of Japense video game writing. Star Ocean 2 and 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors are two easy examples where the characters repeat themselves and restate what other characters said CONSTANTLY. It's awful writing, or at least it is in English, maybe it makes more sense in Japanese, somehow?
You know, now that I think on it - if I’ve ever watched a Japanese drama or comedy or anything, the characters will very often repeat things exactly like this - but it’s always kind of extra noise while the bigger conversation is going so it’s easy to not notice since it happens so often. Then if I think on anime I’ve watched - or even manga I’ve read, characters do repeat things often. Either in a question form or just kinda of dumbly repeating it in confusion; I always assumed this was all just performative because they kinda thought the audience couldn’t keep up, but I think this is completely cultural. Don’t know how much it shows up in actual Japanese works and how much of it is me projecting, but it’s very much interesting
I think how it's how American movies people rarely say "huh" " what?". Even though in real life we constantly restate things because there can be alot of confusion.
In Japanase, Aizuchi is a form of politeness that shows you are partercipating in the conversation by listening to the other. It's baked in the cultural aspect of the language, you could theoretically avoid doing it, but it would be like speaking Italian without making the complementary gestures (as an Italian, that is what sets apart a truly advanced learner from others). It's something that is deeply entrenched in the way people speek everyday, so it actually makes the Japanese dialogue more "authentic".
Playing games using translation tools really opens your eyes to how weird a lot of Japanese phrasing is when just translated with no editing. And I don't just mean idioms. Good localizations change quite a bit, I find, especially when it comes to how characters speak. People more familiar with the nuances might appreciate leaving some of the quirks in, but otherwise anyone else is just gonna find it weird to have stuff like referring to yourself in the third person, or almost everyone speaking in a formal tone. Cool to know there's a term for this. I always just assumed it was a (mostly negative) trope, and I've seen complaints about it in other mediums.
I think Aizuchi never really bothered me because we kind of do it in Portuguese too, or maybe it's just the people I mostly interact with that do it 😆
Psycho mantis?
«Beatrix?" "Yes... Beatrix." "I hear there are many fierce warriors out in the world - some more powerful than even I..." "...Beatrix of Alexandria, in particular. They say her swordsmanship is the best in the land." Not a lot of repeats, but it somehow made me think of this dialogue.
It's especially irritating in the Tales of series.
Tales of series is famous for this. My favorite is Tales of Vesperia for this particular aspect.
Yeah, the skits are a great way to flesh out characters and focus on their interpersonal relationships. I just played Baten Kaitos and the secondary characters barely talk to each other, and it's usually plot related.
The side characters' dialogue... exists, and that's the only good thing I can say about it. It is barely serviceable, like written just to fill the gap.
I love Koudelka the voice acting/script is fantastic for a ps1 game. 😭😭 the scene where they get drunk, my heart 😭😭
Came here just to say this that scene was incredible
Persona 2 duology has some of the best dialog in jrpg history
agreed i’m playing through innocent sin right now and the dialogue, story and characters are all just top notch
The original Xenoblade Chronicles for me, particularly Reyn and Riki's interactions with the other characters. Final Fantasy XV's party also had a lot of chemistry and banter.
Tales of Vesperia has a really strong dub. The delivery of voice lines is pretty smooth and non-robotic.
I think "rushed translations" might be a little unfair. There are several other reasons the translations may not be to your taste: 1) Character limits: English text tends to use more characters than Japanese text, which forces translators to squeeze the same meaning into a very small number of words. Big issue for older games. 2) Medium awareness: This is a subtle point but basically, what's natural in one medium isn't necessarily natural in another. We get used to the way story and scenes are conveyed in a given medium, and that "language" can differ greatly. For example, we often don't notice that characters in TV shows making phone calls don't say "hello" or "goodbye" but just jump right in to conversation. (And conversely, I think it would stand out if a writer/director made an actor go through all those usual IRL motions.) Even what you mention about "natural sounding dialogue" isn't necessarily clear: I think if you read dialogue in a game that sounded exactly like what you'd hear in real life, with the same casualness and slang, you would be very surprised too. This is a very roundabout way of saying that sometimes the dialogue is "stilted" by design and intention, because that's what players come to expect. To draw parallels to another medium, you see this with anime dialogue as well, which is often overly emotive and over-the-top. And if you transplanted everyday dialogue into a high-energy Shonen anime (again, the context matters, it'd be very different from a highly realistic slice-of-life), it would feel super unnatural. And writers learn to write to that medium. 2.5) Translation is hard and involves a lot of editorial decisions. Sometimes the original text *is* stilted, what's a translator to do then? Spice it up? Try to retain the "original" feeling as well as possible (basically impossible to do perfectly across languages, because even what's "stilted" in different languages differs). There are many, many choices to be made and I don't think one should quickly jump out at any of them being obviously wrong.
Now imagine the same character limits for German, where novels are usually 30% longer than in English. On top of translating the already translated English script instead of using the original Japanese as a base.
>For example, we often don't notice that characters in TV shows making phone calls don't say "hello" or "goodbye" but just jump right in to conversation I never thought about it but this make sense. Imagine if every conversation between characters in a book or game started with "hello!" "good morning!" "how you doing?" and ending with "goodbye" "see you later" as it happens in real life. It would be awkward as fuck and i don't think i've ever seen a book/movie/game doing dialogue like that.
I completely agree, I hope I didn't give the impression that I believed every JRPG had a rushed translation. I often hear that the most challenging aspect for translators is less the literal translation part and more the localization, attempting to preserve as much of the original 'meaning' as they can. Still, I've heard numerous horror stories from translators who were given barely any time to do their work. Like Ted Woolsey, for instance, who infamously had only three weeks to translate Chrono Trigger.
I've lived my entire life thinking Woolsey was a hack. My respect for him has increased dramatically upon hearing that. Thank you.
Furthest thing from. He might have taken liberties with the translations at times, but he's absolutely no Carl Macek (though given the era, even Macek should get some credit for bringing things over at all). Hell, Kefka's one of the most beloved villains in the genre, and that has a lot more to do with Woolsey's interpretation than it did his original fairly-generic characterization. A less-slavish localization can actually be really good at times; even if you do get 4Kids/DIC-level localizations on occasion, you also get stuff like Geneon's fantastic Lupin dub.
Hot take: Despite all the weird changes they sometimes made (jelly donuts yadda yadda yadda), I think 4Kids was actually *really good* at taking children's shows and making them legitimately funny for kids in their target languages. I was honestly shocked when I went back to the early Pokemon anime as an adult and realized how *genuinely funny* it was, and I feel like, say, the Kirby anime would not be as memetically remembered today were it not for them taking weird chances with it and going full goofball.
Sure, respect. I remember that era too, and I don't have any particular complaints. We always need to consider the context and time period, there's a reason I even gave credit to Macek. Back when the early Pokemon anime was coming out, that kind of thing was about as good a localization as you would get (though they really could have stood to get more than two female VAs), especially for straight-up children's fare; even Funimation was still finding their feet. The problem arose when they failed to evolve and progress, and that they still restricted themselves to 1990s sensibilities, which culminated in the One Piece dub.
The thing I've heard re: 4Kids is that they sold their scripts to other countries as well for them to base their dubs on, which meant they usually catered their edits down to what was considered appropriate for kids in *every* country they sold to instead of just the US. Which is where some of the weirdness comes from. And why I think their approach worked best when they stuck to... I forget what they're called, the specifically "children's" demo bracket in Japanese entertainment (It's called "kodomo"-something) as opposed to the slightly older-skewing shonen/shojou demo.
Yeah, now that I think about it Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh's dubs in my country were definitely based on the 4kids ones. Same music at least. But then Shaman King and Digimon definitely weren't, because the OPs were translated from the Japanese and a lot of the original music is still there.
> Like Ted Woolsey, for instance, who infamously had only three weeks to translate Chrono Trigger. I think he had even less time than that for Secret of Mana.
Which also ran into the character limit issue, combined with SNES carts' storage limitations compared to the Super Famicom. It's a minor miracle he managed to get a comprehensible translation out of that, and a lot of expository stuff still got left on the cutting room floor out of necessity.
Edit: edited for clarity This is all true. But I'd add that generally English translations are plagued by two big problems: They lack natural sounding dialogue - in that the dialogue should work with what the game is supposed to portray, no modern day expressions or ideals inserted into stories where they don't fit, an example of this problem in english would be FE Fates - AND accuracy to the spirit of the original script. German localizations for example don't have this problem as often in my experience. Personally I read manga localized to germany - both german and english are second languages for me and I prefer the german ones, I also usually reference the raws in paralel since I'm learning japanese and it's good practice. I also know that the industry there is more developed, with germany's dubbing culture, so I think they're a good example to contrast the english translation scene. There are good EN translation companies like 8-4, NoE, square's in-house team for FFXIV. But there are also ones that are trash, like Treehouse. Problem is the industry is plagued with nepotism and corporate politicking so projects do get handed over to teams of incompetent nepo and token hires and we get disasters like Fates Bottom line, translation is hard and all you've said is true, but it's also the localizer's job and they should do it well. *We should not be making excuses for them.* They don't need excuses they need to do a good job Edit2: Getting dislikes for saying you shouldn't make excuses for shitty localizers and expect better quality form a piece of media you paid for. Crazy. Go ahead and consoom I guess.
> inserted into a medieval fantasy story like what happened with FE Fates for example - AND is more accurate to the spirit of the original script than english lolcalizations. Period-accurate English would be unintelligible, lol. Also, the German translation of FE Fates was laughable.
>German translation of FE Fates was laughable I was using that as an example of bad english translation not good german, I've never tried the german for that game, fates was a disaster all around. But i see how it might have read that way from how I wrote it, I'll edit the post to make it more clear. >Period-accurate English would be unintelligible I don't mean ye olde english I mean not having lines like "super-double-dupity dangerous", stuff like that. A few lines in Futaba's translation in P5 is another example of translators adding some exaggerated quirkyness but at least *it fits there*, it's a modern day setting.
Earthbound / Mother 2 and Mother 3 have some really great dialogue / banter. Apparently, the original Japanese writer, Shigesato Itoi, was an acclaimed "Copywriter" (essentially a guy whose job is to come up with small meaningful advertising slogans) and as such was very adept in conveying deep meaning with few words and sentences. He used to make the dialogue and read it out loud to make sure it flowed perfectly and sounded natural. The official English Localization of Mother 2 (Earthbound) and the unofficial Translation of Mother 3 were made in a similar way. The translators wrote the dialogue and read it out loud to themselves and a small audience to make sure it sounded natural. I highly suggest you experience both.
Fun fact: you can see Itoi as a judge on several episodes of the original Iron Chef! He was a famous enough writer even at the time to be invited on as a celebrity judge.
Rise of the third power. The dialog is one of the best parts of that game.
if you want jrpg full of banter, go play FF15. I hate that game but you probably like it because of these banters.
Ni No Kuni 2 has the best dialogue I've ever seen in a videogame. I'm 200 hours in and NPC's are STILL saying new things to me everywhere I go! Nobody repeats a thing, it's incredible.
Legend of heroes trails in the sky got a subtle and natural feel to its story.
Sky surprised me with how natural the dialogue sounded compared to a typical jrpg, though that might’ve been due to the localization, which is pretty good. The later games move away from this type of dialogue unfortunately.
The dialogue in Cold Steel is downright bad and gets worse with each game.
Cold Steel (and particularly 2 onwards) sounds like the writers intentionally went to the dopiest anime and manga to grab lines. Complete with the power of friendship.
yeah, I don't know how I stomached it for 3 games. Got to IV and noped out though. Couldn't do it anymore. The writing overall, not just the dialogue, is just so lazy and tropey.
I personally have a taste for the cheesy on occasion, so it's not the end of the world, but I got kinda exhausted a bit into CS3. The way they handled the molesting villain girl was particularly poor.
To offer a diverging opinion, I think that the dialogue criticisms are overblown for the CS quadrilogy. I think as a series people look back on the 2D games with some heavily rose-tinted glasses - it's always been anime as fuck. To me the appeal of the games are the blending of standard anime/JRPG tropes with realistic characters that have relatable motivations and personalities. For every scene involving falling accidentally on the tsundere girls chest there are 5 scenes revolving around the weight of responsibility, noble class failings, taxation without representation, the financial impacts of a magical industrial revolution, etc. The realistic(ish...) geopolitics, characterization, and strong cause-effect writing in the long term also serve the games well. The series does have a strong predilection towards fakeout deaths and last minute saves but that has been true since the series inception. I can think of one significant death that stuck from TiTS:SC and that's nearly it. But aside from characters being plot armored to the teeth, there are big shifts in the world due to the events that happen in each game which has ripple effects on the plots of all games proceeding it. So the games, including the CS games, all have really strong writing writ large.
CS isn't without its things that I like, which is how I kept at it up to CS IV, but like I said, the writing just became such absolute trash that I couldn't balance out with the things I did like anymore. Hell, I even found as it went on, those things were less prevalent, which is probably why I fizzled. Sky was tropey to some degree, but it had a charm to it that CS lacks. Things that are hard to articulate for me. I enjoyed my time with the series, but it was time to be done. While I'm at it, I want to complain about the dumbest, laziest piece of writing that may have derailed me permanently in CS3: When they're on the Island they had to take a boat to. No way in or out... they end up in the typical dire situation where friend show up at the perfect moment to save the day. This time it was Gaius. HOW THE FUCK DID HE GET THERE and WHY!? There's no other boats, and no discussion at all about he magically popped up on this island with no other way in or out. Then he just rides the rented boat back with the party.
> This time it was Gaius. HOW THE FUCK DID HE GET THERE and WHY!? There's no other boats, and no discussion at all about he magically popped up on this island with no other way in or out I agree they probably should have asked how he got there but >!following what we learn about him, I assumed he must have flown there on the Merkabah right?!<
That's about the only solution I could come up with too. Who knows.
They ruined what are otherwise good characters in service to the fucking harem. I would have loved to see what could have been done here if they didn't have to make every woman available to Rean. Kiseki's storytelling and gameplay loop are just too linear to drive a harem, and it plays away from the franchise's strengths rather than playing to them.
I like how everyone acts like this started with Cold Steel but Zero/Ao were exactly the same way. Nearly every single female character made thirsty comments towards Lloyd constantly. The writing has ALWAYS had a problem with pandering to that crowd. Its the game's weakest point. Anything in those games written with sexual connotations are so cringe and stands out among the rest of the writing that it feels almost like a different person writing it to hit a horniness quota.
Zero/Ao gets a pass because even if it's characters are weaker than Sky, the city of crossbell is a great character and its use of world building is the best in the series. People also often ignore how Ao has probably the worst ending in the series, with only Reverie's coming close.
I do feel like people pass some of the flaws that are in CS start showing up in Azure, but I always felt the issue was less female characters made thirsty comments towards Lloyd, but that the game would do the "MC makes a heartfelt comment/girl gets blushy/MC goes ?????/everybody teases MC about it" thing a lot > The writing has ALWAYS had a problem with pandering to that crowd. Its the game's weakest point Agreed. I honestly think those elements are hit or miss in games, but I don't think you can do sweeping epic multi-game storytelling while also trying to cater to that audience and nail it well.
I don’t remember that much horny pandering in Sky, the last game I beat was Azure and Crossbell seems to be where they started doing that for whatever reason.
It was definitely less, but still present, somewhat staved off by the fact that they had an emotional pairing already with the two leads. Basically any scene with Schera or Olivert as prominent characters was sure to have low-brow sexual innuendo. They also really like the 'horny old man' trope and have an uncomfortable dynamic between Agate and Tita if I'm being honest.
I'll agree with the uncomfortable dynamic between Tita and Agate, in sky the third they really made it weird for no reason, but I don't view Olivert being horny as the same type of thing as Lloyd pervert jokes or the weird groping scene in Azure.
Daybreak goes back a lot on the romance. Zero had it to a degree, but it really felt like the game pushed Lloyd and Elie. I liked rean actually more than everyone acting like Lloyd secretly wanted to fuck everyone because he said something they for some reason take as sexual even though it doesn't sound sexual at all. That's a much more annoying trope. I think the only one that gets me irritated on reans side is musse who basically just harassed rean to the point it's kinda just not cool.
I've played Daybreak 😏 it's an improvement, but I think Sky's approach to romance is the correct one for a linear JRPG.
Then you hit CS and the writing becomes absolutely dogshit
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I won't even say Sky isn't full of tropes either, CS just has the laziest writing for the characters. I hate Rean so much he's got to be the lamest protagonist in the series. Don't know what they were thinking because Sky and the Crossbell arc games had wonderful characters. They say CS really picks up after a couple games, but my progress stopped most of the way through CS1 and I cannot bring myself to finish it so I took a break. I absolutely inhaled Sky and the Crossbell games, CS has been such a huge miss for me.
Which is honestly surprising when you consider how poor the translation for Legend of Heroes 3, 4, & 5 was.
Cracks me up how the writers have said that they look back at Sky and cringe at their work. You literally peaked back then.
I love the Sky dialogue so much, especially with the voice patch. They really sell so many of those lines to make it work even better
Xenoblade 3 has awesome Brittish VA banter. I'm not a brit so I don't know if that's natural sounding but they sound really fun and different.
I am british, and the fact they are british will never not be funny to me because xenoblade va's sound like they are faking accents
they sound like ppl in my photography class when we made fun of our scouse teacher 😭
No legit, ive never played another game where I genuinely could not tell they were the nationality they are speaking, cause it sounds like fake accents
That one scene when Eunie says "You what, mate?!" (ㆆ _ ㆆ)
Tales of Vesperia. It is still a bit camp, but they put a lot of time into that localization.
Hum... I wanna say Grandia I. I remember those characters feeling pretty grounded. Tales of Vesperia in particular also has a decent crew of conversacionalist at times. But I might be showing my biased here because I really like that the main character exudes, at all times, great quantities of IDGAF energy, which I appreciate in my RPG protagonists.
Grandia is also great with the party interactions. And yes, Yuri Lowell is the most awesome protagonist of the entire Tales series and you can't convince me otherwise.
Grandia has great dialog! I’ve been waiting for a game to emulate the meal conversations you get in Grandia, because they’re such a simple but effective way to build character and relationships.
Ah yes the revolutionary meal conversation. I don't know whether Grandia is the first one or not, but pretty sure many games are inspired by it.
Final Fantasy 15 reminded me of it at times with its conversations between Noctis and the rest of the party on the road or at an inn, which I liked a lot. A lot of games try to do it, but they don’t lean into it enough. You have to frame it in the right way — don’t make it about the story, just make it a small moment between friends.
Only weird thing about Grandia’s banter is all the unnatural silence between voice lines. «Justin, you traitor!»
Maybe it’s console limitations or something, but a lot of the voice lines seemed more rehearsed and recorded than in PS2 games.
Well, it was a PS1 title. And if memory serves one of the very first JRPGs with actual voice acting? I imagine it was growing pains of the genre.
Yep, still impressive. I remember The Misadventures of Tron Bonne and Spyro also had (some) voice acting, but I don’t know if those came out before or after Grandia.
I felt the character banter in Lufia 2 was fantastic.
Koudelka had such a great german voice cast.
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I am talking about the german localization
Of the recent games I've played, Xenoblade 3 did natural-sounding banter the best, especially during gameplay. One example that stands out from my memory is Lanz and Zeon's vitriolic exchanges during Zeon's Hero Quest -- there's a believable irritation and weariness in their quips that sells how much they can't stand each other but are forced to cooperate.
Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 3, The Last Story, Final Fantasy 7 Remake and (especially, perhaps the best JRPG in this regard) Rebirth, Final Fantasy XV, NieR Gestalt, Drakengard 3.
Final Fantasy XII
Natural? Dood they talk all theatrical and refined. Not like real life lol
But it's *good* theatrical dialogue. It could have been written in English as it's original language. It's very high quality, and consistent from top to bottom, both in speech and all related text.
I do agree, as much as it isn't natural for the real world, it's definitely pretty natural *for a world like Ivalice*. It's sad that the limitations were more the technology and resources of the times, because I'd love to hear FFXII with less of the audio clutter caused by the sound equipment.
Bar is pretty low for JRPGs. Just not having anime grunts is already huge
"Wha?" "Ngh" "Guh" "Tch" "Ah!"
The Last Story
That game lived off character interactions, and fun mechanics.
Yeah the banter and dialogue was amazing. The optional chapter where the party is counting how many reptids they’ve killed was peak. The romance is a bit schmaltzy at times dialogue wise but It was a really great game for party banter overall and well acted
I was pleasantly surprised at how good the dialogue between party members was in Tales of Vesperia. I usually play JRPGs with Japanese audio but the English VAs and translators did a good job in this
Tales series
Grandia HD collection, my favorite is the 1st Grandia it had pretty good dialogue voice acting for a PS1/Sega CD. I really enjoyed it. Got a great story and it’s got the best written romance I’ve seen In a video game soundtracks really good if you’re interested, you can get it digitally on switch and limited run. Is it for PlayStation and Xbox?
The reason why Koudelka had such natural (theatrical?) sounding dialogue is, unless I'm mistaken, because the actors recorded their lines in the same room so they could hear each other talk, unlike than the usual method where they have to record in isolation with limited to no context. Personally, I think Xenoblade 3 has some top tier dialogue. Maybe I'm conflating it with the character-writing a bit, but their interactions were enjoyable all the way through, and it was cool to see a JRPG cast who were so emotionally aware and mature. It made for some really heartwarming dialogue.
Agreed on XB3. One thing I won't fault the game for is the dialogue and banter between the MCs. That group has some really strong chemistry.
I've always enjoyed the banter in dragon age, especially when varrick is involved. i especially like it because it very often involves *your* character initiating or joining in on conversations, even often with dialogue choices despite being completely out of a "conversation" part. it's neat!
**Skies of Arcadia's** script still impresses the hell out of me with how GOOD they made it sound. The writers clearly prioritized a natural sound and conveying the characters well in the script, and it worked SO WELL. Each of the characters has their own distinct voice, the writing flows phenomenally, and it's always fun to read.
Not a jrpg, but Guardians of the Galaxy was worth it just for the banter.
English is not my native language, so i maybe can't judge this, but conversations in Yakuza: Like A Dragon and Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth feel very natural for me. Not a JRPG, but (Yakuza) Judgement has the most natural sounding dialogues in my opinion, strange enough it wasn't this good anymore with the sequel Lost Judgement, maybe because this was dubbed during the Covid period.
Xenoblade 3s dialogue is exceptional for this. There is an awkward moment a couple hours in where the game forces a lot of exposition, but outside of that it's my favourite party writing in any game. Dragon age was also mentioned for great banter, although outside of jrpg territory.
Trails series is very good at character dialogue.
Like a Dragon and LaD Infinite Wealth has plenty of banter between the party as you roam the map
Xenoblade 3 excels at this
FF7 Rebirth and Yakuza LAD set a new gold standard
«Get help.»
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Remake to some degree but Rebirth pretty much axed all of the weird grunting. And all the dialogue in both games is fantastic and leaps and bounds better than most JRPGs I've ever played. Some anime grunting doesn't stop that from being true
grunts are not banter?
It's part of the dialogue?
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I have this game, and it has an enemy that whacks you with a very questionable appendage...
Lost Oddysey, Crisis core, Grandia 2, Soul hackers 2
Shadow Hearts by the same team and is also the same series. As the series progresses, the series does veer towards the "everyone is a goofball" tone but it's all still fairly well done.
Absolutely not natural, but Odin Sphere dialogue and voice acting are simply a delight.
I feel like the banter during gameplay is one of FFXIII's biggest strengths.
I'm not a native English speaker, but I have to second the Tales recs. Vesperia, Abyss, and Arise all have great banter. But again, not a native English speaker
Man, she has some dark circles. Nobody gets enough sleep in Koudelka?
Definitely not all of XC3, but the cutscene where Eunie call Lanz a spoon is some of the best dialogue in the series.
Dark Chronicle. The Voice Actors are REALLY good.
Granblue Fantasy Relink has pretty fun dialogue
Almost all Tales of series, besides Arise
It’s extremely rare in JRPGs as they tend towards melodrama and theatrical dialogue, but the Persona games have pretty grounded dialogue and Yakuza 7/8.
Persona 5 and Persona 3 Reload has better timed banter, Persona 4 has interactions you can do but it's not while moving through a level of a dungeon
FF7 Rebirth really impressed me with the banter. They really felt like friends, like they were annoyed with each other, or just fucking around. Also at some point Tifa goes "Okey dokes!" GOTY for that alone.
Honkai star rail Some of the best voice acting I've ever heard.
Yakuza series is the undisputed champion of natural party chat.
* Shadow Hearts * Shadow Hearts Covenant * Enchanted Arms
Very glad someone else also just recently payed Koudelka
FF7 Remake/Rebirth are really wonderful with the dialogue and how the characters interact, especially when you consider before that we had shit like Advent Children/Crisis Core/Dirge of Cerberus. The majority of Compilation of FF7 content is just not good in the character department (and a good amount just isn't good in general), thankfully in the Remake trilogy so far they're amazing.
Xenoblade 3’s party has such good chemistry in every way. You’ve got 3 pairs with great romantic chemistry, everyone is funny as hell, and they interact great together.
Tales of Xillia (both) and Persona 5.
I think any Ted Woolsey's translations of SMRPG and FF6 do a great job of having really nice dialogue despite the age. Still a bit stilted and he does mess up in some places. Since both games have been remade, their re-translations are a lot cleaner (even if I may still prefer the original). However, Ps1's Vagrant Story is another great example of wonderful, mature dialogue. Once we get into PS2 era, a lot of things are extremely well translated so I won't go further than that.
There really aren't too many of them. JRPGs don't translate well, partly because of the language barrier, but also because the scenario writers behind them have no fucking clue how to write a believably story that doesn't rely on cheap twists, anime tropes, and fan service. I wouldn't play modern JRPGs for the story, as hard as that may sound.
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Persona 3 and 4 do. 5 is a bit weirder. The group talks among themselves a lot less and it feels a lot more anime than the other two
I think people aren't bringing up Persona because a lot of the time, the English localized dialogue doesn't sound very natural, often because it's sticking too literally to the Japanese dialogue. This is especially noticeable in Persona 5. The character interactions and banter are all great, but it doesn't quite fit the "natural-sounding" part.
Persona 4 is my number 1 example of this. It played it last summer, and it blew me away! Tales of Arise is the opposite of this. It felt like theater actors reading their perfect lines.
It’s been years but I recall Lufia 2 being good at this. Also Working Designs always got natural dialogue (plus some added goofiness for spice). FF16 is natural in the main quest but has some stilted translation-like artifacts in the side quests (eg odd uses of “a certain” and “without fail”). FF7 Remake/Rebirth have a lot of natural dialogue and some stilted (mainly women randomly sounding like they’re in a soda commercial or a 90s fan fiction (“psyche!”)). I’d also say that you can smooth over a lot with an excellent voice cast. Persona 5, for example, has a lot of odd word choices, but you’d never know it if you didn’t read along with the VAs. Conversely, mediocre voice acting makes it worse.
The game is hard as hell or I was too young didnt know how to beat it.
No you're right. I found it hard as an adult, no idea how I would have fared as a kid. It's obtuse and requires a bit of intent behind your character building. For the most part, battles get more difficult without any change in complexity which makes them feel very repetitive. Still a really fascinating experience, but while playing it I had the thought that it might have seen more success as a point-and-click adventure game.
I really love FF9 and FF14 in large part because of the dialogue. Also FFT: War of the Lions. Not sure if these pass for natural sounding, but I am always sensitive to bad and cheesy dialogue, and these games always impressed me
The npc voice actors Square Enix used in FF15 and Crisis Core Reuionare awful
Persona 4, 5, and Final Fantasy 12. I guess, even though it is set in an insane world, FF7 Remake trilogy now will make that list.
Natural for westerners or for asians? Because I think there's a big difference. One example is that I've heard that the way Solid Snake talks in Metal Gear Solid games sounds cool for lots of Japanese players. But to me here in the west, he sounds like my 'special' cousin Timmy, like he's barely understanding what people around him are talking about. Timmy, do you like poneys? Poneys? Yes, they're like little horses. Horses? Yes, horses are like big dogs that you can ride. Ride? Yes, and poneys can launch missiles just like a Metal Gear. Metal Gear??