ATLUS apologizes for the unlocalized Japanese text found in the English version of Shin Megami Tensei IV

Today, ATLUS and SEGA released Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse across the west. Prior to the game’s release, ATLUS announced that some unlocalized Japanese text made its way into the final build of the game.

ATLUS immediately issued an apology and explained the reason for the error.

First, we’re human. This is important, so before you start writing that angry comment down below, please remember this point.

“Second, and this is the funny part, it turns out our QA department is actually too good. The two instances of Japanese text left in the game happen during a boss battle near the end of the game. As you may know, SMTIV:A has partners that are permanently with you throughout the game, and you can select the partner based on what abilities they have that complement your play style. (No more worrying about a randomly chosen Walter casting Agi on demons that resist fire. WALTEERRRRRR!)

Anyhow, just like in SMTIV, partners can get attacked and knocked out. In this particular battle, partners will return after 3 turns, and the errant Japanese text only shows up if you get to a point where the boss gives you a dialogue option WHILE your partner is KO’d. Our testers, who have been with the company for quite awhile, and who are well-versed in all things SMT (I think a few of them also were QA for the original SMTIV) were so good, they never ran into the situation of having an unconscious partner during the fight, and henceforth the dialogue in question.

We never realized that there was a specific set of circumstances for the text to appear in-game, and so it never got localized. And unfortunately, it will still be in there by the time the game hits shelves tomorrow. BUT! As our QA testers and reviewers in the media have shown, it’s a relatively rare set of circumstances that will lead players to encounter the aberrant text, and hopefully won’t even be discovered by the vast majority of players. (Of course, now that I told you how to find it, you’re probably all going to go out and test it, aren’t you?)”

While it might be too late to do any sort of fix for SMT IV, ATLUS has stated that they are going over Persona 5‘s English localization to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again.