The localization of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana on the PlayStation 4 and Vita has been heavily criticized, prompting an apology from NIS America president Takuro Yamashita with assurances that it will be fixed soon.

The game, first in the series to be handled by new NISA rather than the series' usual localizer XSEED, has been the butt of many jokes on the internet over the quality of its English language version. Area names like Crevice of Archeozoic Era were changed to the much more awkward Archeozoic Big Hole. It got to the point where Japanese press were picking up stories on the uniquely strange quality of the localization.

Yamashita issued a statement today apologizing for the quality of the localization and promising to do better.

"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."

In the statement, he promises that the localization is undergoing new translation with a new editor and will be patched in late November.

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana was released on Vita and PlayStation 4 on September 12, with a PC version coming at an undefined date in the future. You can find our review of the game right here.

Our Take

The localization is definitely sub-par, but I wonder what the internal investigation can possibly turn up other than a heavy use of machine translation and a lack of editing oversight.