Quote Originally Posted by Doopliss View Post
I don't understand the surprise here, personally. I mean, one: no writer is ever infallible, and I kind of wish people stopped crediting her for every single good thing in FFXIV and pretending she didn't have some flops herself (this isn't to say her work isn't great; it is. it's just simply unrealistic to pretend any writer single-handedly does all the work for a team project like this, and is some sort of paragon). And two: Ishikawa just, kind of...has a notoriously cheesy taste in music/lyrics, lol. I don't think this is a bad thing, but if you look at her version of the lyrics for the Endwalker theme and so on...the localization team did a lot of work to make it less painfully on the nose.
Unpopular opinion time (?), but as much crap as they get for... I don't know, making what would be a rather bland translation more colourful (but something something stilted anime accuracy), the localisation team have silently contributed significantly to parts of the game Ishikawa more often than not gets full credit for, Emet-Selch's depiction in Shadowbringers and the DRK quests to name some just off the top of my head. She's a very emotive writer, she knows how to make characters that players love and her storylines tend to have more heart and poignancy than her cohorts (who kind of stick to the more repetitive JPRG fare you'd expect that runs a little dry in the West) but she's not actually all that raw or gritty as the writing can get (the JP version rarely is, regardless of who's behind it) and she can definitely get it wrong - including but not limited to, like you say, being no stranger to a healthy amount of cheese, lol. I think purely from a writing perspective she's made several mistakes, but for most players it just flies under the radar compared to her achievements and let's be honest, most FF fans have withstood enough cheese that Ishikawa's writing is positively R R Martin-esque in comparison.