You're right about one thing, Matt. Persona 5 is no Persona 4 Golden. Because Persona 5 is a better game.
Agreed, and I effing loved P4G. I get that the localization was imperfect, though I think some of what people consider bad localization was Japanese cliches and cultural references not being laboriously contextualized for other audiences, which I'm fine with. And yeah, the big bad starting off as a cup is weird. He gets much better, though.
"That aside...." is my personal devil in Persona games. It gets said so often (in 4 & 5) and is a horribly awkward phasing that is rarely heard in real life.
That being said, Persona 5 definitely stood out for not translating intentions and inflections in speech much more than 4 did. It didn't ruin the game for me or anything, but there's no way you can argue it's a good translation. A good translation takes the intention and context of a language and converts it into something natural and representative of the other language. There are a TON of examples of this in Persona 5 being done very poorly.
To answer @jeff 's original request, here is the paragraph about what this category is, or rather should be. This category isn't a bad idea and it can recognise games that get overlooked in best story because the main 'story' is average:
The way in which a world builds the background and setting out to support the main story and gameplay mechanics. The mechanical way you explore the world is not relevant to this (e.g. I can't climb this rock or go in this window). It's about the way a game fleshes out its setting in environmental details, background audio lines, side stories/audio/text entries.
Yes some of these can be folded into best story, but that usually tends to focus on the main storyline and characters, as it should IMO.
Excellent list, Brendon! Have not played some of these (Kentucky Route Zero for one) so you've added some games to my wishlist....
Ohhh, KRZ is sooooo good. It kills me that it hasn't really been mentioned in the various GOTY awards over the years on Giant Bomb, apart from people saying "I wish I'd played KRZ because I think I'd really like it"
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