What is going on with the NPC dialogue in Ar nosurge?

**Tsugumi Henduluin** · 25-09-14, 02:45 PM

Since you seem intent on completely ignoring me on twitter, I guess it's time to take this to a more public space...

I've gotten my copy of Ar nosurge almost three days ago now. While the game is great and you seem to have done a fairly decent job at localizing it, some small inconsistencies aside, there is one *very* major issue with the game that became apparent within half an hour and seems to affect the entire game:
Every single NPC, with the exception of the ones in Nay's cafe for some reason, has their dialogue scrambled to the point where they make about as much sense as straight up untranslated Japanese. It seems it's a simple issue of there being a stray line break somewhere in the text files and this issue can in all likelihood be patched fairly easily, but in the three days the game's been out, Koei Tecmo has not so much as acknowledged this error even being there, let alone said they were working on it.

This is frankly unacceptable, and it's only made worse by the fact you keep actively pushing positive reviews and other promotions of the game on your social media despite being aware of this issue, even prioritizing something as relatively trivial as untranslated trophies which do not affect gameplay in any way shape or form.

Now, I'm not expecting you to fix this overnight (although, if the people over at XSEED can push out 5 patches in 24 hours for a 10 year old game that is held together by spit and tape, despite only having a single programmer...) but I would at the very least like to know what you intend to do about this. Just conveniently ignore it until it goes away, as you seem to be doing right now due to your total silence on the matter, or do you actually intend to fix this at some point?

**Tsugumi Henduluin** · 29-09-14, 09:22 AM

*sigh* Still pretending the problems don't exist, I see.

Alright then, let's make a list of offenses, shall we? Please mind that due to the sheer number of them, I'm bound to have forgotten a few.

1 - Completely and totally denying Ciel nosurge even exists, to the point of removing references to it in Ar
While I understand your decision to not bring over Ciel from a business standpoint, to censor as many references as humanly possible to it in its direct sequel is just childish.

2 - Making DLC that was available to everyone in Japan, a store-exclusive pre-order bonus
Exclusive pre-order bonuses are already one of the scummiest things a company can do, but to do it with content that was previously available to everyone is something even EA and Ubisoft wouldn't dare dream of.

3 - Completely breaking NPC dialogue to the point where it's totally unreadable
Entirely unacceptable in a game that takes pride in its world-building. Not to mention this is pretty damning proof the game didn't go through QA in any fashion whatsoever, more on that later...

4 - Incredibly inconsistent localization of names and terms
To the point where a name or term is literally written in two or different ways in the same sentence. Again, complete and total lack of QA.

5 - Game-breaking bugs
Delta's "Delayed Burst" skill. From what I've read, the bug was almost non-existent in the Japanese version, but pops up quite frequently in the localized version. This is the same kind of nonsense NISA managed to pull with a bossfight near the end of Ar tonelico 2.

6 - Extremely awkwardly worded dialogue choices in various Genometrics levels/wrong use of pronouns
Making it very hard to figure out exactly what the choice is meant to say. Fairly minor issue, but again, more evidence of lack of QA. (Not to mention immensely ironic considering the game features an item that literally states it can do translations fairly well, but words them awkwardly...)

7 - Total lack of subtitles in cutscenes on the Japanese voice-track
Yes, the cutscenes are only 10-20 seconds long and feature maybe 5 words each... but really? You couldn't be bothered to put in even that little effort?

(7.5: The very possible removal of the extra boss in Phase 3, though since nobody has gotten to that point yet, this may or may not be an actual thing. Though given your treatment of the title thus far, I would not be surprised)

And by far the worst offense of all: 8 - A total indifference and lack of acknowledgement of any and all of these issues on the side of Koei Tecmo
The game has been out for almost a week now. In that time, you have organized give-aways, promoted positive reviews of the game and goddess knows what else, but not even once have you so much as acknowledged the fact you might have done a somewhat poor job at localizing the game. Instead, you just put your fingers in your ears and went "lalala, I can't hear you". Really damn professional of you, KT.

By now it's completely clear that Ar nosurge was nothing but a quick cashgrab for you. Shoddy localization, skipped QA alltogether, almost no marketing, holding additional story-content (DLC) hostage for pre-orders... You disgust me and I will no longer be buying any more products from you and I will do my darnedest to make sure people I know will do the same.

I know losing a handful of customers won't matter a damn thing to you as you swim through the mountain of money you essentially stole from your "TK family" (I seriously hope you don't treat your real-life family in the same way as you do us...), but the idea that I gave you money in good faith, only to be treated like this, leaves an extremely nasty taste in my mouth.

The only thing that saves Ar nosurge being the worst localiztion "effort" in the past, oh, 5-10 years is the fact it released only a month or so after Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment, which was quite literally nothing more than a slightly edited machine translation.

Think about that for a moment. I hope you're proud of what you've accomplished.

**Mr.Honda** · 30-09-14, 07:50 PM

Pretty sure KTE has passed this information to the Gust development team, if their recent Twitter posts are any indication:

https://twitter.com/koeitecmoeurope/...30695804829696

Responses get delayed during promotional events. Nothing new. They also have regular meetings with JP development teams to address issues that come up with localized titles.

**Tsugumi Henduluin** · 30-09-14, 08:20 PM

I saw that earlier today, yes. Good news, and I'm genuinely happy and thankful they're now seemingly taking this seriously.

But if I may be so blunt, I've kept an eye on their social media while they were out to the event. They apparently had plenty of time to tweet positive reviews of the game, organize a give-away or two and even post dozens of tweets on their personal accounts. Would it really have been that hard for them to sacrifice a single minute to tweet "We're aware of the possible issues, will look at it when we're back." ? Would have prevented a lot of the drama.

**Mr.Honda** · 01-10-14, 06:37 PM

Well, I don't know what KTE's Twitter feed looks like, but I imagine it takes some extra time to sift through all the tweets, mentions, messages, etc, time that usually is not available during trade shows or live events. I've worked them before, they can get pretty crazy.

Contests are generally planned out in advance and don't require reading any or all tweets mentioning KTE beforehand.

May have been a case where a simple glance at a given moment and a positive review or two was spotted, hence a re-tweet. Might not have seen the Ar Nosurge stuff until later on after the show.

Generally they are pretty prompt in responding to issues brought to their attention, though it did take awhile to sort out the DOA DLC issues, as well as DW8:XLCE DLC issues. These things can take time though to properly address given that the development studios for KTE and related companies are based in Japan.