New Star Ocean Changes Graphics for North American Release

Not that there's anything wrong with this, per se, I'm just curious why these changes were made. Check out the various screen shots from the game over in this post at Siliconera. Its fairly easy to spot the differences, even without reading the post itself.

1) The character portraits during battle are different. In the Japanese version, they're anime-inspired, in the North American version they're CG models. I can perhaps understand why the went this route, trying to appeal to the U.S. Xbox Live kiddies who may not really be into Japanese games, RPGs, anime or manga at all. Perhaps its even to give the game a more uniform appearance for release based on this region's culture. Do I like this change? Its not bad. The CG models are insanely well done, so I don't see a problem with it. Although, it may feel less like a Tri-Ace game without the anime portraits. Still, its no big deal.

2) The menu screens are different. Again, there's a colorful character silhouette backdrop to the menu screen on the Japanese copy, but on the North American version its a full-body CG graphic of the character and not a whole lot of color. The Japanese version gives me a very Persona-esque vibe, with the bold, contrasting colors. Again, the North American menu screen does give that portion of the game a more uniform appearance with the rest, copying the "CG model" look of it all. As Siliconera mentions, it also makes it look more distinctively sci-fi instead of anime-inspired. Do I like this change? I'm not sure, I really like the bold colors of the Japanese version, it gives that portion of the game a bit of character, but this is probably because I still have Persona 4 on the brain.

3) Character portraits next to their respective dialog segments were removed in the North American version. Why didn't they just change the anime portraits to CG renderings like on the battle screen? Curious...

This definitely isn't the first game to see changes between two different regions, but these are far from subtle - they're segments of the game that will spend a lot of time on your screen. I'm still curious as to the reasons they were made. Both versions aren't bad, they're just different, perhaps focusing on different audiences.