I'm starting to get aggravated

[Zilveari]

I'm appreciative to NISA for localizing these games that we would probably have trouble getting in English otherwise... but sometimes it almost seems like you enjoy defacing these games.

It started with the catastrophe that was Ar tonelico 2 of course, but I let that slide...

Neptunia Mk 1 is just plain bad though. You took far too many liberties in your translation of the dialogue. I can't believe GUST allows this... Now I'm not fluent in Japanese by any means, but I have been around it for a long time through various forms of japanese media, popular culture, Japanese friends, and Japanese relatives and have picked up certain things. If I close my eyes and listen to the dialogue I can make out a large amount of what they are saying...

Just a couple off the top of my head that I would like explanations for, if they were done for a specific reason:

1) When someone calls 5pb '5pb' you translate it as Lyrica... why?

2) The scene when Blanc gives Red some 'books'. She said they are doujin. Why did you translate that as "books that can't be found in bookstores"? Seriously most people who are listening to the japanese(aka unmolested) vocal track would understand what doujinshi is... You could have translated it as comic books, self-published literature, fanfiction, any number of things. It's obviously inferred that they may be risque in nature, but not all doujin is 'H'.

There are MANY more instances spread throughout the game, and it seems disrespectful to me. Leave the westrernization/dumbing down to the dub track, and stay faithful to the material in the original please.
Thank you.

*EDIT* I almost forgot, why did you change the character's names in Mana Khemia?

[Ringwraith]

'Localising' isn't the same as 'translating', as direct translations can come off awkward and may end up containing culture-specific references. Therefore it's 'localised' in order to apply more directly to people outside of the original culture.
We don't have a direct term for 'doujin' (which is why we end up using the term), and "books that can't be found in bookstores" is pretty close in meaning, and isn't simply jargon which 'doujin' is.

Besides, as I understood it, the text is more or less the same regardless of which voice track you were using I thought. Also, if you're listening to the Japanese voice track and can understand it, then why are you even reading the subtitles? As you clearly don't need to...

Also, character names tend to get changed either to fit a reference better, to make it pronounceable (this a big one), for others localisation reasons (like a name being chosen for being 'normal', but of course it wouldn't 'normal' when localised if the original Japanese name was used, as that would be unusual instead), or simply to make the spelling more logical.
Basically, a whole multitude of reasons.

Just from Hyperdimension Neptunia alone, Arfoire was Magiquone, and changed so the original cultural reference is maintained (due to a difference in flashcards used between Japan and America), and Nippon Ichi became Nisa, which makes significantly more sense as a name and still works as originally intended.

[Daverost]

If I had to guess, I'd say the Lyrica thing was because the English scenes weren't voiced, and no one would now how to pronounce "5pb." without hearing it. I sure don't.

[Houk]

We certainly appreciate and respect your desire for a more literal presentation of the original work, but you might be surprised to discover that you are actually in the minority among the people who buy our games. You're free to disagree with specific choices we've made (and as with anything of this nature, not every choice/change is ideal), but as a philosophy our approach has served us pretty well. It's also a philosophy that has the support and blessing of every company we work with. (By the way, Neptunia wasn't developed by GUST.)

And while I'm sure you would like someone to answer any and every issue you have with our choices, that's simply something we don't have the time or resources to do. That being said, you're more than welcome to continue to let us know what you like and don't like about our localizations.

(But just a head's up: when you talk about how we "enjoy defacing games," our "catastrophes," "unmolested" dialogue, and "dumbing down" things for Western fans, that kind of childish hyperbole makes it much less likely that people will take your opinion seriously.)

[Ghaleon]

Aggravated weeaboo purists need to realize that some people who play Japanese games are not necessarily experts in the field of anime and Japanese culture. I myself didn't know what doujin was a few years ago, and if I was told it was a comic book, the concept of how the Japanese doujin scene is way different than the NA indie scene would be completely lost on me. Not to mention the fact that it would be an "indie" comic book at all.

Nisa does a fine job at localizing their games for NA, understand they aren't localizing it for diehard manga/anime fans.

[Prinapocalypse]

I was an anime fan for many years before I knew what a doujin was. NISA made fine choices as far as I'm concerned given the examples shown.

[Uiru]

That was your problem with Neptunia? Haha... ha. Sigh.

A lot of that was a bit childish, but the "catastrophe" of Ar tonelico 2 should not be forgotten. Especially with NISA trying to cover it up (I still have the email where RosenQueen insists that it's "not a bug" as I return it) and if there's ever been an official acknowledgment of that game's hilariously long list of localization blunders, I haven't seen it.

NISA generally does good work, too, which is why this was so appalling. You'll apologize for Last Rebellion, a game that was actually decent (not "good", but certainly playable and enjoyable for what it was), but a complete clusterfuck like AT2 gets swept under the rug, along with complete lies about Rhapsody DS? (And then games like Cross Edge and Neptunia get released? I've played A Witch's Tale as well, and I'd take newb developer HitMaker over shovelware developers IF/CH any day of the week. I can see where HitMaker tries, even if their results are usually average at best.)
~Uiru

[LAMV]

^ Welcome to one month ago.

[Ringwraith]

A lot of that was a bit childish, but the "catastrophe" of Ar tonelico 2 should not be forgotten. Especially with NISA trying to cover it up (I still have the email where RosenQueen insists that it's "not a bug" as I return it) and if there's ever been an official acknowledgment of that game's hilariously long list of localization blunders, I haven't seen it.

If you could return a game for it having a bug where it crashes or something I would've returned Skyrim or any other Bethesda game probably a dozen times by now, but I still enjoyed those games regardless of their flaws, it just comes with the territory.
I'm also pretty sure you find admissions of the problems of AT2, no-one's denying they exist, as that would be stupid to do anyway.

I don't have any experience of the others so I can't comment on those, but if IF/CH really do make shovelware, why are people still buying it (especially when it would be niche shovelware if anything).
At the end of the day, NISA is a business and needs to make money to stay alive, it can't run on good faith alone (but the latter helps with the former).

[Uiru]

The bug in AT2 is a 100% repeatable game-crashing bug that is guaranteed to happen in a short time frame (I think it was 3 turns?). Basically impossible to miss on a single playthrough. It's a *little* different from Skyrim (and yes I do find that Bethesda's carte blanche to not finish testing their games before releasing them is bullshit; "the least buggy yet" is not supposed to be praise!). It certainly wasn't AT2's only problem, but it was probably the most ridiculous. Well, you know, that and the untranslated text.

And yes, these problems WERE glossed over (I remember hearing "It's not a bug" and also "The US version features a boss that presents a higher difficulty" or something- yes, it's not a bug, it's a feature) and if these problems have been addressed, I'd like to see where. There was no "oh shit, let us reprint that real quick and get back to you", NISA's response was to say suck it up, pretend the problem wasn't a problem, and hope people would forget about it. An extremely poor show from one of my favorite developers.

Shovelware is software that is just crapped out and shipped out the door with a minimum of care or effort put into it, and I can think of no better word to describe CE and HN. I watched my brother play most of CE, and I myself platinumed HN, and they are #1 and #2 on the worst games I've ever (EVER) played list. For HN, you don't need to look too much further past having two shadow cutouts talk to each other in a cutscene to know that "get 'er done asap" was on the top of that whiteboard. Or having what I can only assume to be zero gameplay testing (none of the ability cooldown timers need to be there, the game's one innovation was to break healing, and why the hell can I not skip cutscenes or just hold down the animation skip button?). Or the constantly recycled TU monsters, or the identical dungeons, or the Godawful music, or the ridiculous story pacing, or the blatant game length dragging. This is a game that was thrown together in an afternoon, recycling past "works" and itself like a dragon shitting its own tail, with the only discernible effort put into appealing to the niche they knew full well they were targeting. (This is a niche that will buy anything that features its preferred subject matter- quality never enters the equation, so why waste time making it good?) Its setting was so interesting, and I wanted to like it so bad, but...

I can certainly go on; HN's failure is complete and all-encompassing and its existence makes a mockery of the concept of game design. Nobody who has any idea what they are doing would put a minute cooldown timer on a hammer and then put three or four breakable walls within a few feet of each other. (This happens OFTEN! Why? And it doesn't help that the walls are always obvious, making them little more than roadbumps that give us an excuse to flash a young girl's panties. If you're going to swing a comically large hammer at a wall, you aren't going to bend over to do it, you're going to swing from the side.) While I can agree that, in theory, making money off this "niche" is not bad, JRPGs are on the ropes as it is this generation and putting out absolute bottom tier garbage like this is only hurting their cause on consoles.

Meanwhile, Last Rebellion's only real problem was trying to be sold for full price. A $20 download on PSN would have been a much more obviously beneficial arrangement for it. The characters and their situation are interesting, the battle system is unique and mostly works, the story is nothing new but is presented well, the voice acting is above average... It helps that it was short, but there was no point at which I felt like I was forcing myself to finish the game. A stark contrast to the rabbit hole I wished I could quit mentioned above. Its combat system has a little problem with balance once you're able to restore your cp, and the game never takes advantage of you being able to buff yourself before battle to make any of the fights particularly difficult. Plus, once you've played it once, you've seen everything- there's absolutely no reason to play the game again. There is a LIST of games I would rather see NISA apologize for than this. This just cost too much for what you got. HN is an affront to the senses at any price.
~Uiru

[Ringwraith]

Which is of course why they made a sequel and localised it which is said to be better than the original.
I won't deny Hyperdimension Neptunia has its problems, but the writing's good, and to be honest, that's all I was there for.
It's also not the worst game I've played, not by a long shot.
Besides, if you don't like, don't buy it. No-one's forcing you to do so.

I'm also pretty sure it's been stated NISA weren't happy with how AT2 turned out, but I can't go much into details seeing as I've never played it and would be mostly speaking from a position of ignorance.

Regardless, I'm pretty sure you've aired your grievances about this before, and it's not like anything can change now.

[Uiru]

Oh, believe me. The decision to platinum HN and find out just how bad it was, was predicated by the fact that I would not be buying an IF/CH game ever again.

And the amount of effort it would take to make a game WORSE than HN is counterproductive to IF/CH's entire philosophy. I don't doubt that it's "better", but unless the phrase "legal age" ever appeared anywhere in the design document I imagine it will be just as uncomfortable to play. Just with (potentially) slightly less torturous gameplay.

I have not seen any acknowledgment of AT2's issues from anyone at NISA. If it exists, I would like to be shown!
~Uiru

[Ringwraith]

Although I honestly find the concept of spending more time than necessary to complete something (this is aside from completing it to begin with) to 100% when you really don't like it rather counter-productive. It's somethign I would never do at least, there's plenty of other things I could be doing with my time which would be more enjoyable.

[kanade2]

I really don't understand why people keep trying to get NISA to knowledge that they messed up on AT2 . It doesn't change anything if they do admit to it,and the majority probably don't even care anymore given how much time has passed.

[Rednal]

And the amount of effort it would take to make a game WORSE than HN is counterproductive to IF/CH's entire philosophy. I don't doubt that it's "better", but unless the phrase "legal age" ever appeared anywhere in the design document I imagine it will be just as uncomfortable to play. Just with (potentially) slightly less torturous gameplay.

Nationally, 13, though individual prefectures may have it set higher. *Shrugs* Places in America may have it as low as 16.