Callonia Posts

Score: 9/10

The most beautiful story I've ever seen, check. The most detailed one, check. Simply awesome, check. Very likable characters, check. Eargasmic music, check. This deserves a perfect score. However, two things I don't like...

One has to do with the game itself. I thought of it before I played it, and now I'm convinced. Purge is flat out unnecessary. The idea of becoming stronger by showing more skin is just... desperate. I can see how it appeals to hardcore otakus, but sorry, not my thing. The characters are based off anime stereotypes is okay, you pulled that off very brilliantly, but purge is flat out ridiculous. To me Ar tonelico is strictly the beauty of pure emotions conveyed in the story and hymmnos. I remembered feeling very awed when someone in youtube said while hymmnos is translatable, you don't need to read the translations to feel the message the song is trying to tell you. The heart can translate it, language is simply the tool used to deliver the details.

So to me the idea of purging isn't just unnecessary, it is somewhat demeaning too. I, as someone who fell in love with the purity of emotions told in the series, am disappointed by the decision of implementing that idea. It shadows the true beauty of Ar tonelico; the beauty of sincere feelings. Rrha yea ra chs ieeya. That is Ar tonelico-like to me, not the purge.

Second is about the localization. It's... horrible. Changing names for no reason whatsoever, bad dubbing, typos, translation that betrays the 'feel' of the character, bugs that should never make it out of QC session, plain stupidity in porting the kana readings despite obvious hints in the story AND readily available sources for the proper spelling...

And the game title. Fine, you can change Ar tonelico 3 to Ar tonelico Qoga; Knell of Ar Ciel. Qoga means end in hymmnos, and there's a possibility of Ar tonelico 3 being the end of the saga, so it's perfectly acceptable. Knell of Ar Ciel... sounds meh, but whatever. Still okay. But come on, the way you're whoring that line in-game is just ridiculous. Stupid. Childish. You just have to do shout outs to the game title that much eh? Please. Okay. maaaaybe it's acceptable if you yank with a line that roughly resembles that for shout outs... but what you did was atrocious. 'Knell of Ar Ciel' is repeated over and over, when it's freaking obvious (why not modify the japanese voice to say that too?) that the lines originally said aren't remotely similar to that shitty shout out you're doing. This is beyond mistranslation, NISA. If you're feeling that creative then don't yank with a perfected masterpiece, go write your own instead. And say what? All this is after the horrible abomination of Ar tonelico 2 localization you gave us. All this is after you promised shit won't happen again, your translator has spent time to learn hymmnos specifically for this project and such. The way I see it, you're just going "HAR HAR WE UNDERSTAND HYMMNOS NOW SUCK IT HOMIES WE'RE TINKERIN' WITH YER GAMES TROLOLLOL". Disppointment can't even begin to cover the overwhelmingly negative emotions I'm feeling towards you. I think a team of two, one with decent Japanese language skills and the other being a sincere fan of Ar tonelico would do a better job of localizing this instead of you, the professional.