Game localization has typically been a hot button issue. The translator and editor are in charge of decided the tone of the translation, adapting cultural themes so westerners can understand them, and making sure game terms make sense. Sometimes, they drop the ball and miss things, leave weird errors, and even sometimes introduce game-breaking bugs.

Gust’s PlayStation 2 follow-up Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica was localized by NIS America and distributed by Koei (prior to their Tecmo merger). The game’s localization (and its predecessor) were brought into question by fans ever since, with claims of odd grammar, lack of proofreading, missing words, and of course – the introduction of game-breaking bugs.

It’s also worth mentioning roughly half the game’s Japanese voice overs were removed to make room for its English dub. All of this culminated into a localized game that many felt hit the chopping block hard, coming out with a weird translation that came off as overtly sexual, strange, and nonsensical. Fans took it into their own hands to re-translate the title.

Featured above, you can view a brief video showcasing the new translation in action.

Now the fan re-translation is complete, and you can grab it from the Project Metafalica website. The translation team made a note in saying all save files from the US or NTSC version will work, save the flags to some events being restored can be now missing. EU saves will not work unfortunately, as this patches the game to the US version.

How do you guys feel about the state of game localization lately? Has it improved? Sound off in the comments below!