Nandemonai

It's not possible to have a good translation with bad prose (well, okay, maybe if the original has bad prose to begin with), but it's very possible to have good prose that isn't a terribly good translation (because it isn't faithful to the original text). That's also a problem that most people wouldn't be able to recognize.

No, it's the most under rated thing among the apologists for low quality work I am convinced that Recettear took off because its localization is one of the best I've ever seen. There were other, better, quirky Japanese games that could have been the one that opened the floodgates. Why Recettear? Because someone at Valve saw the demo and was immediately taken by it. Well, why did that happen? Recettear is a low budget game and even its merchant sim mechanics aren't THAT special. Indeed, Recettear being a smash hit in the West surprised everybody; Japanese sales were so-so. Why is that? I'm pretty sure it's because Recettear's localized script is better than the Japanese script. I haven't actually checked, but I'll bet Recettear in Japanese is a fine script, but nothing spectacular. The English version, in comparison, cranks everything up to 11 and is a laugh riot. I've been thinking about this for quite awhile. When I look back at what I consider the best games I've ever played, there is a very high correlation with the best localization work I've ever seen. Nearly all the best translated RPGs and VNs have really good localization work. I have a very hard time thinking of any I'd hold up as an example of best-in-class despite having a bad localization. Because a bad localization kills the script. Many RPGs that I ultimately wasn't impressed with have bad localizations. Some are probably just... bad games. But I'm now convinced many would have ranked much higher had they been translated by competent folks who knew what they were doing, rather than by inept companies that didn't give a rat's ass. The Atelier series, for instance, has consistently awful localizations, which - combined with the already-fairly-weak plots - really hurts the games. I checked out entirely: I quit halfway through Atelier Shallie because I just didn't care, and haven't bothered looking at any released since. I have it on fairly good authority the Ar Tonelico series is good in Japanese; I couldn't get more than a few hours into either of the ones I tried because the writing was so. awful. RPGFan makes the point better than I ever could: Here is a review of the Japanese PSP version of Legend of Heroes: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch. And here, of the English version. Notice how every aspect of the game scored lower? That's not only because it's a different reviewer. That's because a good story does more than just hold your interest during the story segments. It doesn't make the whole game better, but it makes it feel better. It subconsciously makes people more willing to overlook flaws in the game as a whole. People recognize this effect for graphics; they call it bling. But they don't seem to acknowledge it's true for the text, as well. Bad localizations destroy games. They do it so effectively people don't even understand what happened, just that 'they didn't like the game'. They think 'that game sucked' when the real problem was 'that game was translated by a company that cares so little that when one of its employees thought it would be funny to change a character's name to Esty Dee, they just left it in the game'.

Pulltop did release one game under Jast USA. They're a brand of Will, which for years was one of basically two brands Jast had access to, when they rebranded as Peach Princess. Quick ancient history lession: Jast was a Japanese h-game maker. Jast USA translated a bunch of their titles into English. Then the founder got cancer or had a heart attack or something. He died, company folded. Jast USA wasn't sure what to do; it found new partnerships with Crowd and Will and rebranded itself Peach Princess. Eventually Peter Payne decided Jast USA was the more well-known name and re-orged under it. Well, Pulltop being a Will title, Jast USA released one of their games: Princess Waltz, in late 2008. They never released any of Pulltop's other titles, and 5 years later Pulltop decided to launch Moenovel. I think it is fairly safe to say that Pulltop probably wasn't impressed with Jast USA and is unlikely to work with them again. Their experience with IMHHW probably 'taught' them that going it alone is a 'much better' way to go, since it sold a LOT more than any numbers Jast could have put up in 2008.

Cleanly? They turned one route literally into gibberish.

I found Corona Blossom to be not worth the time. It isn't very interesting.

Princess Evangile has issues, but it sounds like it has what you want. Koihime Musou is, like, half charage and half plot-based. Looking at what you've said, I'm also going to recommend Chrono Clock. All the character routes are somewhat short, but the 3 of the 4+2 (2 locked behind the first 4) that I've finished so far had what it sounds like you're looking for. Even if the plot is kind of light, it's still there. Sonohana New Gen might work for you for the same reasons. I'll also recommend Littlewitch Romanesque, although many folks will prefer the Steam version to the uncut one. The characters are great and it's pretty well written.

MangaGamer clearly does have a schedule. They release one game a month almost all the time, which can only be possible if they've got a schedule. They don't announce that schedule publically, but that doesn't mean they don't have one at all.

Very true. This guy was an admin for the city, got pissy when he was let go, and seized control of the network he was administrating. He made the mayor come personally see him (in jail) before he would reveal the password. This happened more than 20 years ago. And here's an article telling people "hey, you guys know this is illegal". The standard practice now is that if an employee is getting fired or laid off, you have to make it a surprise in order to protect yourself. Many times the employees will be escorted from the building by security immediately after they've been notified. This isn't the nicest way to go about it, but it isn't anything unusual either. I do, however, disagree that the layoffs won't have significant long term effect. There's a good chance the layoffs either are a sign that long term prospects are already rocky, or will make the situation worse in the long run.

Well, there goes the neighborhood. I wouldn't be surprised if they respond to this by launching more Kickstarters, it brings in a chunk of money up front in exchange for a lot more hassle down the road. And obviously they're hurting for money. Companies that aren't hurting for money don't do this. And wiping out the ENTIRE marketing team is a very questionable long term move. Look on the bright side: If worst does come to worst, Jast USA has a long history of license rescuing titles from bankrupt localization companies. There's a decent chance they could clear Sekai's backlog by 2030. Perhaps the early 2030's.

I'm not even sure the VIC-20 could hold a single one of the sprites in its 10K of RAM. Never mind the single-button joystick. Or the fact that Trails in the Sky's text would fill up dozens of floppies even if compressed**. I can see it now... I walk up to a townsperson, press FIRE to open the menu, then select TALK, but this NPC isn't on the same disk as the NPC I just talked to. The game prompts me to INSERT DISK #28. ** - The successor system, the Commodore 64, had floppies with 190K of space per side. But you can't fill it entirely with text. Because the machine has such low RAM, you'd have to store the game program and some of the graphics on each disk. You'd end up with a lot less than 190K of usable space for dialog when you were done.

JAST licensed Littlewitch Romaneque after Littlewitch had already gone under.

That was supposed to be attached to Infernoplex's post mentioning Ojou-sama to Himitsu no Otome - which is a Moonstone Honey game. I'm not sure how that got screwed up.

It is Moonstone. Moonstone games seem to print money for MangaGamer.

I will second the Trails series. Trails in the Sky was originally released in 2004 and it will probably run on your toaster. The game is completely awesome, though, especially with the addition of Turbo mode (the battles can be a bit slow-moving).

Huh. They updated the storefront page. All the 瓦石語 (garbagese) seems to be gone now, except for the one screenshot (which hasn't been changed). Perhaps it actually isn't being machine translated. (I'll still be wanting to see an explanation for what the hell that was they posted.)