Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

"Japanese PS2 conversion review"

Alright, I'll be blunt. I haven't beaten this game, and I have nothing to contribute as to the actual quality of the game. I'm merely doing this to convey the quality of the just-released Japanese version of this game. As a result, I will be focusing solely on the conversion aspects of the game.

A bit of background, I'm an English teacher living in Japan, and my Japanese ain't that great. I bought this game because I'd heard how great it was, and I wanted a game that was likely to have an English track (being an American game, and all). Well, this wasn't that game, unfortunately.

Like so many American releases of Japanese games, Prince of Persia decided to completely cut out the original language track, and rather than have bilingual menus a la Jak & Daxter, just cut out all the English in the game. I'm a little annoyed, but it's really just whining. The fact is, this is an action game, and if you know your basic hiragana and katakana, you'll be fine. If you learned all of your Japanese from watching anime, you'll understand all the important stuff in this game.

Now, the most important thing about a game localization is the voice track. Since, aside from the menus and in-game instructions, this is the only thing that requires any labor at all, I'm going to focus almost entirely an this.

Well, they recorded an all-new voice track for this game. It's good. No, really, it's really REALLY good. After hearing it, I know why it took them 10 months to release a Japanese version of the game. They rerecorded everything, and unlike so many American hack jobs, they hired good actors and took the time to do a good job on it. The entire thing is done in Dolby Surround Pro Logic II, just like the English version, and while I don't have a surround setup, I am piping this game through a fairly decent pair of front speakers, and it really sounds nice. The voices really sound like they're coming from their respective directions, as do the sound effects (of course, those are from the American versions). On the other hand, this really is nothing new at all, in the slightest. But it's still as good as anything can be, so I'm making a point of it.

As for the voice acting itself, which is after all, the meat of any conversion of this kind, it's top notch. Here, I'll give the main character actors here, just so you can see what I mean.

The main character is played by Miki Shinichirou. He's been in tons of stuff recently. You might know him as Allen Shezar, from Escaflowne, or more likely, as Fujiwara Takumi, the main character of Initial D. Yeah, that guy. He specializes in "prince" type characters, who always have the upper hand, even when they appear not to. Here, he plays a dashing, heroic, somewhat conniving prince, and he does it right. You hear him play the gamut of emotions. Caring, annoyed, angry, scared. It's all convincing. Great performance.

The heroine, Farah, is played by Romi Park. Park is an up-and-coming voice actress, who, in contrast to Miki, is not a character actress. She plays *everything*. Here are some more notable examples. She plays the main character from Full Metal Alchemist (yes, a boy, and not a wussy boy either), the overbearing Najima Gable from Stellvia, and also from Stellvia, the main character's shy, reticent little brother. She's got serious range, and she uses all of it in PoP. In this role, she's just incredibly subtle. The character has a tendency to kick serious butt, and during those times, Park puts on her taking-charge voice. But other times, she acts more like Yorda, from Ico, holding the main character back while at the same time helping him out. In this role, she's doing a manipulative, "feminine" voice, which gets on your nerves because it's supposed to. She doesn't like what the main character's doing, but she wants him to think she's his friend. Park conveys this beautifully.

There are other characters in the game, too, but I won't go into detail about them. Suffice to say that they're all quite prolific in small roles throughout the industry.

I think that describes the voice quality adequately. It's fantastic, end of story.

So what's the final verdict? If you're living in Japan and you haven't bought this game yet, get it, even if your Japanese isn't that good. As other reviews have shown (even the unfavorable ones), this is an amazingly good game, and it's worth having.

If you live in the US and, like me, find most English voice casts unbearably annoying, get this game (if you have a Japanese-capable PS2, that is).

If you don't have a modded PS2, don't bother modding it for this game. It's great, but it's not a killer app for an importer. I don't think it's possible to justify it based on a superior vocal track alone.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/04/04