1 Month in impressions/criticisms...

[Kogasan]

I think the biggest problem is the lack there of of middle man end game content. They have end game content for hard core gamers and end game content for beginners but none for the people who find Alex normal being way to easy and can't for one reason or another get into Alex savage. Not that they think its to hard or anything. Again this I all my opinion.

[Naunet]

This game uses way too much Fedex, and to make matters worse, they do it over long distances. Many of the quests in this game should have been condensed majorly for less back-and-forthing, because it is not enjoyable, and it doesn't make the story any better, it just makes it irritating to get it to move along. I understand I need to go to Uldah to ask the princess for permission on so-and-so, but why must I then return to give Alphinaud the word given to me by the princess, only to then again return to the princess to give his response?

Oh. My. God. So much of THIS. I am usually a person who gets super into reading quest text and story and lore, in any MMO I play. But the sheer stupid amount of meaningless back and forth ultimately made me tune out half the story.

[Nekodar]

There isn't really any "original intended language" for this game... Had the story and everything been completely developed in japanese first and then translated/localized, you may have had a point, but that's really not how they do it this time around.

[Lux_Rayna]

Japanese and English dont jive. At all. There is no way on Earth to localize those two languages into a consistent message while remaining faithful to both languages. Translating from one to the other requires you to sacrifice some linguistic integrity. I get your point, but in light of the task I would cut them some slack. Granted, they abuse the Middle Ages dialogue.

[Kaedan94]

While I don't agree there's anything wrong with teleportation, I'll counter you on the point I'm qualified to: Translation.

A) The game is set in a world where the theme is very heavily influenced by middle ages/renaissance Europe. And the FF series in general has always had a strong inclination towards western culture and English, utilizing katakana-ized English words for many, many aspects of it. So naturally the English localization is designed to follow the "old world" theme. Thus, they use old-style English. The meaning is still the same, it's just stylized with old English.

B) A lot of the names in FF series actually come from Scandanavian and Middle Eastern cultures... which are quite famous for sometimes lacking vowels. Some of the names are actually taken straight from Scandanavian folklore.

C) As someone who also is fluent in both Japanese and English, I disagree with you. The localizations are almost always true to the Japanese. They aren't always exact translations, but anyone who has ever worked in localization can tell you that you actually want to avoid exact translations in many cases. Because the Nuance and implications are often quite different.

Let's use your example (I'm at work so I can't confirm your translation of the Japanese, but I'll take your word for it): "I don't wanna die! Somebody save me!" vs. "I'm eternal! I'm immortal!"

Perhaps you're not familiar with many of the cultural nuances of English and the tropes of English media because you live in Japan, but those are not nearly as different as you think. In fact, that particular English trope has been used countless times in English literature to imply the same meaning as the Japanese. Essentially he didn't think he could die and is emotionally disturbed by the fact he actually can. And in English literature tropes, that fear is often met with ultimately futile, defiant language.

There is nothing in the script that is contradictory. There are a few times where it might seem that way because it's not an exact translation, but the meaning is still carried over. Their localization team is actually quite GOOD because they make use of English tropes to mirror the Japanese ones that don't really make sense when translated exactly.

[ruskie]

9. The localization - TERRIBLE!

This is aimed squarely at the localization team or whoever made the decisions concerning the translations for the game.

Now, I live in Japan (and thusly speak Japanese), however my parents are english/japanese and so I speak both fluently. English has always been the language of my parents at home, so you could say my native language is English and thus I prefer reading English, but I'm actually much better at listening in Japanese (this is hard to explain so I won't bother) so I actually prefer to have both the Japanese voice while reading English text, it just makes my information intake more..."full"? Anyways, now that you have context...I am really, really disappointed with the English localization. Disparagingly so. Few things.

Different cultural backgrounds see things differently. And that is the role of the localization team to figure out something that will work for someone that doesn't mix and match voice overs and written in this case.

A. You converted their dialogue in to a sort of ancient knights of the round table type speak. This is wholly absent in the vocalized dialogue (unless you count occasional keigo), and thus made for a pretty severely contradictory viewing experience while reading along. Some of the choices characters use to speak I'm pretty sure aren't even real pseudo-ancient turn-of-phrases, possibly made up to sound unique. I've seen some of the most horrific collections of words I think I've ever had to endure in story text...and putting "Pray" at the beginning of every sentence is just the tip of the iceberg.

"Pray naught why to not for be it to ask..."

I'm sorry WHAT? Why do you go through the effort of garbling up the English language so hard just to create some kind of immersion for English speakers? This stuff is more often than not forcing me to raise my eyebrow and reread things multiple times to even understand what you were going for, and I find myself ignoring the text altogether and just skipping the cut scene unless it has voiced dialogue. If the dialogue wasn't bad enough, the name localizations also deserve mention.

I'm not a native english speaker but for me the english in the game is really a non issue for the most part - but then I'm used to reading a lot of fantasy stuff so for me this is just fulffy padding most of the time but I enjoy it. It gives it flavour.

B. I have seen names without any primary vowels. There's some NPC I crossed named Sylfsr. What is wrong with you?. This isn't a name it's a collection of letters meant to not bear similarity to a functional earth-like name. This doesn't create immersion or make you think you're in a fantasy world it's just awkward and weird. Immersion is created in the personality of the world, not the weirdo names and word choices.

Krk - it's a real world town and island - of the top of my head, Črt - a real world name so that's 2 names without any primary vowels(this reminds me of the time when I was talking with a co worker that came frrm Australia he had about the same reaction as you to the name Krk - it's something unheard of in the English language). Each race has it's own naming conventions and they are described in detail on the forums so you can see what they mean.

Sorry if your world view doesn't extend farther than this "is just not done so" but there is a lot more in the real world then we are trully aware off.

C. The translations are often unfaithful to the originally intended dialogue.

I became particularly bothered by these things during a particular scene...where you are killing the Ascian guy. The English text says as he is being vanquished "I am eternal! I am immortal!". However, in the voiced dialogue, he was (there's no perception bias here, the words he used were straight forward) saying "I don't want to die! Somebody save me!". Why does this bother me? The translation is utterly unfaithful. In the voiced dialogue, he's revealing a sense of weakness not present in the text. He never thought he could die, so how does it feel that he just might?! He was so sure of it that the level of fear in his voice showed that the Ascians are penetrable indeed to their mortality, and that this method was something they never could have expected.

Saying "I'm eternal! I'm immortal!" just expresses that they are clearly wrong about that, given the situation. It doesn't convey nearly the same emotion, and thus the presentation of the scene is compromised.

This scene in particular came to mind, but this sort of stuff is present through out the story as a whole. Some characters are utterly mis-portrayed frequently in their words chosen, and many of these situations call in to question why they needed to do so. A lot of times, the Japanese dialogue gets to the point, and the english dialogue will say things that the character didn't even SAY, usually just to fluff it up with all that ridiculous other-worldly speak that, as I said, is utterly needless in the first place.

I strongly feel that the localization team was unfaithful to the original intended message of much of the dialogue, and that the grammatical pretext used within the characters speech in the English text is wholly unnecessary and obtuse.

The team needs to make the wording appealing to it's intended language audience. There is some marketing and psychology involved in there. The same goes for the box art(this I recall was discussed somewhere before). But yes certain things from what I've heard were rather poorly localized, removing critical references and such(the hunt mark descriptions come to mind).

[zipzo]

While I don't agree there's anything wrong with teleportation, I'll counter you on the point I'm qualified to: Translation.

A) The game is set in a world where the theme is very heavily influenced by middle ages/renaissance Europe. And the FF series in general has always had a strong inclination towards western culture and English, utilizing katakana-ized English words for many, many aspects of it. So naturally the English localization is designed to follow the "old world" theme. Thus, they use old-style English. The meaning is still the same, it's just stylized with old English.

I understand...but it's still needless. You can still instill the sense of immersion necessary for a complete gaming experience without the hokey pokey text. It's just plain overdone. In subtle amounts, it's totally fine, but in my experience attempting to decipher most of the in-game text, it's simply irritating to someone not well versed with that kind of speak which I imagine would be most people playing the game. I already know two languages I'm not itching to understand a third (literally I feel like sometimes it's a different language with how ridiculous some of the grammar is).

My problem with so much teleportation probably stems from the fedex quests. So instead of teleportation precisely as a feature, I'm mostly mad at how they've designed the story with the fact in mind that you CAN easily teleport everywhere. So in a way teleportation is still at fault to a degree.

B) A lot of the names in FF series actually come from Scandanavian and Middle Eastern cultures... which are quite famous for sometimes lacking vowels. Some of the names are actually taken straight from Scandanavian folklore.

Okay...I'll give you this point...but Eorzea =| Scandanavia or any Earthly country.

C) As someone who also is fluent in both Japanese and English, I disagree with you. The localizations are almost always true to the Japanese. They aren't always exact translations, but anyone who has ever worked in localization can tell you that you actually want to avoid exact translations in many cases. Because the Nuance and implications are often quite different.

That's why I picked a situation where there's no interpretation involved, when the words are clear cut.

I didn't mean to imply that the game tells an entirely different story in English than it does in Japanese, but it conveys an extremely different sense of personality from the characters. To a general end of conveying the story itself, of course the localization is fine, it just wreaks of try-hard with the over-done geeky language thing, and at times it improperly over-texts you when in Japanese it may have meant to be more subtle. This is hard to explain in words, but I think you understand what I'm trying to say. To infer that many scenes in the story aren't dramatically tinkered with in terms of how the information is presented (aside from the fact the languages are different) is to be dishonest, quite simply you're just incorrect (and it's all fresh in my head too considering I just went through it).

Let's use your example (I'm at work so I can't confirm your translation of the Japanese, but I'll take your word for it): "I don't wanna die! Somebody save me!" vs. "I'm eternal! I'm immortal!"

Perhaps you're not familiar with many of the cultural nuances of English and the tropes of English media because you live in Japan, but those are not nearly as different as you think. In fact, that particular English trope has been used countless times in English literature to imply the same meaning as the Japanese. Essentially he didn't think he could die and is emotionally disturbed by the fact he actually can. And in English literature tropes, that fear is often met with ultimately futile, defiant language.

There is nothing in the script that is contradictory. There are a few times where it might seem that way because it's not an exact translation, but the meaning is still carried over. Their localization team is actually quite GOOD because they make use of English tropes to mirror the Japanese ones that don't really make sense when translated exactly.

Again, this isn't to say the actual conveyance of the story is compromised by the text, but many elements of character expression most certainly were, and hardly done infrequently throughout the story. To me a story is majorly about its characters and their personalities, not just what nation is attacking what nation, etc (which of course, always got across just fine). It's the nitty gritty details of their communication that was wrecked, in my honest opinion.

Assuming what everyone says is true (about all translations happening at the same time, and therefore there is no "original" language, well then I'll just simply say I despise the English interpretation and leave it at that.

Japanese and English dont jive. At all. There is no way on Earth to localize those two languages into a consistent message while remaining faithful to both languages. Translating from one to the other requires you to sacrifice some linguistic integrity. I get your point, but in light of the task I would cut them some slack. Granted, they abuse the Middle Ages dialogue.

I understand that the languages are different and that there are many things that don't properly work between the two, that's precisely why I prefer to speak Japanese IRL and prefer to write and communicate with English on the computer. Some things are just easier or more...I don't know how to explain...functioning? English has better ways to making direct and specific statements in my opinion, I don't know, unless you are like me it's difficult to explain this.

Mostly I have an issue with them mis-portraying characters words from the Japanese voiced dialogue. From my perception there were many words that, for the most part, didn't need to be used to convey the point in the situation. Where in Japanese the character might say "There's no way..."...the english text will say something like "Does that mean X and X are doing X and X?!".

To me this are two distinctly different ways of conveying a character, one of them portrays a reaction, the other is just an attempt to create an informative reaction for a reading-only situation. It reminds me of Dragonball Z and how they over explain everything as a situation is happening...except in text form.

[Kiara1]

I'm sorry I stopped reading at Combat -excellent.
If you like what I think they failed the most with in this game im not gonna agree with your other thoughts.
Honestly though? 2 and a half day gcd and you give it excellent?
The combat system made me react slower when I play other games like mobas and I had to take a break from it to get it back.

[Strika23]

I agree with most of your post except the character customization part. WoW may have had more face selection but all the faces were premade and couldn't be altered at all.Therefore, you & a million other players had the exact same face. FFXIV has thousands of color combinations, way more skincolors, the ability to customize your face (lips, eyes, eye color, eyebrows, jaw, nose, height, etc.), not to mention it has way more hairstyles than WoW. Since launch this game has added more than 20 new hairstyles with more always on the horizon. When you mix the thousand of options in creator with the thousand of glamour/gear options you can have in the game (and have the ability to dye gear unlike WoW) you will run into MANY unique player characters. I never see clones running around. Look a likes, yes, but never clones as was the case in WoW. I do however agree with the Au'ra horns dilemma being attached to the face & I believe there should be more facial variety among the select faces too.

[Seig345]

To be honest, I had trouble with the "old english" at first, but as seems to be the case with most dialects, I start picking up on repeated terms and phrases as I apply the context of their previous usage, and suddenly I catch myself almost using them IRL ('anon' comes to mind the most here). I think people have trouble with this because the English language has evolved to remove most/all of its original flourish in favor of speed of communication. With the exception of Urianger, and half or more of the NPCs in Limsa Lominsa, I hardly ever find myself stumbling over reading the text in this game and comprehending the point on the first pass.