After a long discussion, we decided that I would voice all in-game characters except for Amber, who Kaji insisted that only he could properly portray. Today we’re proud to present to you the first fruits of our labor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9tR_oJUuY0

We’ll be posting more samples of the dub as we progress, but I don’t want to steal Kaji’s thunder, so please go visit his site and read all about the renewed project: A Sound for Sore Ears

The more we dig into this game’s localization, the more it seems like we’re going to have to take it with a grain of salt. Parts of the localization (Pascal) are really great. Most of the remainder is decent enough and some of the things that bothered me early on have improved (though not all of them). Some of it, however, shows a real lack of research/knowledge/effort. A number of the artes don’t fit outside of Graces and will create headaches in localizing some of the other games. The font and its alignment leave a lot to be desired. Some of the word choice in the post-battle lines is just stupid. For me personally, of course, Luca’s name in Carta is definitely the most unfortunate oversight. I don’t blame the localization staff for missing the reference because they probably didn’t realize that his name is a reference. You can’t figure out the relationship between Luca and Mathias and the reason that Ruca simply doesn’t work just by looking at Tales of Graces. It’s very very hard to localize when you don’t have the right context. That would require a lot of familiarity with Tales of Innocence. And so I can’t help but view it as a simple mistake. I hope that if Tales of Innocence R ever reaches our shores, it will be recognized as such and modified, but that’s a concern for another day.

Part of the reason that I’m posting this is my stubborn pride, but that’s not the whole reason I’m upset about it. I’m not perfect and I make plenty of mistakes. When I believe I’ve made a mistake, I try to own up to it and learn from it, but even now, I just don’t see how Ruca could possibly be his intended name. I don’t intend to keep harping on this point forever, but I can’t help but be disappointed by it. As a fan translator, I think job number one is to do justice to the games that I work on. I do extensive research and I try to keep people informed of the reasoning behind my decisions. I want to try and understand the game’s references and help the player to understand them as well. The reason that I do is because as a fan, that’s what I would want. And so when I don’t feel like the games get the same level of respect from the people who work on them, I wonder if I’m just wasting my time. I wish I could just accept Ruca at face value, but I simply can’t reconcile it with the evidence that I have to the contrary.

I realize this post probably sounds a lot like me rejecting Ruca because I don’t like it and I don’t want to be wrong and I apologize for that. I’ve given you what I believe is Tales of Innocence as it is intended to be portrayed. At this point, I will just have to let my work speak for me. Whether you agree or disagree with me, I hope that you find that our Tales of Innocence patch can stand the test of time.

I don’t want to judge the whole game before I’ve experienced the whole game, but I’m far enough in that I can provide some initial feedback. First of all, there is no player’s guide for ToGf, so I still don’t know what has become of Luca, Xing, and Hisui. I’m very curious, so if anyone has obtained Magic Carta No. 57, 63, or 65, please snap some pictures and send them my way. UPDATE: Kajitani-Eizan tells me that the Hearts characters are Shing, Amber, and Jadeite. Maybe the localization team members are Absolute Zero readers? Oh, one interesting side note is that they are sticking with Claus for ToP’s eccentric summoner.

So, should you buy Tales of Graces f? If you have a PS3 and you’re a Tales fan, the answer is most certainly yes. If you don’t have a PS3 but you enjoy Japanese games, the answer is still yes. The PS3 has a great library of games, so while I wouldn’t suggest you buy one JUST for Graces, I would think you can find enough other titles to make it worth the purchase. If none of the above describe you, uh, hi. Welcome to my blog. …What are you doing here?

So you’ve bought the game. Let’s talk more specifically about Graces. Tales of Graces is not my favorite title in the Tales series. It’s probably smack dab in the middle. The battle system is great and it makes the game fun to play. The story leaves a lot to be desired. The main main characters – Asbel, Hubert, Cheria, and Sophie – are quite one-dimensional to me (yes, even for Tales characters). I was hoping that the localization might help to improve some of their characterization, but thus far, it has not. Thankfully, Pascal and Malik are there to bring a little depth (and awesome) to the party. Overall, I’d say the characters in Graces break even. The story is a big cliche cheesefest (and not the good kind like Tales of Hearts). There’s really no fixing it, but it doesn’t get in the way and it’s no worse than the scenarios presented by other games in the series.

Finally, my initial reaction to the localization is mixed. The technical stuff like town names, character names, item names, and general terminology is pretty well done. I’m not sure about Artes as they require a little closer scrutiny. Thus far, they’ve picked natural terminology that gives some depth to the Graces world. My opinion of the dialogue is less positive. In general, the game feels a little rough around the edges for an 8-4 project. I’ve come to expect high quality from them based on their past work, but Graces feels like it might have been a little rushed. It’s just not up to their usual standard. It’s still good, it’s just not as good. One particular issue I have is with the voice acting, something that I can hardly blame a translator for. I can read the text itself and see exactly how the translator meant the line to be spoken based on my experience with the Japanese game. Unfortunately, it seems like nobody sat down with the voice actors to explain some of these subtleties. At best, this results in a few awkward lines here and there, but at worst, it sometimes feels like two characters are having completely different conversations. I think the fault here probably lies with the director. Someone needed to have a clear vision of what each scene should sound like, and that doesn’t appear to have happened.

That’s what I think so far in a nutshell. Knowing what I do now, I would not hesitate to purchase this game again. I hope that all Tales fans will join me in supporting the localization of the Tales series by buying Graces. It’s probably not going to be the best experience you’ve ever had with a Tales game, but it’s a fun game and I don’t think you’ll feel it was a waste of your time or money. If I have more thoughts on the localization as I play, I’ll be sure to share them.

Given that Graces is going to be our first post-Peter Garza Tales localization, it was hard to predict what we might see on the localization. Normally I don’t get too worked up over localization (this is a lie), but given that the names of every character in the Tales series (Xillia excluded) appear in Carta, Graces’ card game, this could be one of the most important localizations to date. Now, most character names aren’t in need of localization, but for those that are, the debate has been long and heated. Any long-time series fans know the fervor that often surrounds the “official names” that appear in the Japanese instruction manuals. And any long-time readers should know I consider these “official names” to be more or less meaningless when it comes time to localize. The old localization team under Garza had proven themselves as capable localizers and their work could be trusted (save for a few small oversights with the arte names). So as we get closer to the release date, I’ve invested a fair amount of energy worrying about what kind of localization awaits us under new leadership.

Today, the first light shone out from the darkness as the PS3 trophies revealed that Tales of Hearts’ lovable heroine would be named Amber Hearts. If you aren’t aware, Amber Hearts appears in a cameo battle in Tales of Graces f. Kohaku/Amber’s name, of course, is the most obvious of the questionable character names. “Kohak,” a sound more akin to clearing your throat than a name, isn’t even within the realm of reason. A quick glance at the Tales of Hearts’ cast names reveals a clear theme and makes translating the Japanese names the only logical choice. It’s a small victory, but it makes me hopeful that they’re approaching this game with their localization hats on.

Of course, there are still a few names up in the air:

1. Luca Milda – Will RUCA rear his ugly head once again or will research and reason prevail!? Given his relationship with antagonist Mathias, Luca’s name should be fairly obvious. The only problem is that Mathias isn’t mentioned within Carta itself. That means the team will need to go the extra mile in familiarizing themselves with Tales of Innocence to get this one right. A little internet research can go a long way. There have been rumors about an Innocence R localization… I have my fingers crossed.
2. Xing Meteoryte – Xing is tricky. The explanation that the game’s director once offered just doesn’t add up. I would be surprised if they choose to use “Shing” given that it doesn’t really reflect the theme. Kaji was the first one to theorize that his name is the Chinese word for star. I subscribe to this theory because so many of his artes contain that very same character (星).
3. Hisui Hearts – I use his Japanese name here because I really don’t know what route they’ll go with Amber’s brother. The most literal translation would be Jade, but we already have one of those, of course. I threw out Jadeite, but realistically, that might be a little too Sailor Moon. Kaji-kun has been using Jaden. Not too bad. I’ve heard Jasper suggested recently. That’s kind of an interesting choice. Their decision to localize Amber means that it won’t remain Hisui and I doubt they’ll create another Jade. I’ll be interested to see what they decide.

When I go to Gamestop to pick up my copy of Tales of Graces f, the first thing I’m going to do is crack open a player’s guide and search for the Carta section. I can only hope that I have a well-researched localization staring back at me when I do.

First and foremost, let me state that I was not born yesterday. I realize that just because we ask people not to do something doesn’t mean that they won’t do it. It’s against my policy to try and fight the internet. It’s really not a very good use of my time or anyone else’s. That being said, I greatly appreciate those who honor our wishes and those who ask others to honor them on our behalf. I have no strong feelings one way or the other for the rest of you.

It was suggested that we only ask people not to upload the patched rom to keep ourselves out of trouble. While not entirely false, it misses the mark a bit. It’s true that we don’t want to be involved in distributing copies of the game. We always have and always will try to make it as easy as possible for people to use our patches in a way that supports the developers. We hope that everyone who plays our Tales of Innocence patch has purchased a copy of the game, made their own backup, and applied the patch to it. Do I believe that’s true? No. I’m a realist, not an idiot. Regardless, I think the benefits to a fan translation outweigh any costs. Those who did as we suggested and bought the game increased Namdai’s profits. At the same time, a download of the game doesn’t represent a lost sale. Namdai wasn’t counting on any sales outside of Japan or they would have localized the game. You can’t lose sales from an audience that can’t even read the text in your game. We want more Tales games, so we try to support the developers. Speaking of which… Everyone needs to go preorder Tales of Graces f if they haven’t already! And buy Tales of the Abyss 3DS too! I don’t care if you don’t have a 3DS and already own Tales of the Abyss on the PS2. Support the localization of the Tales series!

Back on the matter of pre-patched roms, the main reason we ask people not to distribute them is because it makes it harder for us to troubleshoot the patch. There are a lot of bad roms floating around out there and for whatever reason, people always seem to upload pre-patched roms using a corrupt base rom. We want to make sure people are able to play our patch, but it can be a challenge to determine if problems are caused by our patch or something on the user side. If our patch is the primary means of distribution, we can just troubleshoot individual problems (which often just requires a good copy of the game). If there’s a problem with the patch itself, we can fix it and release a new version. On the other hand, if most people are using a pre-patched rom, we end up with a lot of people reporting the same issues due to corruption, but it’s hard to correct the problem when we can’t get the bad copy out of circulation. Additionally, if we ever get around to releasing updated patches (which we still discuss regularly), it’s a lot easier if people already have a good copy of the unpatched rom. I admit that these are minor issues for the most part, but it gets to be tiresome trying to solve problems that we didn’t cause.

I’m not going to try and take the moral high ground here because I don’t believe there is one. We can’t control how people use our patch and we don’t intend to. That being said, however, if you’re going to host our patch or anything derived from it, we would really appreciate it if you would at least include the original readme.

The main reason for this post is to announce that Tales of Destiny R is no longer on hiatus! Of course, the resumption of the project doesn’t mean that Destiny’s completion is right around the corner or anything. Tales of Phantasia remains the top priority for Phantasian Productions and I’m still distracting myself with several other translation projects as well. (For more information on ToP and ToD2, Cless has given a detailed update on his site.) Cless is currently working on whipping the Destiny script into a format that will make life easy on all of us from the translation stage through the final editing. For my part, I really need to replay refamiliarize myself with Tales of Destiny before I dive into translating the main script. The menu translation is at a fairly advanced stage, so most of the brute force translation is finished. For me, the script translation typically requires more finesse than the menu and I’m sure Destiny will be no exception. Only time will tell exactly how the project will progress, but for now, I’m thrilled to be able to get it back on its feet.

In other random news:

• Tales of Innocence R looks… okay. I’m interested to see what they do with it. There’s no doubt that Tales of Innocence left a lot of room for improvement. I’m not loving the ToIR battle videos. Looking much too Radiant Mythology for my tastes. I won’t issue final judgement until I actually get to try it for myself, of course. I’ll almost certainly be picking up a Vita regardless.
• Tales of Innocence’s v1.1 patch is increasingly looking like it may meet the ToP v1.1 patch’s fate of eternal purgatory. Is anyone still waiting for an updated ToI patch?
• Tales of Graces’ English localization is supposedly complete. I’m very interested in seeing the results. Personally, the first thing I’m going to do is buy a strategy guide and see what they did with all of the series character names in Carta. Graces is not my favorite game in the series, but with 8-4 on the job, I have high hopes that the localization will allow me to love it in a new way. And, of course, I’m all about supporting the Tales series in any way I can. Everybody get out there and buy it when it’s released!
• Tales of Xillia keeps tempting me, but the recent announcement that content was cut almost surely signals that Xillia R isn’t far off. I’ll probably be holding out for that.
• Skyrim is amazing. I can and did spend pretty much all of my free time playing it since it came out. Looking forward to seeing the modding scene explode when the construction set comes out.
• One Piece is as great as ever. The Hunter X Hunter remake has been excellent so far.
• Friendship is magic.