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[SF Kosmo]

So this actually soft-launched a few weeks ago, but I haven't seen any discussion of it, but it's gotten quite a few updates in the meantime and is now pretty damn close to 100% (they claim it's like 99.9%, good luck finding the 0.1%). It doesn't seem like they are going to declare any particular release a "1.0", but are instead calling it a "first draft," and plan to update in the future. Anyway...

This is not an official trailer, this is a fan project, but it's presented like one to be cute.



What is Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut

Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut is a 2008 remake of the 1997 PlayStation title, the second in the long-running Tales of... series. It borrows much of the style and gameplay from Tales of Rebirth, one of the mainline titles of the series that was left in Japan. It is a complete, ground-up remake of the original, with all new graphics, modernized gameplay, a rewritten script, and a parallel second quest that allows you to play from Leon's viewpoint. It is the second full-blown "remake" in the series, following Tales of Phantasia's PlayStation 1 release.

ToDDC was one of three "main" Tales games released on PS2 that did not come to the US, presumably because they shared a graphical style of 2D sprites on 3D backgrounds with hand-painted textures.

About this Translation

This is not the first attempt to translate ToDDC. At least two other translation groups, Phantasian Productions and Absolute Zero, have tried and failed to finish their own translations. This project, by a group calling themselves Life Bottle Productions, differs from those others in one big way: It's open source, allowing for any interested parties to contribute and offer advice.

It's a remarkably professional effort, better in many ways than most of the official localizations we got around that time. It translates all of the dialog, menus, anime cut scenes, skits, everything, and the quality appears to be excellent. I took some screenshots from the opening sequence of the game:

How Do I Play It?

The game is available as a patch, which you can download from the project's Github. You will need to supply your own copy of the game in iso format, which you can rip from a DVD, or maybe find somewhere but we don't talk about that.
You will need a modded PS2 to play it on real hardware, but it works beautifully in PCSX2 with the software renderer as well.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

.

 

[West Texas CEO]

Awesome stuff.

I'm still waiting on a Wachenröder ( バッケンローダー ) translation...

 

[Davevil]

We need a thread with the best unofficial translation

 

[Dr. Kitty Muffins]

I love this.

 

[SF Kosmo]

We need a thread with the best unofficial translation

Oh that's a good idea. There have been a lot of really amazing ones over the years.

The Tales series has been very lucky, going back to the original DeJap translation of Tales of Phantasia on SNES in like 2000 (I think). They've also done the PSX remake of Tales of Phantasia (two separate translations too!), Tales of Innocence, Tales of Tempest...

But there are still some really major ones left. As far as mainline games go, Tales of Destiny 2, which Life Bottle is already working on, Tales of Rebirth, and Tales of Hearts (we got Hearts R, but the original is actually quite different).

 

[demonstr8]

Oh that's a good idea. There have been a lot of really amazing ones over the years.

The Tales series has been very lucky, going back to the original DeJap translation of Tales of Phantasia on SNES in like 2000 (I think). They've also done the PSX remake of Tales of Phantasia (two separate translations too!), Tales of Innocence, Tales of Tempest...

But there are still some really major ones left. As far as mainline games go, Tales of Destiny 2, which Life Bottle is already working on, Tales of Rebirth, and Tales of Hearts (we got Hearts R, but the original is actually quite different).

I bet Arche fucks like a tiger!

 

[BaneIsPain]

My favourite Tales. Awesome stuff

 

[Shouta]

This game is amazing. I highly recommend it to everyone.

 

[SF Kosmo]

I bet Arche fucks like a tiger!

They might have taken some liberties but that patch was what made me a fan of that series. I adored that game, and even imported and played the PSX version in Japanese after playing the SNES one.

PS1 version is superior though

I actually never cared for it that much, but some of that is owed to the shit-tier localizations we got at the time. They cut out all the skits, a lot of the writing was pretty bad, and the game itself was also only like 15-20 hours.

The remake improves a lot. The skits are back and the script is rewritten with much better characterization. Plus the combat is the much better Tales of Eternia style. I like it a lot. Really impressed with the work these guys did Ina very short time after watching others try for years and fail.

 

[Graciaus]

I had no idea this was even being worked on. I gave up hope of ever playing this when AZ cancelled everything. Will look forward to the final version.

 

[SF Kosmo]

I had no idea this was even being worked on. I gave up hope of ever playing this when AZ cancelled everything. Will look forward to the final version.

It apparently came together quite quickly. They used DeepL as a starting point for a lot of the translation and that got them to a working script a lot faster than most projects. You'd never know, though, the translation seems quite good, better than the original game got back in the day. So much of translation is in the edit pass.

 

[demonstr8]

They might have taken some liberties but that patch was what made me a fan of that series. I adored that game, and even imported and played the PSX version in Japanese after playing the SNES one.

For sure, I'm in the same boat. I just wanted to share that part of the translation from DeJap with this board haha.
I remember checking their website every week waiting on their next release when I was a kid because every time they did it was like Christmas, it was sort of the same with Aeon Genesis.

 

[Pejo]

This looks great, I'll have to give it a try. I only played the PS1 version.

 

[Paltheos]

Tagging this.
I'm already playing another long RPG that just received a premium fan localization (Geofront's release for Trails to Azure), but checking out all the old Tales games has always been on my bucket list. I've played all the mothership titles since and including Symphonia (... except Xillia 2, but I don't know if that one counts). The classics have just never come up, and I've never had easy access.