Criminal Girls 2 Heading West with Some Alterations

Today via press release NIS America announced that Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors would be heading West this September. The game will release in North America on September 20th and in Europe on the 23rd. Just like with the first game due the explicit nature of the Punishment mini game there will be some alterations made to it in order to bring the title West. Here are some details of all the changes straight from the NISA Blog.

1 – Redrawn art.
We had a bit more time to work on this title. We didn’t want to make any alterations to the game that would be jarring to the experience or feel “off,” so we worked with the original artist of the game who redrew the art for the Motivation scenes that might have caused issues due to their explicit nature. We didn’t want the game experience to change though, so we are also investing the extra effort into incorporating Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors’s unique Live 2D effect into the new art.

2 – Terminology changes.
As with the first in the series, Criminal Girls: Invite Only, “Punishment” will be framed as “Motivation,” and other terminology changes from the first game will also apply here. There may be a few other translation changes as well. This reduces the power distance between the player character and the girls in the Reformation Program and makes the activities of the game more consensual.

3 – No native language dialogue.
Like with Criminal Girls: Invite Only, we will not be dubbing the game in English. The game’s text will be in English, but the spoken dialogue will be the original Japanese voice track.

4 – No Motivation scene dialogue.
Some of this could cause an issue with power distance, or perceived consent of the activities of the game. This dialogue also represented a technical challenge to localization, because there are no subtitles. Thus, another reason this dialogue was removed was to avoid a situation of no text to accompany several lines of untranslated Japanese being spoken.

I’m sure many of you noticed that I said things “could” be an issue. That’s a little vague, and not 100% saying something would cause, for example, an AO rating. And you’re right. However, we consult with rating boards, our developers, and a variety of other stakeholders before deciding on a course of action with a title, and we did so with Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors.

We hope that you can appreciate the effort that has gone into bringing Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors to North America and Europe, and will enjoy the game when it comes out this September.

We have and will continue to work hard to bring unique and entertaining content to North America and Europe. As I mentioned earlier, we have tried to make the experience you will have playing Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors as close to the original experience as possible. You’ll experience the same story, the same understanding of the characters and their histories, and the same gameplay mechanics as someone in Japan. Some nuances have changed, but we sincerely hope you will enjoy and appreciate the overall game.

Yours in Prinny,
– Jordan