Is It Better to Play Wild Hearts in Japanese?

Wild Hearts is an action RPG from Japanese game development studio Omega Force. The game is deeply rooted in Japanese mythos, and this really shows in the game’s fantasy world of Azuma, which is heavily inspired by feudal Japan. The developers did a remarkable job crafting the game world and characters, but there was just one thing that really bothered me while I was playing through that I couldn’t shake: It was the characters’ voices. By about the second character I met, I started to realize that maybe I would enjoy the character interactions more if I changed the Wild Hearts dialogue to be in the game’s native Japanese with English subtitles, and for me, this made a world of difference for play.

You Should Give the Japanese Voice Acting in Wild Hearts a Try: Decide for Yourself If It Is Better

After changing the language from English to Japanese in Wild Hearts, the experience interacting with characters was just leaps and bounds better of an experience for me. If you are someone who doesn’t mind reading subtitles, I would encourage you to give it a try. The voicing just sounds so much more natural and stopped my urge to skip through the dialogue quickly every time. It also really adds to the experience you have in the setting; you’re in an offshoot of feudal Japan after all, so it’s arguably more immersive to have the characters engage in conversation in Japanese than the rather strained English you get by default.

Of course, you don’t have to try it out if your preference is less reading and more listening. It certainly won’t be everyone’s preference to play with the Japanese voice acting. If you’re like me, prefer a more authentic experience, and want your character conversations to sound more natural, it’s worth hopping into settings and just quickly swapping the audio over from English to Japanese (the first option). Let me know in the comments below if you end up giving it a try!