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Ar nosurge |OT| – Class__EXPAJA;

matmanx1

Member
Man I really need to finish that Ciel nosurge summary so I can start Ar. I'm getting close but it's been a very busy week. Hopefully I will get to finish up and then start on Ar by this weekend.
 

BluWacky

Member
So is all the NPC dialogue in this game broken?

And why is the trophy data all in Japanese?

Because whoever was behind the localisation did a bad job, basically.

Just been playing through the second big Genometrics sequence
Sarly's one
, albeit running out of Dive Points before I could finish it, and even though there's nothing wrong with the actual translation in terms of it making sense it displays the very worst tendencies of literal translation; sure, it's accurate as far as I can tell with my fairly limited Japanese, but it's so artificial.

While the whole "Tsun" and "Dere" kingdom thing in the first Genometrics seemed like a joke you'd get if you knew where those came from, which was fine, to actually straight out use the word "tsundere" in a line of dialogue feels lazy to me. Sure, I know what it means, because I'm an anime geek, but not everyone is going to know that.

This Genometrics sequence falls back on moe as a joke, which... okay, I guess. It might be funnier if the dialogue weren't so clunky.

(I realise this all sounds super negative, but I don't really mean it that way. I am enjoying playing the game quite a lot, but it's not really particularly good as yet, IMO - very early days though!)
 

Durante

Member
So is all the NPC dialogue in this game broken?
Nah, not all of it. From what I've played so far, maybe 10%.

Because whoever was behind the localisation did a bad job, basically.

Just been playing through the second big Genometrics sequence
Sarly's one
, albeit running out of Dive Points before I could finish it, and even though there's nothing wrong with the actual translation in terms of it making sense it displays the very worst tendencies of literal translation; sure, it's accurate as far as I can tell with my fairly limited Japanese, but it's so artificial.

While the whole "Tsun" and "Dere" kingdom thing in the first Genometrics seemed like a joke you'd get if you knew where those came from, which was fine, to actually straight out use the word "tsundere" in a line of dialogue feels lazy to me. Sure, I know what it means, because I'm an anime geek, but not everyone is going to know that.
I strongly disagree with this part though. I'd much rather have a literal translation for a game like this than some lame attempt to make it work in "localized" English. Those are always incredibly artificial.

This is not a medieval fantasy game which you could easily translate and localize in a far more liberal manner. The game actually has, as you mention, entire parts of it (and even skills!) based entirely on anime tropes. I've never, in no medium, seen stuff like this localized (as opposed to just translated) well.

What they could (and should) have done is extend the in-game glossary for terms such as "tsundere". But it was clearly a shoestring budget localization, and they probably only have the exact same glossary prompts as in the original.
 

OceanBlue

Member
:eek: which boss?

I just cleared phase 1 personally. . .That boss will always give me issues

Zill
. Part of it is probably because I'm not great at the battle system yet though.

There are a lot of high DP cost scenes. Can I unlock them at any time or are they missable?
 

Wilsongt

Member
So I played a couple of hours last night... Not sure what to think, honestly. I'm not such a big fan of the single character + heroine battle system. So far I have done one dive and I enjoyed that, an I definitely lol'd when the second divable character was revealed. "Whaaaaaaaat!?"
 
Because whoever was behind the localisation did a bad job, basically.

Just been playing through the second big Genometrics sequence
Sarly's one
, albeit running out of Dive Points before I could finish it, and even though there's nothing wrong with the actual translation in terms of it making sense it displays the very worst tendencies of literal translation; sure, it's accurate as far as I can tell with my fairly limited Japanese, but it's so artificial.

While the whole "Tsun" and "Dere" kingdom thing in the first Genometrics seemed like a joke you'd get if you knew where those came from, which was fine, to actually straight out use the word "tsundere" in a line of dialogue feels lazy to me. Sure, I know what it means, because I'm an anime geek, but not everyone is going to know that.

This Genometrics sequence falls back on moe as a joke, which... okay, I guess. It might be funnier if the dialogue weren't so clunky.

(I realise this all sounds super negative, but I don't really mean it that way. I am enjoying playing the game quite a lot, but it's not really particularly good as yet, IMO - very early days though!)

If you're anywhere near the target audience of this game in any region, you probably know the term "tsundere" and are at least somewhat familiar with moe culture in general. More importantly, it's a word with no real English equivalent, especially given how it's used in that situation, so any attempt to make the sequence work without using the word would be awkward as hell.

There are certainly cases where localizers go too literal (you could argue keeping honorifics in Persona 3 and 4 was unnecessary, for example,) but I don't think this is one of them.
 

kiryogi

Banned
If you're anywhere near the target audience of this game in any region, you probably know the term "tsundere" and are at least somewhat familiar with moe culture in general. More importantly, it's a word with no real English equivalent, especially given how it's used in that situation, so any attempt to make the sequence work without using the word would be awkward as hell.

There are certainly cases where localizers go too literal (you could argue keeping honorifics in Persona 3 and 4 was unnecessary, for example,) but I don't think this is one of them.

Pretty sure unless they wanted to really butcher the meaning this was actually a correct choice. The honorifics in Persona on the other hand was not. Would you have preferred they used the Rough and Soft kingdom instead? That would have really lost a lot of the humor and meaning. Not to mention the name of the song magic was "Tsunderain"

Edit: Talking this over with a professional, it seems KT made the right choice.

Zill
. Part of it is probably because I'm not great at the battle system yet though.

There are a lot of high DP cost scenes. Can I unlock them at any time or are they missable?

The only real missables are a trophy, talk topics and some crystals. DP drops like rain later regardless. But their genometrics stick around if that's your question. Missable crystals happen to be one off events like first time entering their genometrics.
 

Shingro

Member
So who can I send a gentle request to about fixing the alphabet soup NPCs, It's certainly no dealbreaker, it sorta highlights how town NPCs are completely unimportant in many ways.

Still, I'd like to send some praise for localizing the right game, and ask them to put some more funds or give the studio more time and QA.

So, I'm going to list the NPC (random villagers) dialogue from the very first area. single click on each. Having seen a single area I'm not sure if I can seriously judge, particularly with how amazing the visuals and imagination is everywhere else. Still, this is very sloppy QA, takes a single person 10 minutes to see there's mistakes..


[Man]
Although if the Sharl weren't around, I could try doing business outside the Barrier.
I'll sing a song for you.

[Two women talking]
Woman A: Of course I haven't!
Woman B: I heard she's really beautiful!
Woman A: Really? Now I'm curious!
Woman B: The reason we can live peacefully in this city is all thanks to the Divine Empress protecting us!

[Weaver]
I~ I~ I'm just a girl from Celesgardeeen~
Did you hear? The Genomirai Chuch's activities have been pretty suspicious lately...

[Older Woman]
I get the feeling something terrible is going to happen soon...
Hey have you ever seen the Divine Empress' real face?

[Man]
I don't have time to care about things like the Sharl of the Barrier now.
Ugh, I'm bored...
Opening this shop is a wish come true. I'm going to become a big name in business!

[PLASMA Troop]
I wish something interesting would happen...
This is bad. I don't have any money. I can't repay my loan.

[Older Woman]
But seeing plebian scenery like this isn't bad, either.
Business has been pretty good lately, so I'm happy every day.

[PLASMA Troop]
Hearing about the Sharl taking people far away sounds romantic.
I kind of just wish they'd take an old man like me somewhere too.
It's lively here, but it's dirty and makes me a little dizzy...

[Woman]
I just narrowly escaped myself. I hope nothing terrible happens.
I'm really bored with my life. That might be the reason I feel this way, but...

[Woman]
Maybe I should just run away outside the Barrier, Or maybe that would be too dangerous?
Everyone, please be careful around the Genomirai Church. They're acting strangely.
 

kiryogi

Banned
So who can I send a gentle request to about fixing the alphabet soup NPCs, It's certainly no dealbreaker, it sorta highlights how town NPCs are completely unimportant in many ways.

Still, I'd like to send some praise for localizing the right game, and ask them to put some more funds or give the studio more time and QA.

So, I'm going to list the NPC (random villagers) dialogue from the very first area. single click on each. Having seen a single area I'm not sure if I can seriously judge, particularly with how amazing the visuals and imagination is everywhere else. Still, this is very sloppy QA, takes a single person 10 minutes to see there's mistakes..

I'm at phase 2 myself and still running into it, Aquagon claims it's 90% of the game. >_<
 

chrono01

Member
So who can I send a gentle request to about fixing the alphabet soup NPCs, It's certainly no dealbreaker, it sorta highlights how town NPCs are completely unimportant in many ways.

Still, I'd like to send some praise for localizing the right game, and ask them to put some more funds or give the studio more time and QA.

So, I'm going to list the NPC (random villagers) dialogue from the very first area. single click on each. Having seen a single area I'm not sure if I can seriously judge, particularly with how amazing the visuals and imagination is everywhere else. Still, this is very sloppy QA, takes a single person 10 minutes to see there's mistakes..


[Man]
Although if the Sharl weren't around, I could try doing business outside the Barrier.
I'll sing a song for you.

[Two women talking]
Woman A: Of course I haven't!
Woman B: I heard she's really beautiful!
Woman A: Really? Now I'm curious!
Woman B: The reason we can live peacefully in this city is all thanks to the Divine Empress protecting us!

[Weaver]
I~ I~ I'm just a girl from Celesgardeeen~
Did you hear? The Genomirai Chuch's activities have been pretty suspicious lately...

[Older Woman]
I get the feeling something terrible is going to happen soon...
Hey have you ever seen the Divine Empress' real face?

[Man]
I don't have time to care about things like the Sharl of the Barrier now.
Ugh, I'm bored...
Opening this shop is a wish come true. I'm going to become a big name in business!

[PLASMA Troop]
I wish something interesting would happen...
This is bad. I don't have any money. I can't repay my loan.

[Older Woman]
But seeing plebian scenery like this isn't bad, either.
Business has been pretty good lately, so I'm happy every day.

[PLASMA Troop]
Hearing about the Sharl taking people far away sounds romantic.
I kind of just wish they'd take an old man like me somewhere too.
It's lively here, but it's dirty and makes me a little dizzy...

[Woman]
I just narrowly escaped myself. I hope nothing terrible happens.
I'm really bored with my life. That might be the reason I feel this way, but...

[Woman]
Maybe I should just run away outside the Barrier, Or maybe that would be too dangerous?
Everyone, please be careful around the Genomirai Church. They're acting strangely.
Wow, that's just unforgivable. How does something like that get past quality control? I mean, we're not talking about some obscure "if you move the camera at a specific point in time at a certain angle the game locks up" kind of bug. This is conversing with NPC's, one of the most commonplace things you do in JRPG's. :(

It'd be nice if they patch it, but I doubt they will. That being said, I'm sure the game is still fun, but it's saddening to see the butchering of NPC conversations. I actually enjoy talking with the various NPC's in my JRPG's, so having everything essentially backwards is kind of upsetting.
 

Shingro

Member
Annoying as the NPC alphabet soup is, this game makes me happier then anything I've played all year =)


Just the sort of top speed imagination world I love to exist in. I hope to see these sorts of places and premises in VR someday

Edit: but yeah, anyone have a support email from the right people? I'm having trouble finding one
 

Christhor

Member
So how's the dub? Or to be more precise, how many lines are actually dubbed? Sorry if this has been answered already, trying not to read too many posts to avoid potential spoilers.
 

Volcynika

Member
So how's the dub? Or to be more precise, how many lines are actually dubbed? Sorry if this has been answered already, trying not to read too many posts to avoid potential spoilers.

An ok portion of intro cutscenes are, and some important story bits here and there.

Zero side cutscenes (aka scenes like after exiting synthesis menu) are voiced. Zero of the first dive sequence is voiced. So far that's what I've seen.
 

rockx4

Member
Can't believe I'm saying this, but this is probably my least favorite Ar game so far. I enjoyed the first 3, yes even the third one, but this one just feels really off. I'm only about 5 hours in so I hope it gets better, but I'm not enjoying it much. The dub is pretty good though... so there's that.
 

kiryogi

Banned
So how's the dub? Or to be more precise, how many lines are actually dubbed? Sorry if this has been answered already, trying not to read too many posts to avoid potential spoilers.
Only major story cutscenes are dubbed. No Genometric. No delta battle voice. No field chats. No synthesis shop major events.
 

Christhor

Member
An ok portion of intro cutscenes are, and some important story bits here and there.

Zero side cutscenes (aka scenes like after exiting synthesis menu) are voiced. Zero of the first dive sequence is voiced. So far that's what I've seen.

Only major story cutscenes are dubbed. No Genometric. No delta battle voice. No field chats. No synthesis shop major events.

That's a shame, even if it was to be expected. It seems unlikely that we'll see a Gust title with an extensive dub again. Not very hyped to be playing this game.
 

Eusis

Member
Only major story cutscenes are dubbed. No Genometric. No delta battle voice. No field chats. No synthesis shop major events.
Basically you lose nothing going with subbed only, despite unsubbed voice bits?

Though does that also mean no battle voices? I don't think I'd really mind missing THAT, but then I tune it out most of the time anyway.
 

Durante

Member
So after a few more hours I have two things to say:
  1. I'm really enjoying the game, a lot.
  2. Probably because I really like the game, I'm getting quite annoyed at the translation inconsistency. The actual translation quality of individual scenes is perfectly fine as far as I can tell, but it feels like many of them were translated individually, and without first establishing a unified set of translations for anything but the most common terms. Therefore, many words are translated (or even just spelt) differently in different contexts. It's not a dealbreaker by any means, as you can easily figure out the meaning, but it still annoys me to see such a nice game treated with such little respect during localization.
 

BluWacky

Member
I swear I kept seeing Quantave and Quantarv. Are they the same, I don't knowwwwwwwwww.

It's Quanturv in every piece of dialogue, but Quantave on the map screen. It's just dumb! That can't be a budget issue, that's different departments not talking to each other properly. I mean, the game is ridiculously text heavy (having just gotten to the end of Phase 1 and died horribly on the boss, I swear that very little has actually happened of note as yet, but I've sure read a lot of dialogue!) but standardisation of terminology across the game shouldn't be that hard.

(my only experience with game translation was dumping text into Excel spreadsheets and doing find-replace when I decided to standardise a term in the very small amounts that I translated, so I'm probably not the best judge!)
 

kiryogi

Banned
It's Quanturv in every piece of dialogue, but Quantave on the map screen. It's just dumb! That can't be a budget issue, that's different departments not talking to each other properly. I mean, the game is ridiculously text heavy (having just gotten to the end of Phase 1 and died horribly on the boss, I swear that very little has actually happened of note as yet, but I've sure read a lot of dialogue!) but standardisation of terminology across the game shouldn't be that hard.

(my only experience with game translation was dumping text into Excel spreadsheets and doing find-replace when I decided to standardise a term in the very small amounts that I translated, so I'm probably not the best judge!)

Which phase 1 end boss? :eek: Ion's or Deltas?

It's a painful gauntlet either way
especially on Veteran

I'm going to throw this out there as an advance warning because it's a popular question too, in order to clear Ion's Genometrics

You have to be at Dive Level 3 and in Phase 2
 

Cindered

Neo Member
I don't suppose anyone could explain to me how the TxBIOS equips work exactly? I haven't been able to find anything concrete on them either in or out of game.
 

kiryogi

Banned
I don't suppose anyone could explain to me how the TxBIOS equips work exactly? I haven't been able to find anything concrete on them either in or out of game.

You gain the bestowed effects when you reach that lvl in harmonics, which is the gauge in the lower right in battle.
 

OceanBlue

Member
It's Quanturv in every piece of dialogue, but Quantave on the map screen. It's just dumb! That can't be a budget issue, that's different departments not talking to each other properly. I mean, the game is ridiculously text heavy (having just gotten to the end of Phase 1 and died horribly on the boss, I swear that very little has actually happened of note as yet, but I've sure read a lot of dialogue!) but standardisation of terminology across the game shouldn't be that hard.

(my only experience with game translation was dumping text into Excel spreadsheets and doing find-replace when I decided to standardise a term in the very small amounts that I translated, so I'm probably not the best judge!)

I feel the same way, but I guess I don't really know what goes into game development. I can't help but wonder if there are developer tools to "compile" scripts or to check whether text overflows out of boxes.

Just finished Phase 1. It was a breeze for Delta, but painful for Earthes :(. Don't neglect Purification lol.
 

kiryogi

Banned
I feel the same way, but I guess I don't really know what goes into game development. I can't help but wonder if there are developer tools to "compile" scripts or to check whether text overflows out of boxes.

Just finished Phase 1. It was a breeze for Delta, but painful for Earthes :(. Don't neglect Purification lol.

Even with purification, phase 1 finale for Earthes is one of the hardest battles in the game. On all difficultues. XD
 

OceanBlue

Member
Even with purification, phase 1 finale for Earthes is one of the hardest battles in the game. On all difficultues. XD

Well the music was great though. I had to go to Normal difficulty and the fight was way too short to appreciate the music lol. If the jump in difficulty from Hard to Veteran is as large as the jump between Normal and Hard, I'm glad I'm doing a Hard playthrough.
 

Cindered

Neo Member
You gain the bestowed effects when you reach that lvl in harmonics, which is the gauge in the lower right in battle.

that's the idea I got, but putting a harmoheal into my level 2 slot has it always triggering, but it doesn't work at all if I put it anywhere else

Edit: Just kidding, I got a harmoheal to work off my level 3 slot@level 3, but the one in my level 1 slot doesn't work at all. Wonder if it's bugged or something?
 

RurouniZel

Asks questions so Ezalc doesn't have to
It's Ar Tonelico 2 all over again.

Why do my favorite Ar games have the worst localizations? XD
 

Durante

Member
To be fair, translating an Ar game is probably about 10x harder than your average moeblob niche JRPG. Not only do you have far more text (what with all the VN segments and looong synthesis discussions, plus lots of the standard dialogue you get in all JRPGs), it's also filled to the brim with tons of technical, specialized terms unique to the setting.
 

kiryogi

Banned
It's all really unfortunate, but in the end, I'm just glad we actually got it. It's a decent translation a few typos aside, and when the dialogue isn't jumbled up :D

Wow I didn't realize Ion can have synthesis conversations with Nay too, this just makes it even more text heavy, but you gotta love these moments :D
 

BluWacky

Member
Which phase 1 end boss? :eek: Ion's or Deltas?

It's a painful gauntlet either way
especially on Veteran

Delta's - I'm not that far into the game yet really, work gets in the way of playing.

I watched MasterLL's video of the boss and he seems to be much higher level than I am, has millions of items and also finished
Sarly's first Genometric
, whereas I didn't have enough DP to do so. Perhaps I'm horribly under levelled, but I don't really have any chance to grind now. I also can't remember how far back the last save point was before I died...
 

Kincaido

Got 99 problems and only one of them is a waifu
Just finished the Ciel summary and wow. Just wow. Kinda mad at myself for reading through it instead of buying the new version next month and experiencing it myself, but I couldn't help it once I got started. Was too interesting OTL

At least I will appreciate my Ar play through more now.
 
Just finished the Ciel summary and wow. Just wow. Kinda mad at myself for reading through it instead of buying the new version next month and experiencing it myself, but I couldn't help it once I got started. Was too interesting OTL

At least I will appreciate my Ar play through more now.

Readng the Ciel summary made me really want to play the game. I found it super-interesting, and not what I was expecting at all (way more dramatic and exciting than I had though).

Sadly, no option for me though until I learn English or TKE give in and localize it. Which I don't see ever happening.
 

galvenize

Member
Okay so I'm reading the in depth summary of ciel no surge, currently chapter 6 and oh my god, all that fictional technobabble is.giving me a headache. I swear I tried but the cielnotron bios dive chain cathode tube clusterfuck makes no sense to me. Individually I do understand to a certain extent but when the characters put those words into context or when they start explaining something I'm Iike "wth are they talking about, please stahp." Could be that I'm not well versed in computer science but still...
 

kiryogi

Banned
Just finished the Ciel summary and wow. Just wow. Kinda mad at myself for reading through it instead of buying the new version next month and experiencing it myself, but I couldn't help it once I got started. Was too interesting OTL

At least I will appreciate my Ar play through more now.

After finishing it, I ended up ordering the Ciel nosurge Offline Agent Pack to experience it full on, I have to see this all live.
Especially Nelo cracking at the end with BETRAYAL
 

OceanBlue

Member
Okay so I'm reading the in depth summary of ciel no surge, currently chapter 6 and oh my god, all that fictional technobabble is.giving me a headache. I swear I tried but the cielnotron bios dive chain cathode tube clusterfuck makes no sense to me. Individually I do understand to a certain extent but when the characters put those words into context or when they start explaining something I'm Iike "wth are they talking about, please stahp." Could be that I'm not well versed in computer science but still...

Yeah, there is a lot to juggle in your head. It does help to have a small background in electrical engineering IMO because, the quicker you make real-life analogies, the easier it is to understand. I thought it was pretty manageable but I can see how it'd be difficult. Well, not that you have to have some deep understanding of EE though (I don't know much EE either).
 
True, but it's still super disappointing to see a localization of this "quality" in 2014.

I'm disappointed as well, it just feels like Koei doesn't give a fuck, there's no marketing, review copies weren't sent out, and a lazy localization makes the game really difficult to recommend. The Atelier series does not get this treatment, but we all know why.

If the Vita version ever gets released, I hope they at least fix the NPC stuff.
 

kiryogi

Banned
I'm disappointed as well, it just feels like Koei doesn't give a fuck, there's no marketing, review copies weren't sent out, and a lazy localization makes the game really difficult to recommend. The Atelier series does not get this treatment, but we all know why.

If the Vita version ever gets released, I hope they at least fix the NPC stuff.

No review copies?! D: Didn't hear about that. . . KT Europe sort of tried to do a little PR, but yeah it's pretty sad.

Okay so I'm reading the in depth summary of ciel no surge, currently chapter 6 and oh my god, all that fictional technobabble is.giving me a headache. I swear I tried but the cielnotron bios dive chain cathode tube clusterfuck makes no sense to me. Individually I do understand to a certain extent but when the characters put those words into context or when they start explaining something I'm Iike "wth are they talking about, please stahp." Could be that I'm not well versed in computer science but still...

It wasn't too over my head, but it might have helped I was preempted with prior world building from Ar Tonelico. Try to make it through, its a wonderful read.
 
I'm really not sure how to handle this boss battle with Zill. She hits for way more than I can dish out, and since she attacks three times per turn I can't defend against both her and the robots she has. Cass' Song Magic charges so slowly too. Do I just have to grind until I get enough dive points to complete Sarly's first Genometrics to stand a chance?

Maybe I'm not getting it, but I'm not really liking the battle system overall. It just feels like there aren't enough options.
 

Shingro

Member
I'm really not sure how to handle this boss battle with Zill. She hits for way more than I can dish out, and since she attacks three times per turn I can't defend against both her and the robots she has. Cass' Song Magic charges so slowly too. Do I just have to grind until I get enough dive points to complete Sarly's first Genometrics to stand a chance?

Maybe I'm not getting it, but I'm not really liking the battle system overall. It just feels like there aren't enough options.

Try to either knock the robot's turns out of them (R!+X is a good choice) or burn your way to her and knock her out. You by default should have 3 for the two robots, or you knock the robots out and have 3 for 3 of hers. Remember you don't necessarily have to defend Cass from each (weaker) robot attack and save them for Zill's strikes
 
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