Unless they changed it since I checked, yes it is. As are several other games that might not be immediately noticed as such.

I don't think it's unfortunate, because the quality of official Finnish dubs in other media is kind of really bad (unless it's Disney, those guys usually dub pretty well), and they have this fixation that if there's a dub, the original needs to be removed from every copy :p

I only checked the gamecard and it says it's English only. As for the German multilingual retail version, which I happen to own, you can't choose the language after the game is installed. If you want to change it, you have to reinstall the whole game. Probably thats the case with the GOG version too and they just didn't check it completely, so they didn't want to tag it as multilingual.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUxNkOo1sp8

Warcraft 3 was translated very well into Russian but then again...so was every other Blizzard game since then

The video above is a good example

That's actually very true, which is why I was all the more surprised by Crisis Core.

One particularly paintful translation into German that I remember was Knights of the Old Republic (where they actually left chunks of the dialogue subtitles - including dialogue not spoken in German - in English!).

I can't actually remember the last time I played a game in German (I think it was the extremely weird German version of Soldier of Fortune 2, which we installed at a LAN party just for laughs). I do know that Warhammer 40,000 games work rather well in German (it's a language that lends itself well to the bellowing of an Imperial space marine)

Follow the instructions in that topic to change, that's why it exists. You need to move some files around.

The games that GOG tag as multilingual often requires a reinstall, others have a setting that can be changed through the game itself or a setup application.

Most of what they only tag as English only has English, but some just require a little work to switch because the language files are present but has no GOG-simple way of switching.

Oh, I remember that one. Even the story was twisted just to have an explanation why the enemy soldiers are actually robots ... So stupid. :D

Another really bad German voice acting I remember is The Saboteur. But I'm talking about the English version, not the German one. The voices of the German soldiers in this game was spoken by non-native speakers and the pronunciation was so terrible, I hardly understood a word. Of course the grammar was a total mess-up too.

@ Miaghstir

Thanks for the info and the link to this very helpful topic. I'll keep that in mind for future purchase decisions.

Well.... It's not a literal translation. They took a lot of liberties with the original script so as to change out the Japanese humor which wouldn't have worked in translation, replacing it with English humor that works for the English audience. They also had the luxury of no constraints, so they had a fairly large amount of freedom over the end result.

When it comes to mainstream games though, especially those for systems with limitations (such as, say Gamecube games), there is a very finite amount of space to work with in which an English translation can be placed. It's easy to say a lot in Japanese in a far shorter space than English as entire words can take as little as one space, whereas the corresponding English would require more. So for those translations, sacrifices have to be made due to size limitations.

Further to that, depending on who the translation is for, there is also limitations on what terms can be used. Nintendo, for example, have very strict guidelines and pre-approved terminology that *must* be used; along with more general guidelines such as, "must be written so that a young child can fully understand".

Translations for larger games can also suffer due to the translation being performed by many translators who are often not even in the same location, thus consistency can be difficult to ensure and quality can suffer if editors don't catch said inconsistencies and errors. And don't forget, in such projects the deadlines can be exceptionally harsh and if you're being rushed, you cannot always ensure a top notch translation.

So, basically CF do good translations right now as they working on (comparatively) small projects with a far higher degree of freedom, both creatively and in terms of time. Most translators for games don't get that luxury (and also get an appalling amount of pay compared to the work done).

Games hardly ever get translated to brazilian portuguese, but the best brazilian localization ever's got to be that of Max Payne for PC. Both text and speech (which is rare), including the humorous lines from the bad guys along the game, which were beautifully done. Completely unexpected down here.

Nowadays, both Fifa and Pro Evolution Soccer are well localized to Brazil too, although I must say it doesn't impress me in the least, it was about time.

Many games are apparently being translated to Portugal portuguese in Playstation 3 (Resistance fall of man, Fat princess and Little big planet). Most brazilians hate the accent but I reckon the translations seem real good in both Fat princess and Little big planet, but I noticed minor errors in Resistance (which doesn't have speech translation by the way).

Hmm. I don't speak Polish, but I'm pretty sure "Candlekeep" is not a good Polish translation for Candlekeep. :P

I wish I had something to add to this topic, but I only speak English and Hungarian, and I've yet to see one game translated into my native language that didn't make me cringe every few seconds because of the horrid quality of the translation and/or voice acting.

I think the only 'professionally translated' game I ever played in Estonian was Hired Team Trial Gold. I only bought it because they announced an Estonian release, unfortunately the game was rubbish. It did however leave me with some 'gems' that simply sounded really awkward, i.e. "Üks lask, üks laip," literally meaning "One shot, one corpse."

In general, I really dislike dubbing so I prefer to play games in the original languages.

Hired Team: Trial = Palgatud Meeskond: Katse

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/hired-team-trial-gold/cover-art/gameCoverId,66985/

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/hired-team-trial-gold/cover-art/gameCoverId,66986/

I'm curious. What about the games that are originally German (such as the Gothic games). I've been told that the German voice acting is leaps beyond the English (which in my opinion is just OK).

To be honest, I never played the Gothic games longer than a few hours, and that was years ago, so I don't remember the quality of the voice acting enough to judge it. I can't even remember if I played them in German or English language. It's just not my kind of game.

In general, most of the games are initially produced in English, at least the big budget AAA types like Crysis, Risen, Anno (Dawn of Discovery). They are afterwards dubbed into German. So it doesn't affect the quality of the voice acting if the developer is German based or not. It's only a matter of budget. More money, better quality. And the big problem is, that many publisher don't want to spend much money on the German dubbing. That's poor, especially compared to the dubbings of films an TV series, because they're usually great.

The only exceptions in this regard are Point And Click Adventures, a very popular genre over here. They are mostly produced in German language and maybe dubbed into English, if they are successful. The best known developer is Daedalic Entertainment. You may have heard of The Whispered World, A New Beginning, Edna & Harvey or Deponia. The German voice acting in their games is excellent, by the way.

Daedalic is also publishing their own as well as third party games (e.g. Sam & Max or Torchlight 2) in Germany, usually with goodies like soundtrack CDs and posters, and DRM-free as well. Their philosophy is very similar to GOG, so I wouldn't be surprised to see their games here one day.

I remember Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors getting a lot of praise for its localization last year.

It really was good.

not only the translation but also the german voice acting of the first prince of persia (sands of time) that came out for ps2 is absolutelz beautyful
it certainly helps that the voice actors where professionals that already had a chemistry (two mains where voiced by the voice actors of jack and rose from titanic)

on a sidenote: if you are interested in that game: its basically the only pop game of the ps2 games you need, the story is charming and is completely told, the sequels where darker and edgier without a purpose, i mean if you want there is not so much wrong in getting the sequels too, but overall they are only half as good as the first ps2 installment