Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time And Cross Cultural Communication

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time has worldwide online play which is awesome. However, this feature also introduces a language barrier when a Yuke from say Japan and a Selkie from Germany randomly link up in the same game. Square Enix claims “the multiplayer mode can be played seamlessly even when each player selects a different language.” How are they tackling the problem?

Canned phrases.

Players can selected pre-programmed phrases from a menu and, theoretically, the game sends out the appropriate pre-scripted translation to whoever is playing Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time in a different language. Final Fantasy XI has a similar system so this works to an extent. If you want to say something original you can register your own phrases too, but just don’t expect someone playing the game in a different language to understand you.

Since Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time has, at the very least, support for different languages I wonder if the Japanese version will have an English language option like the Chrono Trigger re-release too.

Images courtesy of Square Enix.