UPDATE:

Yesterday, Bandai Namco confirmed that Tales of Hearts R would only have Japanese voice-overs and English subtitles when it comes to North America later this year.

The reason why is that fans have often told them that they prefer the Japanese voice-overs and would rather the company include them as often as they can.  With the Vita market being small in the West, the budget for localization of Vita games is smaller, so they could only afford one language track when bringing it over.  According to their research, fans were more interested in Japanese voice-overs for Tales of Hearts R, so that is what they decided to go with.

ORIGINAL STORY:

Bandai Namco Europe announced yesterday that Tales of Hearts R will have Japanese voice-overs and subtitles in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish when it launches in Europe this Winter.

Hideo Baba, head of the Tales team, said, “We received lot of feedbacks from fans to release Tales of Hearts R and today we are really happy to announce that the game will get an original Japanese Voice-Over along with EFIGS subtitles to please all the fans!”

No details were given about the North American version of the game, so hopefully we find out soon.

Along with the voice-over announcement, Bandai Namco also released a series of new screenshots for Tales of Hearts R (see below).

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Tales of Hearts R is scheduled for release in North America, Europe, and Australia on the PlayStation Vita in Winter 2014.

My Opinion:

Although I am a huge JRPG fan, I am not one of those who enjoys Japanese voice-overs and subtitles.  I honestly don’t get the point because I spend too much time reading them and not enough time paying attention to what else is going on during each scene.  However, I understand that there is a giant group of fans that adores subtitled games/shows, so this is great news for them.  I just hope that when it finally releases in North America, it at least comes with English voice-overs and makes the Japanese voice-overs optional.  

Courtney Osborn is MONG’s Founder and Editor in Chief.  You can follow him on Twitter, Twitch, and IGN.