Hot take: I’m playing unicorn overlord and started it after I read this article a couple days ago. It’s honestly not that bad.
The story itself feels a little shallow, being about 10 hours in. Aside from a certain character being “abducted”, I really haven’t perceived any risk so far. It seems like every decision I make is a no-brainer with consequences only appearing if I make the obtusely obvious wrong decision.
Story and writing wise, it isn’t really the shining example of jrpgs to begin with, so the localisation just seems like a footnote so far.
The gameplay loop is pretty satisfying though, which is why I’m still in it. I’m ready for the writing to mature into a darker game and hoping that this first “chapter” is just a light beginning. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t happen.
To be honest, if I were going to be offended at anything in this game, it’d be the jiggly boobs on half the girl units for no reason and the overtly sexual way that the witch class character just… Stands there swinging her hips? But I’m not one to even care that much about eye candy. But it’d make a better complaint to me than overly-shakepearean localisation.
The article’s right about the conversation turning needlessly toxic. There’s people out there that are fanatics about accuracy for no good reason, even cases where I’ve seen a “TRASH localizer!” video that convinced me the localization was good in that it avoided repeat words, when they were attempting to state the opposite.
These people seriously need to either learn Japanese to play the game how they prefer, or just be silent and stop harassing game devs.
My problem with the pro localization argument, is I’m enjoying a Japanese property for the sake of its own metrics. I don’t necessarily want to have my dialogue match what’s “normal” for my region, otherwise I’d just purchase a game that was made in the west.
Japanese storytelling (and any other culture for that matter) is unique. Why change it? In Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, there are some questionable translation choices that I just can’t jive with (eg: majority of Cait Sith’s catlike banter and the casts reaction to it is glossed over.)
Not to mention people thinking the original story is “problematic” and needs to be “fixed.” If you don’t like a cultures games, don’t play them pretty simple.
I’m still gonna play Unicorn Overlord but I’m not happy with these inaccuracies.
His work on Vagrant Story was phenomenal. Japanese scripts tend to be really boring and samey. Without the work of a good localizer, you’d hear the same twenty anime one-liners interspersed throughout the entire game.
There are exceptionally few puns that can be translated literally. One that comes to mind is from a Lipton Limone advert, where Miranda Kerr says 「おいチイ」, when I first heard it I thought it was just an accent thing, but the second time I realised it’s a pun; Tealicious.
I used to see it all the time when I read unofficial transliterations of manga and the translator tried to make the pun work, they’d include a note explaining the joke. Personally I prefer localisation which keeps the spirit of what was meant but the text/lines flows in a much more natural way to a native English speaker.
It’s a common fan translation technique, and–as far as the criticism sourced in good faith goes–I wonder if it’s the genesis of a lot of the grumbling. Back when fans had to rely on independent, amateur translating to have access to more material.
Maybe some of them would just prefer the “literal with footnotes” approach.
I don't think anyone would've complained if the localization's quality was on-par with AA or Vagrant Story, but it looks to me like that isn't the case.
The complaints are largely, as she says, “sacrificed accuracy for flowery prose.” Japanese games in this setting still often follow in the footsteps of early Dragon Quest and the Final Fantasy games set in Ivalice by not strictly using contemporary English.
I think it’s an interesting conversation when it can be divorced from “removing insensitive language is censorship” crowd.
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