The localization team

[Fuddy]

While I understand some people enjoy the references, every time I see a western pop culture reference in this game I die a little inside. Shouldn't translations be as literal as possible?

Simply put, No. Most people I've met who are that into Anime are just too in love with Anime and Japan to see it in an unbiased way.

Why even translate it then? Just play the game in Japanese if you understand it. Once I learned Japanese I went back and played some classic games from when I was younger and I've actually been disappointed sometimes at the original Japanese text as it does have differences in nuance. It's just my personal preference there but just because something was originally written in one language does not make that language inherently better. I haven't played much of FFXIV in Japanese but if the English team is more creative they very well may have created much better text.

In fact, I went through and looked at the achievement names in both English and Japanese. Look at the names for the 10 level increment achievements. The Japanese achievement names are just like "Level 10 Conjurer" (幻術士：レベル10) while the English one is "I got the magic stick." I don't know about you but I think the English is WAY more interesting. That's not to say there aren't other achievements with good names in Japanese too.

One of my favorites was "It's not Lupus"... cuz... it's CANCER!!!! It's so stupid and I know it's a House reference but for some reason I find it too funny.
Now we need two more fates "It's never Lupus" and "Ok, it's Lupus"

The old english speak is a little overboard IMO though. A little dialect is ok here and there but something about "give succor" just sounds wrong to me. Oh well, thanks for expanding my vocab SE.