NIS America Apologizes for Ys VIII's Localization, Promises Free Update

Published: October 13, 2017 5:44 PM /

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NIS America's President and CEO, Takuro Yamashita has officially apologized for the poor quality of Ys VIII's localization. The bulk of the official statement posted on NIS America's blog reads as follows:

Thank you for all the feedback and support we have received since the launch of Ys VIII. It has come to my attention that the quality of the Ys VIII localization has not reached an acceptable level by our own standards, but most importantly by yours. As president of NIS America, Inc. I want to apologize to you personally for this grave error. This situation should not have happened – especially to a game as wonderful as Ys VIII and by a company that strives to deliver the very best customer experience in each title. We have begun internally to investigate the causes of this situation as well as to implement steps to ensure that a similar situation does not occur again.
As for Ys VIII itself, we will have a new translator and editor go over the entire localization to fix grammatical errors, typos, inconsistencies, and also to take a fresh look at the dialog and characterizations. For the script, where necessary, we will re-translate and re-edit the game including updating voicework to reflect these changes. We plan to have this work done by the end of November and will offer the updated localization free of charge for both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita versions of the game via patch. The PC version of the game will include this localization in its initial release.
In case you haven't been paying attention, Ys VIII's localization has been getting raked over the coals for poor editing, sentence structure, and all-around translation issues. Some of the earliest reports of translation errors popped up on GameFAQS and Twitter three weeks ago, less than 10 days after Ys VIII's release. Even our own review calls out the localization, and you can see some of the more egregious examples here. Not only that, but an email campaign was also started in response to what gamers saw as poor communication on NIS America's part.
As the statement elaborates on above, the updated translation and editing for Ys VIII's localization is slated to arrive near the end of November. Takuro also mentions the PC port of Ys VIII, which still has no release date. NIS America Editor Alex Flagg posted an update on the official Steam Community forums on the status of the port, along with its difficulties. There's still no release date set, but NIS America is aiming for a mid-December release and is working with Peter "Durante" Thomas to iron out shadow rendering issues, along with improving GPU and CPU performance. These updates, along with the announced translation improvements, have resulted in the delay for the PC version of Ys VIII.
It is worth noting that Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana was Nihon Falcom's first game to be published worldwide by NIS America. Previously, Nihon Falcom has worked with XSEED Games, Arc System Works, and Atlus, all to bring the Ys games to a worldwide audience. Hopefully, Ys VIII's localization troubles don't have an adverse effect on either Nihon Falcom or NIS America, as by all accounts, Ys VIII was an outstanding game. Ys VIII's free localization patch is set to come out near the end of November.

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Kyle Johnson
| Japanese Gaming Specialist

Professional painter. Semi-professional weeb. I've played hundreds of games, but finished very few. I speak Chinese and Minnesotan.