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@Ene did I miss any localization discourse on Unicorn Overlord? I played it while I was gone and I couldn’t help but notice that the English script sucked fat nuts, no idea how much of that was localization bs and how much was it being a badly written game to begin with.

@jimmybuffettfanaccount Both english and japanese reviewers say that the game's writing is nothing special, or just bad. Sega probably forced Vanillaware to send the JP script to sensitivity readers.

@Ene that checks out. there’s certainly some problems unique to the English version (they’re trying to go for a faux archaic style like ffxii or ff tactics but they’re simply too stupid to know how to do it, constantly slipping up and using contemporary words, idioms, and speaking style, and I even noticed a few “to, too, two” mistakes which is incredibly juvenile) but the main thing is that when you scratch the surface of virtually every single one of the dozens of characters they all have this soulless blackrock approved neolib imitation of a personality, and that felt like it was probably true for the original, too.

Why must the Americans keep dropping nukes on Japan?
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@jimmybuffettfanaccount @Ene such a shame to see vanillaware dragged down to this level

@irie @Ene interestingly zog still let them have a bunch of their muscle girls. kind of maybe almost really makes you think…

@jimmybuffettfanaccount @Ene I think they call this "safe sexy" lol

ugh

@irie @jimmybuffettfanaccount @Ene by this point everyone should know what to expect from fatlus and Sega, everything they touch gets corrupted to a certain degree
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@Ene @jimmybuffettfanaccount vanillaware is currently on stage 1 of 3 of subversion being sterilization
Expect to see some innocuous and subtle poz in the next game

@Vidmastereon @Ene I wouldn’t say unicorn overlord is only sterile, the Angel and elf characters have tons of support conversations about how terrible it is that their societies are racist for not wanting to let humans in and mix with them. It’s pretty unsubtle antiracist stuff.

@Vidmastereon @Ene also their previous game 13 sentinels had a fag character, admittedly he was more in line with historic Japanese degeneracy than westernized lgbt degeneracy so it’s up to you to decide if that counts as poz in the same way.

@irie @jimmybuffettfanaccount @Ene What do you mean?
The last game Vanillaware made was Dragon's Crown.

@Ene @jimmybuffettfanaccount There was a big uproar over how awful the translation was

@Arkana @jimmybuffettfanaccount Despite all the uproar, no one found censorship. Shows how weak the original writing is.

@Ene @Arkana @jimmybuffettfanaccount I found this one, I'm not even looking for censorship but the added line was so obvious...

I read a couple of the Twitter threads showing comparisons. Honestly, the original dialog looks super boring. The localizers added a lot of victorian styling. It is a bit annoying as it's more long winded, so it stretches out the dialog that isn't all that great to begin with. But you could argue it's actually better.

I will say I tried to do Japanese voices with English subtitles for two of the battles and it was terrible! The Japanese does not go with a middle ages/fantasy style setting. The English voice actors with the game go way better .. and they're good actors even if their lines could use work. I did a full game review if you're interested:

https://battlepenguin.com/gaming/xenoblade-chronicles-eternights-senran-kagura-shinovi-versus-unicorn-overlord/#unicorn-overlord

It's a good game. The story is actually neat, but it's mostly lore dumps every once in a while. The individual character development isn't the greatest, but the gameplay and tactics are super neat and the art/music are amazeballs.

@djsumdog @cris1010 @Arkana @Ene if they had succeeded in giving it a consistent olde timey feeling with the English script I think you could make a case the changes were an improvement over the original, but I strongly disagree. I facepalmed every time a character said “yep” or used current year therapeutic society jargon like a common redditor, and i facepalmed a lot. if theyre too dumb to know-or can’t be bothered to look up-if an idiom or word they’re using was invented in the 20th century and shouldn’t be included in a medieval setting then they should stick to the dull original text. for any player that’s even remotely familiar with historical writing that stuff is as off putting as if the medieval knights were going around saying skibidi bazinga.

@jimmybuffettfanaccount @djsumdog @Arkana @Ene @cris1010 hmm
i have to disagree, think they should stick closer to the original script regardless.
that way everyone is on the same page about the writing

@rlier23 @djsumdog @Arkana @Ene @cris1010 I just said you COULD make the case if the changes were an improvement. I probably wouldn’t. it doesn’t matter though because the changes suck lol

What did you think of the gameplay/tactical mechanics, or the overall lord/word building?

@djsumdog @Arkana @Ene @cris1010 @rlier23 World building is meh, it’s fire emblem, really really similar to fire emblem, just with the ancient dragon civilizations fire emblem always has being swapped out for valyria from game of thrones. The concept of ghosts from an ancient society of advanced sorcerers possessing people is kind of neat, but they should have given them personalities or a coherent and unique worldview, instead of having them act like generic villains.

Gameplay is great, it unfortunately doesn’t avoid the problem of balancing strategy and rpg mechanics properly (not a huge crime, nobody ever does) so by about halfway through the incredibly nail biting, winning battles by the skin of your teeth, jumping out of your chair in excitement after pulling off a maneuver with a half dozen moving parts goes away because you’ve built an Alain unit and another strong cavalry unit that can pretty much handle the entire rest of the game (and I was playing on expert). Still, keeping a srpg engaging for half the game is longer than most fire emblems are able to pull it off, and definitely longer than any isometric srpg I’ve ever played has done it, so it’s honestly still something of an achievement, and even when you make your game breaking Alain unit it’s still kind of cathartic to play and see it smash up an entire maps worth of enemies. Like I said somewhere else in the thread, if you skip all the text and just enjoy the pretty art and fun gameplay it’s a solid 8/10 game, easy.