I was looking through what‘s free in PS+ and discovered the joy of Raiden V’s English dub:
https://youtu.be/QhdcZ_rJnkg?t=3803
Everyone sounds like they're talking into webcam mics and the main two VAs who talk 80% of the time's delivery is so awkward, it's great. There's like one or two who do a pretty good job, like the pirate queen, but everyone else is so incredibly awkward and amazing.
Also all their voices are normalized in a way so that you can barely hear them over the sound of normal gameplay, but they're talking through 80% of the gameplay so you can never catch what the entire story is.
The story itself is like typical anime scifi with hammy archetypes like the manly space captain who rushes headlong into battle and his lady assistant who keeps him in check, and their lines are super archetypical anime lines. Except!!! It's delivered in the most incredibly stilted way in English!!! It's great!!!!!
I love it. It really elevates a game that would've been normally decent to somewhere so much beyond.
The OST by Basiscape is amazing and then it's all ruined by the incredible English VO.
Man, why aren't people talking about this game. I want the world to hear all the incredible clips of the captain talking about how much he loves coffee as his mic peaks and cuts out while the most incredible music ever plays in the background.
https://youtu.be/QhdcZ_rJnkg?t=2170
I was trying to specifically find a conversation that was killing me, but none of the videos I looked through online had it? Then looking it up, apparently each stage after 2 has 4 variations with very different dialogue, and they all depend on how well you play??? I guess I played so awfully that I ended up getting the goofiest lines and the worst ending. Anyway, here's the clip I wanted to share:
https://youtu.be/F7kpGu1K03Y?t=2497
I thought the near constant dialogue was a bizarre choice when I started the game since the mix doesn't let you hear most of it. BUT I really enjoyed it as a stylistic choice and it gives a good feeling of being a fighter pilot having to endure the constant orders/chatter/anxiety/philosophising of your superiors.
A few STG have tried this approach over the last decade or so but I can‘t think of any that I think really pulled it off—as awkward as it may be, Raiden V might actually be one of the better examples, believe it or not, but it’s also probably the one classic STG series that can not only get away with not changing but whose fans really don‘t want or need for it to change a whole lot, so even the relatively modest attempts at modernisation weren’t well-received.
At least they /did/ dub it, I suppose; most of them don't bother (even Platinum, whose recent talky story mode is paid DLC, even).
@“Personasama”#p90409 Man, why aren’t people talking about this game
Haha I hate to break it to you but Deadly Premonition style the shmup community largely found the story focus and the VO off putting and distracting. I've only ever heard people complain about it until now
I bought the directors cut when it came out and then somehow never played it!! You have inspired me to give it a try. I will report back with my feelings.
I really wanted to love Raiden V but as much as I thought the dialogue was fun I found it off putting when I really didn't want it to be. Especially so because the bullets are already difficult to see and also during the later levels where the bullets come towards you more aggressively. Those voices never really let me get into a flow state and it sucked the fun out of the game.
did you ever try this out? Curious as to what you thought!
I have all the Raidens but haven’t gotten to this one yet since I wanted to work through them a bit linearly. I will probably pull this out to see this firsthand now; I had no idea that it had something this goofy to it.
as someone who makes a decent chunk of my living voicing video games and as someone who also adores shmups and would be over the moon to be a little part of something like Raiden, this breaks my heart a little. but conversely, the fact that this exists exactly as it does makes my heart happy.
but, good on them for at least localizing the voiceovers at all. a good deal of STGs have done the chatter thing over the years, but typically it’s only subtitled for non-Japanese releases, which very obviously does not work as STGs are probably the number one genre in which you are least likely to be able to read anything at all while playing. it often makes for some surreal experiences though – I love playing that Karous on 3DS because the dialogue is so odd and oddly translated, and you can’t really look at it too often, so whenever you do glance at the text, it feels like you’ve died and gone to some sort of theological beat poetry purgatory