This game frustrates me. I enjoy playing it, I fucking hate reading the bullshit the writers came up with. The main conceit, so far, is that you're criminals because you change people's hearts. Like, what the fuck? Someone changes their behaviour, comes out and confesses their crimes, does not press charges of any kind and they start looking for the people doing it on what grounds? Assault? Jaywalking? What?

Also, they link it to that apathy syndrome or whatever it's called that's apparently been around for a few years. Why? How? The symptoms (loss of self) and outcomes (people dying) don't seem in any way related.

Am I wrong? Will there be some kind of reveal on that stuff later on that at least partially explains why, Sae, Akechi, the police, etc. are looking for you? Because so far there is literally (yes, literally) zero logic behind it.

@paulunga: there is an explanation but I don't want to say too much. I thought it was fine. I don't agree that there is zero logic there. I will also say the thing you're hating only intensifies as the game goes on, so be prepared.

The logic isn't that hard, considering the group uses mysterious calling cards to flag when someone is about to confess, and then they do, it's obvious third party tampering is involved in the confessions, naturally an investigation would follow this.

They pretty much outright say early on that a lot of people suspect The Phantom Thieves of coercing their targets to confess through threats or violence. Because, logically, why else would they just come out and publicly confess all their misdeeds out of nowhere? They aren't immediately assuming all the heart stealing stuff is real and they're not just going to let vigilantes run around and do whatever. (Despite what comic books may have taught you, vigilantism is very much a crime that police do not condone.) There's also some more spoilery reasons for why you become targets so easily and why mental shutdowns are linked that I won't get into.

Obviously there's some suspension of disbelief required here considering we're dealing with supernatural anime mumbo jumbo, but this part isn't that hard to follow or roll with.

I don't really think the writing is bad but the thing you seem to really dislike is going to intensify so.. might be rough?

Well it does get explained in a fairly decent way that I'm okay with......that being said if you are this upset this early then mayyyybe this game isn't for u man cause the writing style is what it is...some like it some don't

I don't really understand the problem

Hi! Welcome to video games! Please be aware that many video games, JRPGs in particular, tell stories that often involve melodrama and fantastical settings that would not exist in the real world.

If you think that is too intense, or you find fantasy offensive for some reason, then maybe video games aren't for you. There are many other hobbies that might suit your need for realistic fidelity better.

IDK if someone was going around 'stealing peoples hearts' you think the police wouldn't investigate that shit? I mean think about HOW that would happen in a world without personas and shit. How many ways can you completely change someones personality against their will. Torture, drugs, whatever. It makes complete sense that the popo is after you, if for nothing else than for figuring out the methodology

Zero logic behind a Japanese video game story? Well, thats a first.

It hasn't really bothered me because I just basically chalk it up to Japan is gonna Japan. Its like any movie about time travel, just let go of all logic and go with the flow.

The methods behind the heartchanging is not known to the general public or to the police, for that matter. So everyone thinks in the boundries of reality. How could you force criminals to confess their crimes? Blackmail is probably the first thing that comes to mind or other illegal methods. So, there's that.

If you take how it's actually done, it's another can of worms entirely. The team essentially alters the personality of the criminal, against their will. It's like drugging someone and make them do things they wouldn't do otherwise. They are criminals, sure, but that doesn't lessen the team's guiltiness.

The syndrome accidents started not long before the game started, it's not been around for years and the game tells you things about the syndrome early on (Morgana explains it to you what triggers the syndrome before you fight Kamoshida) and later on you will find out why people die because of it.

So yes, you're wrong about pretty much everything. It all comes down to "play the game more and pay attention."

I don't think youill enjoy the rest of the game then to be honest, they do back up their logic later on in the game though (also it's a JRPG, at some point you do have to accept a suspension of disbelief)

Without going into any detail, it's a Persona game and there's more going on than you initially are aware of.

To talk about it more would be getting deep into the themes of this game which I do think are quite well written and come together well enough in the end.

Unfortunately the localisation remains a mixed bag throughout.

@kestrelpi: I see the occasional person bring up the localization as being spotty but never with actual reasoning. Where does the localization falter notably that isn't just a general aspect of the games story?

It's been a continued vague complaint on the Beastcast too and I just didn't really see it.

I would like to know as well because I never noticed anything egregious.

This game is mediocre at best so you should feel ok to just stop playing it. (Also, unrelated to topic, but Atlus can go fuck themselves with their "no you cannot even take screenshots" policy.)

It's a game where you kinda look at everything closely but I think most of the best writing comes from all the confidants. Personally, I kinda wished they had a moment where I could pick out the actual culprit like in P4.

I don't think localisation is at fault. The most obvious one is the pronunciation of Sakamoto. But another one I saw over at Kotaku (if I can recall) was a developer or something calling out a shogi test problem in the game.

P4G has you asking how many books there are in Murakami's wind-up bird chronicles and who came up with translating "I love you" into Japanese. So it's kinda pointless calling it out now.

I thought the writing in the QL was pretty bad--might be localization though. So I'm not surprised to hear someone have problems with it. I'm also not surprised I've only really heard one or two people on this site have a problem with it.

@zeik:The coercion/blackmail angle extra doesn't make sense considering the third target. He's someone the officials can't get because they think he might be blackmailing people (with many signs pointing that way, mind you, UNLIKE the Phantom Thieves' completely unexplainable actions) but have no way of proving it, which is the reason why the Phantom Thieves even target him in the first place! And it's in stark contrast to P3/4, in the third one you're acting expressly under the supervision of the director of your school and for the Kirijo Group. In the fourth one you're much more closely tied to actual murder in a small town so the police going after you is more understandable (even without Young Detective's involvement), but in this one it just seems like the explanation for most things is "adults just don't get it". Except for some hints that someone at the top might know what's going on with Mementos and the Palaces, but I don't think either Akechi or Sae know anything about that.

@whatshisface: That 2-3 years for the syndromes starting is a direct quote from the game. I think that's something Sae's boss said at some point. Again, someone breaking down completely and a person suddenly having a change of heart and confessing their crimes is in no way related. We as the player know that it is, but that's because we know the trigger behind both is the same. And even so, the police or whoever wouldn't act on the suspicion of blackmail without any indication other than criminals freely confessing their crimes. And I absolutely agree that the Phantom Thieves are guilty of coercion, even if it's of a magical kind. They even accept the consequence of possibly killing their targets without much of a second thought. That makes the bad guys' arcs so much weaker, too. They're hilariously over-the-top villains that don't redeem themselves in any way because it's not of their own accord at all.

@turkthomas: You're the worst. That wasn't helpful to anyone.

Also, I'd like to add that I actually still like the S.Link stuff, general gameplay and pretty much anything not related to the main story. I mean, I've played almost 40 hours over the last 4 days. I'm begrudgingly enjoying P5?

I don't see how people are insulting the writing/localization which is charming and engaging enough to suck away numerous days of my life just reading dialogue for hours at a time.

That's a success in my opinion

Compared to Tokyo Mirage Sessions which had a plot that I just could not care about at all and eventually dropped entirely.

The police or whoever wanting to find out how/why these people suddenly confessed makes perfect sense to me. I don't understand the problem you have with that.

Them thinking there may be a connection to the psychotic breaks/shutdowns doesn't seem that crazy to me either. Both involve a person having a sudden change in personality and behavior.

All that said, I'm about 50 hours in, so I have no idea where the story ends up.

@paulunga: By the 3rd victim they've already started investigating The Phantom Thieves and the calling card provides a pretty obvious link between those first two cases and the third. Even if they still don't understand their methods, or consider the possibility that it's a copycat or something, the Phantom Thieves would still obviously be the primary suspects. Presumably they would still be investigating any other possible leads, but with their methods unknown and the circumstantial evidence piling up they would have no other real targets.

If the 3rd victim was the first or second they might dismiss it easier, but by the 3rd time this happens under mysterious but similar circumstances, and a clear calling card from the Phantom Thieves claiming responsibility, only an idiot wouldn't draw connections between the cases.

The police have every reason to believe The Phantom Thieves are up to something illegal and it is their obligation to investigate situations like this until they can prove one way or the other, and questioning the primary suspects would be pretty damn high on their list of things to do.

This isn't related to the discussion in any way: I just noticed my Persona are sorted pretty much by how much I like the associated Confidant (except for Hanged, that one deserves to be higher):

@paulunga: Devil is too high imo.

@zeik: Eh, I think I just really like girls. XD

There are a few places I noticed that were weird. Not unintelligible, but just sort of odd. Like during one of the interrogation interludes, the ADA tells you to "keep it brief and only of the truth," which sounds a bit off. It would have been better as just "tell the truth." I don't think I've ever heard a native English speaker say "of the truth."

@paulunga: Fortune should at least be higher then. Chihaya is way more likeable than Ohya.

@lawgamer: That doesn't really seem that weird to me. I'm pretty sure that is a proper sentence, and although not really how I talk, it fits the speech patterns of someone like Sae.

@lawgamer: There's nothing really odd about that sentence.

More importantly though, there's no reason the localization team at Atlus USA wouldn't be able to write perfectly normal sentences in english.

@paulunga: Moon is at the bottom and that's the important thing. Very nice.

This was linked in an opinion piece on Polygon. The site provides some examples of bad localization. Idk if it's going to be enough to change your opinion on the localization however.

@cerberus3dog: When I'm actually playing, I kind of get used to some of the awkward phrasing, though it's definitely stood out at times. I did find Ann's "Are you really a bad person as the rumor says?" line pretty clunky, especially as the opening to her character trailer. As someone who doesn't speak Japanese, a lot of this is pretty unknowable, but I guess I'm most concerned with complaints about the translation losing a character's "voice". If characters are really losing personality in the localization, that's a pretty big bummer. I think at one point Yusuke refers to someone as "that guy" or something, and it's weird and un-Yusuke-like, and I'm wondering how much care was actually given to the characters themselves when translating the game. I like the characters a lot! I just wonder if I'd like them more if I spoke Japanese.

@cerberus3dog: I can see where they're coming from at least, though it's not something I noticed actually playing.

There's an example from Futaba on that page though that I do feel is actually just completely missing the point and not really a 'mistake'.

I don't even mind the word choices or the stiffness of some lines, it's the times when what a character says doesn't reflect what the person they're following up from said--non sequiturs or just really bumbling sentence openers essentially. Thankfully it doesn't bother me like it does other people.

To address the topic, I don't think the things you're outlining as problems are actually problems. My playthrough being almost 90 hours long, I don't totally remember the opening hours, but I was never under the impression that the mental shutdowns and psychotic breakdowns (which are different things in-game) in P5 were linked to Apathy Syndrome from P3. Other people have already explained why the cops would be after the Phantom Thieves, since the team makes damn sure that people know why the victims are confessing with their calling cards and the Phan-Site.

I'm more than open to hearing about translation errors, especially with respect to things like Japanese honorifics (which I know nothing about), but this site actually unsold me on the argument.

Flipping through the examples they give just reinforced that I don't think the game really had many localization errors at all; there isn't even anything wrong with like half of the examples used. Nobody would bat an eye if many of these lines were in an English game, but because it's in a Japanese game, suddenly it's all 'localization and translation errors.' Don't get me wrong: some of these are definitely stiff/awkward phrasing and some are just incorrect English, but in many of these the site's author is being overly nitpicky about semantics, intentionally obtuse for the sake of argument, or, in some cases, actually incorrect about what sentences are and are not acceptable or correct in the English language.

Let's also not forget the fact that spoken English has even more leeway than written English, and this is a game where 80-90% of the text is spoken by a character.

Okay, lemme attack this from another direction.

It might be true that the localisation isn't a 'problem' (I disagree, there are plenty of outright errors, and for me they made the thing less enjoyable than it could have been, but I'm willing to contemplate for the sake of argument that it isn't a problem).

But it ALSO isn't very good, and something I really enjoyed about P4 was that the localisers really made a lot of those lines come to life. Even when they were getting across odd concept, it rarely felt unintentionally stiff, and characters like Kanji were written in a way that was incredibly endearing, and it felt like the localisers had a bit of fun with it without changing the intent.

Another game I played this year was Yakuza 0, and going to that localisation it just feels like it was done with so much more care and heart.

For the most part P5's is perfectly serviceable, and on occasion (particularly in text messages and such) it's even good. But it's hardly ever GREAT.

I don't know that 'Well it just isn't very good' addresses the question much but seeing the examples from that site above I can at least see a point of contention, if not necessarily agree with it all that much.

The localization stuff is definitely overblown, but acting like it doesn't exist or is exceptional isn't fair either. Here's an example from just now. I had one character say to another:

"Think of your justice!"

Response: "My justice..."

Um, what?

I guess part of my thinking is that when I hear someone say 'The localization seems bad' it brings to mind a different meaning than 'Oh the writing is bad'.

@efesell: Well, to be fair, I don't speak Japanese, so I guess I shouldn't assume instances like that are poor localization. It just, to me, reads like something that was poorly translated, especially in comparison to how good a lot of the writing is. It could just be bad writing, you're right. It just doesn't feel like bad writing to me, because it borders on nonsense.

Oh I would say that particular line is probably accurate to a fault.

@kestrelpi: It's been a long time since I've played P4, but I think you're right that there's a bit less personality in this game's localization. It's hard to imagine something quite as inspired as the legendary Funky Student existing in this game. I will say that I think Futaba's nerdspeak is pretty well done and endearing. And the IM conversations have caused me to laugh out loud a few times.

And though the translation might be far from perfect, one aspect of the localization I think they nailed is the voices. I think the main cast sounds great, every voice feels like it fits the character. Haru's voice maybe sounds the most like someone doing a voice, but I still think it fits pretty well. Overall, I think this might be my favorite voice cast of the series.

I would say that the biggest problem with it is how uneven the localisation is. It's not consistently subpar, but it is in a surprising number of spots, and often during really important character/story moments. I've seen that website with the examples, but I noticed errors which were voiced, even. A particular late game character makes some sort of speech and says something (I can't recall what) where it's sort of obvious that the translation left out a word.

At another point a character says something like 'If it's okay by me then it's okay in the eyes of the law' when obviously they meant the exact opposite: 'If it's okay in the eyes of the law, it's okay by me.'

And at other spots it's just written in a very dry way which doesn't do much to bring out the character of whoever is speaking, or which conveys the basic meaning but doesn't do much to convey the feeling behind the words, and those kinds of things are the biggest problem, and unfortunately most of it happens in the main story - the side stuff is generally much better!

There are parts which are done very well - I think the Phansite messages are pretty well done, and the text message story dialogues, and some of the side stuff I mentioned.

I concur with the site that think it's probably the fact the translation team was very big which led to the general unevenness. It's nothing to do with the capability of the individual translators, it was just a too-many-cooks type situation. I guess after P4's mostly excellent localisation and the extra time given to this one I was hoping for something at least equally good.

I honestly remember having way more trouble dealing with localization in P4 than I had going through this, although it was an entirely different set of potential problems. That game was very insistent on consistently rendering things the same way over and over and it stood out as such an annoyance for whatever reason. I remember being driven slightly mad by hearing Nanako weave 'Big Bro' into every line of her dialogue for example.

I guess for me individual stilted lines just don't really stand out so much.

Just click on the black line if you are truly feeling impatient. I'm spoiling the hell out of it.

Otherwise, it will be explained and it's very very overt and hard to miss. No localization error will make this ambiguous in the slightest ( I'm not sure what everyone here is going on about other than reacting to a polygon article, it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic).

The straight forward answer: At some point one of the target of the phantom thieves dies as he is confesing and it gets pinned on them. For the police, that one murder makes them believe them might be the cause for all of the other cases. Even then is hard for them to pin any crime on them, as you assumed. But they come up with a different solution... I will not spoil that.

If it still feels like is not making sense and you want to skip more pages: The police is also under the control of the main bad guy, who is a politician. He uses his connections with them and the media to make a big deal out of the whole thing in order to catapult his career.

Not enough? then the next one:

This bad guy politician is the one responsible for the deaths and breakdowns, making it all be the fault of the phantom thieves was not planned from the beginning, he had no way of knowing that. But he took advantage of the whole situation and controlled the results of their phan-site poll to set them up against Okumura, who is the guy that gets killed to start the plan to put the whole blame on them.

Even more:

Except for Kamoshida, all the other criminals you target are connected to this main bad guy. The are also protected against any legal or social punishment as he has control of both.

I definitely don't remember it that way, and I've replayed it quite a few times.

Like the Big Bro thing you mentioned is maybe slightly awkward, but I understand why it exists: language to describe family is a little more convoluted in Japanese than English, they have completely different words for older and younger siblings and whether you're referring to them to someone else, or directly, or speaking about another person's relation, etc. And then you add to that the various honorifics that get added, you can be speaking to a relative more or less formally. On top of THAT those same words are used just to generically talk about people in different age groups, so the way you talk about people in general is totally different, so it's difficult to translate in a totally natural way.

Nanako is probably saying something like 'Oniichan' which is an informal way of addressing an older brother. Probably the most natural way of translating that into English would be simply 'Bro' but that doesn't feel quite right here, because that's something that you might just call a friend, and doesn't seem to suit little Nanako. "Big Bro" then is closer to the original line but also probably sounds a little better coming out of a small kid's mouth. In the absence of a perfect way to translate this line, it's probably about the best they could do.

In a lot of translations you'll find some awkwardness around anything involving family relations or referring to people by their apparent age, and honorific-speech, and the differences between formal and less formal speech, and traditionally male and female speech patterns. All of these have genuine reasons for being tricky to localise.

Here, we have loads of lines which have absolutely NO business being awkward. Like the principle's "You might have done a variety of things in hiding in your hometown, but you will behave yourself here."

It makes sense, just about. But it doesn't sound like much thought has been given to make it sound like what someone would actually say. It would have got across exactly the same sort of sentiment to say:

"Perhaps you thought you could get away with being a troublemaker back home, but you'd better keep in line while you're here."

Both versions express the same sentiment, and neither are disastrous but the first reads like a '1st pass' sort of translation, get the meaning across, don't worry about making it sound natural, and the second sounds a bit more like how the line might read had it been written in English initially.

And again, I think most of these lacklustre translations come up during the main plot sequences - less so with the side stuff.

@kestrelpi: I actually think that your example sentence misses an important part of the original line. Principal uses the words 'in hiding', because protagonist doesn't have confirmed history of being troublemaker, outside the one case of assault that landed him in the mess to begin with. Principal just assumes that the main character is shitty kid to his core, and thus surely has done some shit, although not been caught from it.

I wish we lived in a different reality where every single time Nanako is supposed to say "Big Bro" we could hear Drew doing the Linquid Snake's "BROTHER!" instead

@kestrelpi: Oh I know and understand why the dialogue was like that in P4 but I think that's what frustrated me more. It was a good localization that made deliberate decisions I really disagreed with. That becomes more noticeable to me than just the minor mistakes might have.

I disagree that it's an 'important' part of the original line, and even so I disagree that my version doesn't capture it. It's just that in my version I change the talk about doing stuff 'in hiding' to 'getting away' with doing stuff, which has similar implications. Nothing important in the meaning is lost here. I would take the more natural sounding line with slightly more subtle implications about 'getting away' with stuff than the clunk of 'done a variety of things in hiding' a million times over.

The two important ideas to get across in this line is:

• 'The principal thinks that the student was the type to cause trouble in his home town'
• 'He wants the student to know that he won't get away with that in his new place.'

That's it. As long as the localisation team gets those ideas across, they are doing their job adequately. To do it well, they should also make it sound natural.

But even so, you're now nitpicking a hypothetical fix I made. Even if I agreed with you that this meaning was lost it's still completely possible to come up with a less-awkward version of that line. For example:

"I don't know how long you got away with causing trouble back home before you got yourself caught, but things are different here. So don't try anything."

Heck, it doesn't even need to be that much of a tweak. They could even switch a tiny part of the original phrase and it improves it.

"You might have done a variety of things in hiding in your hometown, but you will behave yourself here." --> "You might have been able to fly under the radar for a while back home, but that won't work here."

Second version has more natural sounding idioms, implies all the same things (without the awkward phrasing) and gives the phrase a bit more life by using a metaphor.

"But the original line didn't have a metaphor, so I don't want one here." is the thing you often hear next, and I think it is basically a naive way to think about how a localisation from a very different language works in practice.

Out of interest, what do you think would have fixed the example you gave i.e. Nanako's use of 'big bro?' Would just 'bro' have been better (Debatable, I think)? Or if not what would have worked in its place?

And again, I'm not talking about the mistakes (though there are plenty) as much as just... poor, unnatural phrasings.

Almost feel there should be a separate thread for this because it's not exactly the writing, although it's closely related.