About a week ago, the creator of the Tales series had announced that they would be translating and localizing Tales of Hearts R for the PS Vita for both NA and Europe. Now, ToH is a game I've been waiting for for a long time now. I thought it was never going to be released here. Tales of Hearts follows the boy named Shing who runs into a girl named Kohak Hearts and her brother. Kohak's heart has been separated across the world and Shing being the protagonist of the game obviously goes out of his way to resemble it.
This announcement was very awesome news (I missed this topic since I wasn't on here during April >_>). I was actually gonna import Hearts R as I didn't even think about a localisation. I'm glad I held off. They've changed Shing Meteorite's name to Kor Meteor. Everyone was up in arms about this on GameFAQs, but apparently they did it to keep with the mineral stone theme and Kor means 'heart' in Latin apparently. Kohak's name was also changed to Kohaku yet Hisui's name has remained the same. Can't say I get the reasoning behind those two. I'm hoping for a release date soon!
All aboard the ToH hype train Choo choo~ Buhh it's crazy with the Vita now getting a large surge of games coming its way. I guess this is great news for those needing a reason to pick up their VItas and start playing~
So some news about the NA release came out at E3 for Hearts. It was brief... like 5 seconds brief... but its an important thing. Tales of Hearts R will be subtitled and not given and English Dubbing. I'm fine with this because I frankly like the voices in Hearts sub.
I suspected that it would be sub only. Two games coming out in the second half of the year...I kinda thought they wouldn't be able to put the same resources into both. I think this will once again bring the Vesperia PS3 fanboys out of hiding because Bamco said before that they wouldn't release a Tales game overseas as sub only. Now they'll expect the same for Vesperia as a reason for it to be brought over. :/
I don't mind a subbed game since I always prefer Japanese voice acting over English, but it may deter a good chunk of the Tales fans here in North America. Up to this point, (I believe) all Tales games were English dubbed save a few that had Japanese voice acting available (ex. Tales of Symphonia on the PS3). This could mean a pretty low sale count. Hopefully that won't be the case as I do wish to see more games coming over to America WITH the option of a Japanese voiceover rather than English dubs.
It will definitely put people off. I've seen countless Tales fans all across the forums I visit saying they've cancelled their pre-order or that they won't buy it now. Tbh I don't think Bamco cared about it being localised - the only reason they did is because Sony would've thrown a little extra cash their way as it was the top request by fans in their poll. They won't be expecting big sales and it won't be too much of a loss for them. I can't stop thinking how nonsensical the name changes are now though. Since it's being subbed, the characters will be saying "Shing" while the subs read "Kor". I don't understand that mentality...
