Quote Originally Posted by Edmond Dantes View Post
To be honest, my question is how much of a difference the translation really makes.

I mean, that might be odd coming from the guy who will always say to watch anime subbed when possible, but even I'll admit (for example) that Yu-Gi-Oh in Japanese is only a slightly better experience than in dubbed English--it's still a fundamentally generic shonen anime just with card games instead of martial arts battles, and if you didn't like it in English its doubtful that you'd have thought the original was worthwhile.

Likewise, and I may be about to commit a major sin here, and I mean, I do LIKE Lunar: The Silver Star (both versions), but at the end of the day the game is kind of a bog-standard JRPG about a boy who sets out to be a hero and ends up having to save the world from a dark lord (here called a Magic Emperor) with plot twists you can see coming a mile away (gee which of these obviously evil looking people is gonna turn out to be the bad guy later?) and characters who are basically archetypes, only the PS1 version doing anything to make them break out of that and even then, just barely. And was anyone really surprised that [SPOILER] turned out to be a goddess?

I mean it was fun, and its flaws get forgiven because despite being cliche it managed to salvage that with its execution (one of the only cases of this, like, ever), but... I highly doubt I'm getting a worse or totally destroyed experience just because the version I played had a kid who talked about eating Wheaties.
The games are enjoyable... and the experience is there and I am thankful that I had the possibility of playing that game in some form, but when you really like your hobby and go deep in you analysis its when you start to question why WD took the liberty to make that changes, now that we have more people doing great localizations you even question more the way that WD works, the target customer really could have appreciated a more precise translation, respecting the original message the director wanted to give to the players.

I really like to read or listen the original director vision, being a movie, animated series or a book. Yes, you can add or subtract elements to fit into a space, but changing the original vision is not really the best way to treat another person's work.