GameArts (Grandia/II & Lunar) Collection

[Arlia]

Fair enough but you could've at least named off the games with worse voice acting than Grandia.

I actually haven't played a lot of games with a significant amount of voice acting, but Rune Factory 2 was pretty bad. You can just tell they grabbed someone in the studio, and said, "Hey, do an elf voice!" and the result was a disaster for one particular character, but there were only half-cheeked attempts by the rest of the cast, too. This might be branching out, but I once saw "Legend of Lemnear", because of the Langrisser artstyle, and dear me... I don't like anime, I've watched very little of it (pokemon when I was little...that sort of thing.) But goodness... That was the first and last non-ghibli anime movie I saw.

Someone actually uploaded part of it on Youtube, if you care to watch:
https://youtu.be/gt1Y9gMIQHA

[Alunissage]

Leo, she's already said she doesn't want to discuss it further, so please stop trying to pull her in. And one doesn't have to point to examples of worse execution of X to say that one doesn't like how X is done in game Y.

I'm also not liking how you're making the topic about how messed up you think people who don't think the way you do about sex or sex jokes. Not saying that's an invalid topic, but it's rather rude to keep harping on it in a thread where the creator of the thread has said she doesn't care for the topic. I know you don't mean your statements as attacks, but it really seems like you're trying to invalidate her perfectly reasonable subjective reactions to her gaming experience. That's not cool. And that's after putting her on the defensive about her opinion of WD -- asking why is reasonable enough, calling it venom when she just said she doesn't have WD stuff in her collection by intention is overly strong -- and I really don't like seeing one person being jumped on repeatedly for her subjective opinions which she not only stated calmly but backed up with reasons.

I don't have a problem with discussing localizing, of course; I find it very interesting. But perhaps in a different thread. Or at least more respectful in this one.

No English version of Growlanser (I) exists that I know of, although there's a text translation. Imperial Knight would know; I believe he worked on it. I've played a little bit of the first game, but it tended to crash on my Japanese PS2 so I gave up. I do mean to try it again, maybe on PSP. I should get that version; I already own the PSX one twice but that's never stopped me.

(On the topic of voice acting, I really didn't care for what I heard of the Growlanser II English voices. Probably because I played it originally with the Japanese voices and the English voices I synthesized in my head were just totally different from the WD ones.)

[Kizyr]

Yes, I know; it's awkward that I'd dislike the company that gave the US the game. I guess I just wish someone else had done it, or that they'd stayed a little more on script with the whole process.

A game is more than it's translation. It's also artwork, and music, and you know, game play. Grandia had relatively bad voice acting, but I've heard much, much, worse, and some of the voice acting in Lunar is cheesy, too. I guess I prefer a overly simple, possibly bad, translation to one ruined by putting too much of themselves into it. Which one is really worse, at the end of the day? It's only a matter of preference, and you just asked about mine:

Before I get into this, I do have to say that I think they're all pretty fair criticisms of WD (except for some of the speculation about what caused their bankruptcy -- though Alun already mentioned that). There's a lot that's just chalked up to subjective likes and dislikes. Overall, for me, the things I liked about WD outweighed by far the things I disliked, so it landed on that side.

Anyway, I don't want to belabor some of the stuff that's already been discussed a bit. But just a few points...

-The nasty sense of humor in some of the games.

Yeah this is 100% subjective... I'm not sure where I fall on this. Usually I didn't mind, but I can see how it gets uncomfortable. I didn't fully document stuff like this while putting together my Japanese-to-English script differences, but the English script definitely makes more crude references than the Japanese script.

-This one might get me in a lot of trouble: anachronisms. In other words, pop culture references. I want to forget about the real world when I play a game, not be forced into remembering that I'm just playing a game, every time I talk to an NPC.

In trouble? That was a pretty common complaint. I've sort of changed my mind on this over the years -- I thought it was pretty funny back when I first played the games, but now that I replay them it does make me groan more than enjoy the dialogue. It's not bad enough to throw off the whole translation (honestly, the Japanese dialogue that was replaced was, 99 times out of 100, pretty bland). But now that I'm playing the games 10-20 years later, it's definitely weird to say the least.

-I hate John Truit's voice. Anything else would have been better, in my opinion- absolutely anything. Why would anyone suddenly start speaking like that, for any reason? No one but WD would have come up with that voice.

Oh... now this one we're gonna have to agree to disagree {^^}. Ghaleon's one case where I thought the English voice acting was better than the Japanese (John Truitt's take on it was better than Rokurou Naya's, and he was the best of the Japanese VAs to take the role in my opinion). A few others were Ruby (Japanese voice is far more irritating) and Leo. Several of them were on-par between the English and Japanese voices, too. KF

[Leo]

Fair enough but you could've at least named off the games with worse voice acting than Grandia.

I actually haven't played a lot of games with a significant amount of voice acting, but Rune Factory 2 was pretty bad. You can just tell they grabbed someone in the studio, and said, "Hey, do an elf voice!" and the result was a disaster for one particular character, but there were only half-cheeked attempts by the rest of the cast, too. This might be branching out, but I once saw "Legend of Lemnear", because of the Langrisser artstyle, and dear me... I don't like anime, I've watched very little of it (pokemon when I was little...that sort of thing.) But goodness... That was the first and last non-ghibli anime movie I saw.

Someone actually uploaded part of it on Youtube, if you care to watch:
https://youtu.be/gt1Y9gMIQHA

Lol I made it about 3 minutes in. That is pretty damn bad!

Leo, she's already said she doesn't want to discuss it further, so please stop trying to pull her in.
No English version of Growlanser (I) exists that I know of, although there's a text translation. Imperial Knight would know; I believe he worked on it.

She said give my opinion but don't expect her to debate. I addressed her twice in my previous post and she chose to only reply to one portion of it. I'd say the two of us have it handled.

As for the info on English Growlanser, that's a bummer. Constantly referring to a text translation rather than it being translated inside the game sounds incredibly tedious. I have no idea why they'd want to bring over 2 and 3 while knowing that we never got the first one.

[Arlia]

Hi Kizyr!

Yes, the bankruptcy thing I knew wasn't entirely their fault, and I kind of made it seem like that in the first post. Not my intention.

In trouble? That was a pretty common complaint.

Some people LOVE it, and I figured I'd get an ear full from someone that it made the game for. Heh, not literally in trouble, I just figured I'd be disagreed with on that one pretty quick!

Oh, I knew a long time ago I was on my own about my opinion of Ghaleon. I'm so sorry... I know there's a million Ghaleon fanboys... But I hate the character because of his voice. As a bad guy, I expected him to growl and burn with his voice, but instead, he sounds like a fruity wuss that's angry over his choicest tea being spilt. I didn't start seeing him as a character until I heard his voice by a different actor on the PSP game. (Reasons I don't like the remake can be in another topic. '_') Even the silly "bad guy has an accent that's totally not American" thing suits him better then Mr. Truitt.

Leo, you remind me of a friend I used to have named Travis. He never knew when to shut up, and was upset that not everything was about him all the time. That's why we're not friends anymore.

[Alunissage]

Leo, she's already said she doesn't want to discuss it further, so please stop trying to pull her in.
No English version of Growlanser (I) exists that I know of, although there's a text translation. Imperial Knight would know; I believe he worked on it.

She said give my opinion but don't expect her to debate. I addressed her twice in my previous post and she chose to only reply to one portion of it. I'd say the two of us have it handled.

Just FYI, she and I posted simultaneously. But I decided the sentiment stands.

As for the info on English Growlanser, that's a bummer. Constantly referring to a text translation rather than it being translated inside the game sounds incredibly tedious. I have no idea why they'd want to bring over 2 and 3 while knowing that we never got the first one.

That's easy enough. Growlanser I is PSX and II and III are PS2. Both WD and Sony had problems with this. Sony refused to bundle PSX games with PS2 games (I don't think WD ever asked them to, seeing as they didn't want to bundle II and III anyway, but this came up at some point), and WD had a hell of a time selling Arc Collection as it was because game stores weren't stocking much in the way of PSX games. They weren't going to be doing another one, not at that point in the PSX's lifecycle.

Heh, I remember Vic saying at one point, probably on the WDMB, that he'd only consider doing Growlanser I if a PSP version came out. Which was pretty easily translated as not a chance in hell. And then it did come out on PSP -- but WD was defunct by then.

[Leo]

Hi Kizyr!

Yes, the bankruptcy thing I knew wasn't entirely their fault, and I kind of made it seem like that in the first post. Not my intention.

In trouble? That was a pretty common complaint.

Some people LOVE it, and I figured I'd get an ear full from someone that it made the game for. Heh, not literally in trouble, I just figured I'd be disagreed with on that one pretty quick!

Oh, I knew a long time ago I was on my own about my opinion of Ghaleon. I'm so sorry... I know there's a million Ghaleon fanboys... But I hate the character because of his voice. As a bad guy, I expected him to growl and burn with his voice, but instead, he sounds like a fruity wuss that's angry over his choicest tea being spilt. I didn't start seeing him as a character until I heard his voice by a different actor on the PSP game. (Reasons I don't like the remake can be in another topic. '_') Even the silly "bad guy has an accent that's totally not American" thing suits him better then Mr. Truitt.

Leo, you remind me of a friend I used to have named Travis. He never knew when to shut up, and was upset that not everything was about him all the time. That's why we're not friends anymore.

I enjoyed a lot of the pop culture references but can definitely see how it'd annoy a lot of other people. I'd be baffled if it made the game for anyone, though.

I like John Truitt as Ghaleon and couldn't stand anyone else doing it. You aren't alone in your point of view, though. Plenty of people call Ghaleon gay and Truitt's regular speaking voice sounds like that's a real possibility. I don't consider it like that when he's voicing Ghaleon, though.

As for the last bit, I like debates on the things everyone knows/notices but rarely discuss. Any subject that people are unnecessarily uncomfortable with actually. It's interesting and revealing of humanity in general. I feel people in general could get a lot more comfortable in their own skin if they'd allow themselves to observe and critique them. Also note that when you didn't respond to the second part of the other post, I didn't push for it.

As for the info on English Growlanser, that's a bummer. Constantly referring to a text translation rather than it being translated inside the game sounds incredibly tedious. I have no idea why they'd want to bring over 2 and 3 while knowing that we never got the first one.

That's easy enough. Growlanser I is PSX and II and III are PS2. Both WD and Sony had problems with this. Sony refused to bundle PSX games with PS2 games (I don't think WD ever asked them to, seeing as they didn't want to bundle II and III anyway, but this came up at some point), and WD had a hell of a time selling Arc Collection as it was because game stores weren't stocking much in the way of PSX games. They weren't going to be doing another one, not at that point in the PSX's lifecycle.

Heh, I remember Vic saying at one point, probably on the WDMB, that he'd only consider doing Growlanser I if a PSP version came out. Which was pretty easily translated as not a chance in hell. And then it did come out on PSP -- but WD was defunct by then.

Looks like I'll be skipping out on Growlanser then.

[Imperial Knight]

The Growlanser script is posted on GameFAQs. The translation itself was done by someone who is neither a native English speaker nor a native Japanese speaker, so I helped edit the translated text. Honestly if I had the time I'd go through and re-edit the whole thing for a number of reasons. For one, I wasn't always consistent with the decisions I made and I never got around to editing some of the later parts of the script. For me it's totally worth it to play the game while reading the script, but it's my favorite game of all time. I wouldn't expect everyone to be that dedicated. I know there is (or at least was) a fan translation project going on that was making slow progress. I have no idea of the current status or whether it's even still active, but I suspect that one day there will be a translation patch from one group or another.

Speaking of Growlanser and Working Designs, I thought they did an excellent job with II&III. The humor was kept at a level appropriate for the tone of the games and didn't rely so much on pop culture references as much of their earlier work. I know WD's gameplay tweaks were often controversial but pretty much all of the changes they made were unambiguous improvements. They added a badly needed auto-battle function to Growlanser II (III already had one) and dramatically improved the interface (comparing to any non-WD Growlanser release is night and day).

Adding to why WD never translated the first one was that when it came out it never occurred to them to even try since it was published by Atlus who, of course, already had a North American branch. It still completely baffles me that Atlus USA passed it up especially given how underwhelming a lot of their choices were at the time. If I recall correctly it was Atlus (Japan) who contacted WD about doing II&III, not the other way around, and since Vic was already a fan of the games he jumped at the opportunity. From what I've read Growlanser was a source of tension between the Japanese and American branches of Atlus, with the Japanese side wanting the games localized and the American side resisting, but that's based on third-hand knowledge, so take it for what it's worth.

[Alunissage]

Yeah, that jibes with my recollection and mine would be second-hand knowledge. ^_^ And yeah, the battle and equip screen tweaks were pretty significant. I won't get started on the voices, though; probably people who are only familiar with the US ones think they're fine. I did kind of miss the +1 +2 +3 on the gem names as a quick reference to make it easier to figure what to equip.

I really do need to get back to it. I had time carved out in 2005 to play it and my brother-in-law visited and insisted on playing some other game during the only long at-home vacation I had, and I never got back to it.

[Arlia]

I had time carved out in 2005 to play it and my brother-in-law visited and insisted on playing some other game during the only long at-home vacation I had, and I never got back to it.

In-laws ruin everything.

[Alunissage]

Hehe. I actually like my bro-in-law quite a bit, and I can kind of understand his reasoning -- he was on summer break and this was pretty much the only chance he'd have to play whatever it was he was playing. I was just burnt out by extra people being around for so long. It went something like, a week or two in Vancouver with my then-fiance and my sister, then we drove back with little bro, then my sister left, then my fiance left for a visit to his hometown (Saskatoon) leaving me with little bro for a week -- which I learned would be the case after everything was arranged, because the two of them got carried away with making arrangements and forgot to check with me. So I'd thought that at least that third week he'd be mostly hanging out with fiance and I'd have some time at home to recover and play, but instead I was a hostess when I really needed some down time alone. There were other complications too, involving a 911 call and trip to the ER, but... yeah. I'll get back to that game someday!

[Arlia]

Well, it's neat that you can be in the same house as yours for a week, heh... I adore my sister's husband, but my husband's brother is a nightmare.

In any case, I was kidding above (just in case.) I would LOVE to play the original Langrissers, but I can't stand strategy games, no matter how many times I try. I guess I'm just dumb, and can't strategize well, I guess.