Persona 4
Persona 4 is a role-playing video game developed and published by Atlus for Sony's PlayStation 2, and chronologically the fifth installment in the "Persona" series, itself a part of the larger "Megami Tensei" franchise. The game was released in Japan in July 2008, North America in December 2008, and Europe in March 2009. "Persona 4" takes place in a fictional Japanese countryside and is indirectly related to earlier "Persona" games. The player-named protagonist is a high-school student who moved into the countryside from the city for a year. During his year-long stay, he becomes involved in investigating mysterious murders while harnessing the power of summoning Persona. The game features a weather forecast system with events happening on foggy days to replace the moon phase system implemented in the previous games.
Atlus USA
The most information about the difficulties of localization have been for the "Persona" series. "Revelations: Persona", the first role-playing game localized by the team, was handled by a small staff of six full-time employees, meaning that localizing the game was a huge task. They were also faced with the problem of the numerous Japanese cultural references the game contained. Nearly all references to Japanese culture were removed, with the setting changing from Japan to North America. This meant that the names and ethnicity of all character were altered, with the most notable being the character Masao Inaba being turned from a Japanese to an African American boy named Mark. "Revelations: Persona" has become notorious for the number of changes made to the game's content for its Western release. Atlus USA's next original title, "Persona 2: Eternal Punishment", was described as a "halfway point" in their localization style: while they kept as faithful as possible to the original script, they needed to take the alterations to "Revelations: Persona" into account for character names. The first "Persona" title was later remade, and this allowed the staff to completely redo the localization, changing everything to be more faithful to the original with the exception of a few fan favorites. For "Persona 3" and "Persona 4", Japanese honorifics were retained despite it being a contentious decision among fans. Humor that was focused on a knowledge of Japanese culture also needed to be either changed completely, or adjusted so that it would be understandable. In "Persona 3", references to the first "Shin Megami Tensei" were changed to those of the first two localized "Persona" titles. Some issues with language have caused changes to be made: "Persona 3" character Mitsuru Kirijo's second language was changed from English to French, and class questions based around language needed to be entirely redone. Some character names were altered, such as the stagename of "Persona 4" character Rise Kujikawa. For "Persona 4 Golden", an expanded remake of "Persona 4", the main trouble was finding a suitable voice actress for new character Marie. For "", this approach was taken, and added dialogue was inserted to explain aspects of the game's fourth dungeon, which was themed around a Japanese culture festival.