Atlus' Japan-Only Dreamcast RPG deSPIRIA Receives English Fan Translation of its First Chapter

These days, Atlus is a worldwide brand, what with the massive success of its Persona RPG series, but once upon a time, not every title they developed was done so with an international audience in mind. They developed the earlier Persona games for the Japanese market, while their first Sega Dreamcast game, Maken X, was done so knowing it would be distributed across the globe. The only other game Atlus released for the Dreamcast was deSPIRIA, which remained exclusive to Japan and was its own beast entirely. Its dated gameplay and visuals for its release year of 2000 make it hard to believe it would've ever been considered for a Western release, and had it been, the gaming press would've torn it a new one. But without those same contemporary "everything must be polygonal" goggles on, deSpiria is a very novel —if not incredibly niche— horror experience in the Dreamcast's library, and today I am excited to report that its first chapter is now playable in English thanks to a team consisting of rio de popomocco (translation) and DinoJesus (programming), with more to come later.

"Ma'am, this is a Wendy's..."

The game puts you in the shoes of Allure Valentine, a woman working for an organisation known as "the Church" and has you exploring a dystopian underground version of Japan, getting into psychic mind battles with the creepy individuals you encounter. That's the operative word here, "creepy", and one deSPIRIA embraces proudly. I mean, the protagonist snorts a worm up her nose in the opening cutscene... for plot reasons. Graphically, it is filled to the brim with those cold, uncanny, pre-rendered visuals often seen in horror games from the 90s. Graphics that were aged on arrival back on release, but in retrospect, only further serve to up deSPIRIA's unsettling atmosphere.

The exploration takes place in first person, and is basically point-and-click, with a sort of slideshow quality to proceedings. You can rotate on the spot to survey your surroundings, then click on an area of the environment to move there, triggering an FMV of you moving towards it. Those who have played and enjoyed titles like D and Kowloon's Gate before will feel right at home here. Well, it's hardly homely, but you know what I mean. The game also features some pretty psychedelic —at times nightmarish— battles in which the protagonist jacks into other people's psyches.

To play deSPIRIA's first chapter in English, you will need to go to the translation project's GitHub repo and download a patching tool, which will apply the translation patch to your existing GDI of the game. The patching tool isn't available for Mac or Linux, so you will have to find a roundabout way to get it to work on those operating systems, or alternatively get a friend with Windows to do it for you.

Interestingly, the creators of this patch offer three different modes for gameplay speed, which reduce random encounters and rebalance the game for those who just want to focus on the story. 

Unfortunately, as of writing this, I have been unable to get my patched GDI to play properly on GDEMU, with it crashing on a certain scene right at the start. I was, however, able to play the game successfully (and take the screenshots you see in this very article) via the Flycast emulator.

Those who have heard me witter away on the podcast before will already know how stoked I am for this translation, and I will be eagerly awaiting any future preview instalments (there's no word as of yet as to whether this is how they wish to release the rest of the patch going forward), and of course the full patch somewhere down the line. Will you be giving deSPIRIA a go? Let us know in the comments or on our socials.