Breath of Fire 2 Retranslation
Dec. 15th, 2010 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroI've been a fan of the Breath of Fire series since the first game (though, like many fans, the changes they made for Dragon Quarter were too much for me). One of the biggest weaknesses the series had was the terrible translation of the second game. Ryusui agreed, and building on a patch made by d4s, he put together the Breath of Fire 2 Retranslation.
This isn't a simple text-change. They re-did the text box structure in the game, changed the font, re-translated all the text, updated some of the graphics, and added a "hold B to dash" feature. This means that more text can be added to clarify things, and it works really well.
Characters demonstrate significantly more personality and wit. The first mission is enough to make you think that Boshe is awesome and deserves his own game. Argus, the Colosseum boss, gets an awesome villian speech when you meet him, as he outlines his evil plot with utter glee. Tapeta channels Elan (at his dopiest yet most melodramatic) with aplomb. This also manages to give Ryu (the slient protagonist) a little more personality, by changing the "Yes/No" block into interesting and amusing variants, such as "Of course! / No way!" The "Dragon Tear" still lets you see people's feelings about you, and the improvement / deterioration of their moods seems much more justified with the comments that you can make.
And a couple of odd plot holes got closed up (and lots of confusing plot issues got clarified). One such bit is, whe you get to the Thief's Tomb, you find "Evidence" in a hidden chest. The game never explains what you found evidence of or why this is useful to anyone, but apparently it allows the resistance to go ahead with their attack. (It's never mentioned again.) In the retranslation, you find the "Thief's Emblem", which the game specifically notes can be sold for a lot of money to finance the previously-noted-to-be-cash-strapped resistance.
Really, this is what the GBA version of the game should have been, rather than just a straight port with slightly-adjusted graphics and controls. (Though I believe that version increased the XP and Gold drops from enemies, which made the game faster and easier. This version retains the original rates, and I think it should have adopted that change.)
The name changes are mostly sensible stuff to match the original Japanese (which has the side effect of making things less silly--Bow becomes Boshe, Baba becomes Bunyan). The spell and item name changes seem mostly to get in-line with the other games in the series--the second-level healng spell became "Rejuvenate", for instance. The equipment name changes are marked improvements over some of the nonsensicle stuff in the original--the BoyDR becomes the Bowie Knife, and the SoketAR becomes the Circlet.
Some retranslations are useful, some less so. This game desperately needed it, because the crap translation was probably the game's biggest weakness. The Secret of Mana variable width font retranslation is also on my backlog; I get the impression that that does similar wonders for clarity. I played a retranslation of FF6 that was not particularly useful, as it mostly undid the "Woolseyisms" that made the game as much fun as it was, and changed the monster names to less-memorable "more accurate" translations. I also played a fan-translation of FF4 Hardtype, which was kinda redundant after the even-better GBA version of the game came out.
This game's monster names were a big improvement over the original, which relied very heavily on abbreviations. Also, there's a leech inside the queen's body which was renamed a "hemoglutton", which I thought was terribly clever. The true name of Lord Eva was changed to Evanth, from "Evan". A sensible change, though one that might be upsetting to a friend of mine.
I did forget some of the less-perfect aspects of the game (which I suppose I'm more aware of now, since I'm being picky with other jrpgs). There's a sequence that involves hiking back and forth across half the continent four times, for instance. (And a couple more times later!) And part of that hike includes an area where you fight Poison Movers, who have an attack that poisons your entire party--before you learn an antidote spell or get anti-poison equipment. Better hope you purchased enough antidotes! The game also lacks "leaked experience", so if you don't use a character long enough for them to end up ten levels behind, you're going to be in real trouble when they have a solo event. Buff spells have little effect (especially given their cost) and debuffs never work on anything it's worth casting them on. (But almost always work on you, of course.) The fusion system is annoyingly "fragile", as a fused character goes back to normal if killed, dropped to 1/4 HP, or if you start a cutscene. That means hiking back to Township if you want them re-fused. And this game's dragon system is probably the worst of any BoF game, as each dragon spell is a one-shot attack that uses all of your MP, and if you have less than full MP when you cast it, it does dramatically less damage.
And there's the money issue. Monsters drop very little cash in this game (hence my wanting the higher drop rate from the GBA port). There's a trick you can do with the "cooking" minigame to turn Turbochargers ("Cond. Ups") and Shrimp into Gold Bricks at a significant profit, and it saves literally hours of money-grinding.
Despite that, though, it was a solid game for the SNES era, and this patch puts it very close to the Playstation BoF games. If you haven't played the game, or you're looking for a bit of nostalgia, I highly recommend this version.
This isn't a simple text-change. They re-did the text box structure in the game, changed the font, re-translated all the text, updated some of the graphics, and added a "hold B to dash" feature. This means that more text can be added to clarify things, and it works really well.
Characters demonstrate significantly more personality and wit. The first mission is enough to make you think that Boshe is awesome and deserves his own game. Argus, the Colosseum boss, gets an awesome villian speech when you meet him, as he outlines his evil plot with utter glee. Tapeta channels Elan (at his dopiest yet most melodramatic) with aplomb. This also manages to give Ryu (the slient protagonist) a little more personality, by changing the "Yes/No" block into interesting and amusing variants, such as "Of course! / No way!" The "Dragon Tear" still lets you see people's feelings about you, and the improvement / deterioration of their moods seems much more justified with the comments that you can make.
And a couple of odd plot holes got closed up (and lots of confusing plot issues got clarified). One such bit is, whe you get to the Thief's Tomb, you find "Evidence" in a hidden chest. The game never explains what you found evidence of or why this is useful to anyone, but apparently it allows the resistance to go ahead with their attack. (It's never mentioned again.) In the retranslation, you find the "Thief's Emblem", which the game specifically notes can be sold for a lot of money to finance the previously-noted-to-be-cash-strapped resistance.
Really, this is what the GBA version of the game should have been, rather than just a straight port with slightly-adjusted graphics and controls. (Though I believe that version increased the XP and Gold drops from enemies, which made the game faster and easier. This version retains the original rates, and I think it should have adopted that change.)
The name changes are mostly sensible stuff to match the original Japanese (which has the side effect of making things less silly--Bow becomes Boshe, Baba becomes Bunyan). The spell and item name changes seem mostly to get in-line with the other games in the series--the second-level healng spell became "Rejuvenate", for instance. The equipment name changes are marked improvements over some of the nonsensicle stuff in the original--the BoyDR becomes the Bowie Knife, and the SoketAR becomes the Circlet.
Some retranslations are useful, some less so. This game desperately needed it, because the crap translation was probably the game's biggest weakness. The Secret of Mana variable width font retranslation is also on my backlog; I get the impression that that does similar wonders for clarity. I played a retranslation of FF6 that was not particularly useful, as it mostly undid the "Woolseyisms" that made the game as much fun as it was, and changed the monster names to less-memorable "more accurate" translations. I also played a fan-translation of FF4 Hardtype, which was kinda redundant after the even-better GBA version of the game came out.
This game's monster names were a big improvement over the original, which relied very heavily on abbreviations. Also, there's a leech inside the queen's body which was renamed a "hemoglutton", which I thought was terribly clever. The true name of Lord Eva was changed to Evanth, from "Evan". A sensible change, though one that might be upsetting to a friend of mine.
I did forget some of the less-perfect aspects of the game (which I suppose I'm more aware of now, since I'm being picky with other jrpgs). There's a sequence that involves hiking back and forth across half the continent four times, for instance. (And a couple more times later!) And part of that hike includes an area where you fight Poison Movers, who have an attack that poisons your entire party--before you learn an antidote spell or get anti-poison equipment. Better hope you purchased enough antidotes! The game also lacks "leaked experience", so if you don't use a character long enough for them to end up ten levels behind, you're going to be in real trouble when they have a solo event. Buff spells have little effect (especially given their cost) and debuffs never work on anything it's worth casting them on. (But almost always work on you, of course.) The fusion system is annoyingly "fragile", as a fused character goes back to normal if killed, dropped to 1/4 HP, or if you start a cutscene. That means hiking back to Township if you want them re-fused. And this game's dragon system is probably the worst of any BoF game, as each dragon spell is a one-shot attack that uses all of your MP, and if you have less than full MP when you cast it, it does dramatically less damage.
And there's the money issue. Monsters drop very little cash in this game (hence my wanting the higher drop rate from the GBA port). There's a trick you can do with the "cooking" minigame to turn Turbochargers ("Cond. Ups") and Shrimp into Gold Bricks at a significant profit, and it saves literally hours of money-grinding.
Despite that, though, it was a solid game for the SNES era, and this patch puts it very close to the Playstation BoF games. If you haven't played the game, or you're looking for a bit of nostalgia, I highly recommend this version.
Re: ...
Date: 2013-04-24 01:55 am (UTC)If you resume the LP, post a link here.
Re: ...
Date: 2013-05-01 07:07 pm (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uru-wrLgFUo&list=UUUFLbyQT-CLgHX4COWBPZhA&index=1
Re: ...
Date: 2013-05-02 12:38 am (UTC)