NIS America announced that the localization woes that were brought to their attention have been supplanted with better dialogue, better interactions, and improved contextualization of what’s happening between characters and on screen. In fact, NIS America is calling this a relocalization patch, because it completely overhauls so much of the content for the PS4 and PS Vita versions of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana when it comes to the localization.
The news went out recently, with NIS confirming that the PS4 patch is available right now as a 1.16GB download, and the PS Vita version is available as a 279MB download.
As you can tell, the localization patches are almost large enough to be entire games all on their own.
The large size is due to the fact that they had to add in and re-cord all new voice lines to match the all new text dialogue. The list of changes to the English localization of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana includes:
- Changes to the script
- Item names
- In-game terminology
- Monster and boss names
- Graphical Text
- Re-recorded English dialogue
They do note that for PS Vita users the relocalization patch will be saved to the memory card and will overwrite the previous patch for the game. If you have the digital version of the game it will take up extra space on the system card, but if you have the retail version it will be saved to the memory card.
If you’re unsure about how well the relocalization of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana was implemented, NIS America did a livestream on Twitch to play through some of the game and showcase what some of the changes were and why they made those changes. You can check that out below.
Watch Let’s Play – Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA! from NISAmerica on www.twitch.tv
Amazingly, this all started due to a campaign that true hardcore gamers put together to get NISA’s attention when they realized that the localization for Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana was severely lacking and in some cases really made the character interactions and story feel dull and uninspired.
Gamers politely reached out to NISA through e-mail campaigns, hashtags and community threads, and surprisingly the company listened and apologized.
In fact, NISA’s response was the complete opposite of Funimation, who attempted to deflect from the issue by blaming their own community for “harassment”; using it as a scapegoat to cover-up for the fact that their English localizationsof popular anime had been turned into sociopolitical soap boxes for politically motivated localizers attempting to inculcate viewers with agitprop.
In this case, NIS America at least attempted to fix the issue instead of making matters worse by complaining about “harassment”. Whether or not it turns out better than before remains to be seen, but PC gamers will have to wait a while longer due to the fact that NIS America had to pass off the PC port to another port house since they didn’t have the skill to fix the memory leaks, FPS issues and optimization tweaks for Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana.
