A reliable source has informed us that the new Sakura Wars game coming to the United States will be packaged in a 2 disc set, with one disc dubbed, and the other will be subbed with the original Japanese voices. Players will be essentially getting 2 copies of the game. There apparently are also talks of a releasing the game in a premium bundle. We should have official confirmation very soon.
(Edit: Confirmed, see inside!)
During E3, it was announced that Final Fantasy XIII should be seeing a stateside release in Spring 2010. Square Enix was a little concerned about the number of discs required for the the Xbox 360 version of the game, and reiterates that the Playstation 3 version will be one disc long. As for retaining the original Japanese voices, Square responded only if it fits on the disc. Personally I am for the Japanese voices, as Vanille is voiced by Yukari Fukui, who also voiced Nia Tepplin from the anime Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
The English voice acting also is a bit shaky, which you can decide for yourself after watching the included trailer inside.
During the press event in San Francisco, Haru Akenaga, President of NIS America apologized sincerely for the technical and translation issues in the localization of Ar Tonelico II. Instead of trying to make up excuses, Akenaga admitted some of the problems were "careless mistakes" and promised "to put their best efforts into improving the quality of localization".
We will have our interview up later with the Localization Coordinators at NIS America who talked a little about the overall translation process at NIS America as well as some of the problems that happened with Ar tonelico II.
So apparently we were completely fooled into believing that Trinity Universe would be the game announced at the NIS America press event; instead, NIS unveiled a new action orientated RPG in early development stages titled Last Rebellion. Players can free roam around the world but will enter into turn based combat when encountering an enemy. The interesting aspect is that players will be able to target different parts of the body which will affect the way enemies attack. Attacking the legs will slow an enemy down, while damage to the arms will weaken their attacks. From the brief gameplay footage we were shown, it looks like the game still needs some work, hopefully adding some more textures.
The game is currently a join project between Nippon Ichi Software Japan and HitMaker and is expected to be released in Japan around Fall 2009; no word on a stateside release yet.
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