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[wyrdwad]

tbh, anyone with basic programming knowledge can do these kind of tasks. I don't even know how much anyone would charge for it since it's so simple.

I have a relatively firm grasp on programming (albeit mostly in outdated languages), and often write text-parser programs to aid myself and my coworkers in our jobs -- but the SC text was just too inconsistent in its formatting (in both the Japanese and the English) for that to be practical. By the time I would've finished programming in every possible exception to every weird rule those files followed, Jess would've been done copying and pasting everything several times over.

Additionally, as far as I'm aware, Jess was editing the text as she went, so it certainly wasn't months of futile work by any means. She had it down to a science, and was making very steady progress the whole time.

-Tom

 

[Knurek]

I think you've got that backwards, wouldn't that be 6MB?

D'oh... Of course, 6 MB.

I don't know how to tell you this, but your average localizer does not know how to do this (at least in my experience). I'm an editor, and one who is about five steps from being a luddite. XSEED has never had a programmer on staff unless you count Tom who does do neat things with ripping text from other things we get abroad sometimes and makes cool little pixel games. He didn't know how to fix this and had plenty of his own work to do at the time. No one else in the office had an idea how to do it either.

I didn't mean to offend, sorry.
It's just that the article made it to be a bigger deal (two man-months of tedious work in a project that has been delayed and delayed) than what you say it was.
Really glad you have that work behind you, looking forward to playing the game somewhere down the line.

 

[Redhood]

Wow! That was an interesting read.

I know it wasn't excel but It is just one option called Text to column that could had been used. Openoffice has it too.

CSV are data separated by Comma.

In the text to column command set the divider as comma and it will split the data into 3 cells.

1,2,3 will change to 1 | 2 | 3

As for editing as you go that part I agree with. Maybe this tedious task lead to a much refined script overall.

 

[Se7enSword]

Well, lessons learned all around thanks to Kiseki. I do like how that's the one thing a lot of people jumped on, we are nerds to a fault.

I'm kind of surprised Sara's side of the story wasn't included in the article, secret hero status confirmed.

Secret hero indeed!

Everyone had a very hellish step to deal with in the entire process to release it.

 

[NolbertoS]

This game fell off my radar. Own rhe first one on PSP but wanted SC physical copy . How big is the game to d/l as I barely have enough space on my Vita memory card, and I thought a 64GB card would last be for awhile :/

 

[Antiwhippy]

Seriously though, Xseed do need to learn how to market better. The release came out of nowhere all of a sudden and was released in pretty close proximity to a lot of heavy hitters.

Am grateful for all the hardwork put into this game though.

 

[Psxphile]

Interesting article. A little dramatic at the beginning there, but journalists gotta journ (?). It's nice though that it has people wanting to check out the series so I guess I can't really fault them.

I'm left wondering: how much of this is known to the Japanese publisher FALCOM and what thoughts, if any, do they have on the situation? And if they weren't aware of XSEED's tribulations in the quest to get this title out the door (however unlikely that is), it's almost certain they will now that it's out there in this article. I suppose we might never know, and can only hope in the future that it won't sour them to continue working together with XSEED to bring more of their titles westward.

 

[Dragoon En Regalia]

Falcom's more likely worried about how ToCS will perform than SC, but I doubt sales performance going sour for the latter will jeopardize the relationship between them and XSEED. We still have Ys 8 and localization of Tokyo Xanadu on the horizon.

 

[CheesecakeRecipe]

Yeah, with Falcom pushing XSEED into doing Cold Steel as soon as possible, I think that's where the real performance tester is going to be. Trails SC seemed to be more of a passion project for XSEED at this point, especially considering how long it's taken. Good sales of any kind for SC would probably help their case, but I imagine Falcom's eyes will be on CS sales when the time comes.

 

[Se7enSword]

This game fell off my radar. Own rhe first one on PSP but wanted SC physical copy . How big is the game to d/l as I barely have enough space on my Vita memory card, and I thought a 64GB card would last be for awhile :/

It's 2.4 GB https://store.playstation.com/#!/en...y-sc/cid=UP1023-NPUB50275_00-B000000000001452

Seriously though, Xseed do need to learn how to market better. The release came out of nowhere all of a sudden and was released in pretty close proximity to a lot of heavy hitters.

Am grateful for all the hardwork put into this game though.

Yeah, their marketing could have been so much better. There has been too little awareness for those who aren't hardcore fans of the series.

 

[OmegaDL50]

Reading this convinced me

I did my job...now I just need to finish FC before I play SC.

 

[TP]

Was going to wait a bit before I bought it
I'll just move it up, other stuff can wait

Noticed it was on GOG day 1
appreciate that

 

[Ricitor]

Fantastic read. Always love these articles that go into the behind the scene struggles to really appreciate the effort that goes in to this kind of work. I always knew localisation was time consuming but I never really thought of it as difficult so this really opened up my eyes. Makes me appreciate the work XSEED and other localisation companies do so much more.
I always saw Trails in the Sky on sale on PSN and I just always thought it was some generic JRPG, but reading up on it now, I am really peeved at myself for not getting it, sounds incredible. Just bought the first on Steam and will be buying the second one soon just to support more localisation projects and the people behind them.

 

[Thoraxes]

Holy shit at this story.

Also bless all you awesome people at XSEED. You put a lot of fucking hard work into a game that a lot of dedicated fans really wanted to see, and I thank you for your hard work and the release of this game!

 

[Dragon1893]

The first one kept crashing on me so I left it there and did other things..

They fixed it and as for the second, I've played 10 hours without a single crash or any other issue.
No need to be afraid of that stuff.
Not saying there's 0% chance of it happening but the games are fine.

So cool to see so many people in this thread buying the game. Join us in the OT!

 

[Pellegri Testament]

Seriously though, Xseed do need to learn how to market better. The release came out of nowhere all of a sudden and was released in pretty close proximity to a lot of heavy hitters.

Am grateful for all the hardwork put into this game though.

I'd say the fault partially lies with all the people demanding it come before CS or doing nothing but shitposting in regards to their other releases, just because their game wasn't being talked about more. I'm sure more than just the handful of people that have bought it so far really wanted it to come out, but that's no reason to go on twitter or various forums and start threatening their employees because the release wasn't being talked about. If not caving into demands and pushing the release back some lead to better sales upfront, then that's honestly something that should have been done, whiners be damned. At the same time, people should be grown up enough to handle waiting without resorting to being an asshole, even if it has been multiple years since this was first announced.

Then again there were only so many weeks this year that didn't have a noteworthy release coming out. When should they have delayed it to if it was ready to come out this year? 3 weeks of the next 2 months aren't even looked at for potential releases because of the holidays, every other week has "something" worth mentioning being released.

 

[ghostlight_ross]

It's incredible the amount of hard work that's gone into this one. Big thank you to everyone involved in getting this out to us

Not got that far into SC yet, but so far the writing has been excellent.

About sales, obviously I've not seen XSEEDs numbers but a few points.

First SteamSpy numbers aren't really worth taking note of until they stop jumping up by so much each day, with the way it's averaged out over a few days it's always going to be underestimating sales early on.

Regardless, even if I had access to accurate sales numbers I still wouldn't be comfortable labeling any game as a flop at this point. Sales patterns on Steam can be pretty varied, even more so I'd have thought when the game launches without a discount.

 

[RetroDLC]

tbh, anyone with basic programming knowledge can do these kind of tasks. I don't even know how much anyone would charge for it since it's so simple.

'It's so simple' for a programmer, but there isn't always a programmer at hand, or the time available, to invest in solving a problem.

This thread is going in loops.

 

[Cikay]

After reading this I'm considering buying SC at full price to support all this work, even if I haven't touched FC yet. Good piece of journalism.

 

[hamchan]

I'm only 10 hours into FC otherwise I would have bought SC at launch. Also doesn't help when it feels like every game is coming out right now.

EDIT: Ah screw it, i'll just buy it now since this game coming out here is like a goodwill gesture from XSEED anyways.

 

[Volcynika]

Good read. I know I'd like to see a blog entry by Sara whenever they get Corpse Party PC out, sounds like she had to rewrite so much to even get it working on modern PCs.

 

[Tomato Convenience Store]

I just want to say that I appreciate the efforts of all involved immensely. I've been waiting for SC for years, and it has been one of only a handful of must-buy games for me this year. Thank you kindly.

 

[leesmapman]

Who the fuck does that instead of taking an hour to whip up Python script to convert it automatically?

Like, seriously, this is something a first year IT student will do for lunch money...

My first thought exactly.

 

[Dragon1893]

My first thought exactly.

Let it go guys. The thread is going in circles. Read the many posts written by XSeed's staff and let it go.

 

[KimonoNoNo]

Very illuminating article and thread.

I love stuff that allows us to peak behind the curtain, so thanks to all those involved.

 

[Parsnip]

I still haven't played FC, maybe this year.

 

[YankeeDonB]

Seems a herculean effort. Too bad the game isn't selling better.

Aside from release timing, I have to say, as someone who's interested in this series and played tits first chapter and plan on getting this and Cold Steel later this year, it's tricky to figure the series out.

Spread across a hodge podge of odd platforms, mostly untranslated, long and non-intuitive names (legend of heroes trails in the sky SC looks/sounds like some kind of updated version of legend of heroes trails in the sky FC, not a full-blown sequel).

All this work on translation, a little should be directed toward Western brand management.

 

[Stitch]

Yeah it's moving really poorly relative to their other games, even accounting for the amount of time they've been out:

By comparison, Tales just came out at $50 and moved 78,347 ± 7,392 despite being pretty high up there on the list of console game drowned in anime sauce.

Gurumin was given away for free if you voted for it on greenlight

 

[Barrylocke]

Seems a herculean effort. Too bad the game isn't selling better.

Aside from release timing, I have to say, as someone who's interested in this series and played tits first chapter and plan on getting this and Cold Steel later this year, it's tricky to figure the series out.

Spread across a hodge podge of odd platforms, mostly untranslated, long and non-intuitive names (legend of heroes trails in the sky SC looks/sounds like some kind of updated version of legend of heroes trails in the sky FC, not a full-blown sequel).

All this work on translation, a little should be directed toward Western brand management.

Perhaps they need to give the full names "First Chapter" and "Second Chapter" out more?

 

[Aeana]

Perhaps they need to give the full names "First Chapter" and "Second Chapter" out more?

This is probably the easiest thing they can do from now on, and I think it's worthwhile.

 

[Elaugaufein]

Idea Factory games have an established fanbase/audience on Steam. The argument you used with Tales applies to them here too.

Also the Re;Birth games are actually pretty good. It's not like losing to Cross Edge or Last Rebellion or even the original Hyperdimension Neptunia or something.

 

[wrowa]

I wish they could drop the "Legend of Heroes" moniker. It's so generic and uninteresting (while Trails in the Sky has a nice ring to it - but that might just be because I'm not an English native speaker) and since the series is mostly is getting referred to as Trails/Kiseki these days, it's not even important.

However, I don't think it would change much regarding sales. I don't think that FC / SC is causing much confusion either. I'm pretty confident that almost everyone who has played through FC immediately googled for the sequel anyway - it ends with a strong cliffhanger, after all - and knows that it's called SC. I think the bigger factor is a combination of a) not many people having actually finished FC on Steam, b) SC being relatively expensive and c) lots of competition. I think a) is the biggest roadblock, since it just doesn't make a lot of sense to buy a direct sequel to a game you haven't actually finished yet. b) and c) hurt sales right now, but that doesn't mean that those people won't get around to buying it later. I'm pretty confident that SC will continue selling for quite some time.

 

[batbeg]

I've got nowhere near beating the first one but I will buy this anyway. I'll eventually play for it and it needs no discount.

 

[Sophia]

This is probably the easiest thing they can do from now on, and I think it's worthwhile.

Might be even be prudent of them, sometime in the near future when it's clear steady sales have dropped, to bundle both games together like Ys 1 and Ys 2 too. The biggest barrier to entry to these kind of games is the previous installment (see: Xenosaga 3), so doing anything at all to alleviate said barrier will help in their favor.

I'll be picking both games up myself at Christmas. Just not sure if I want them on Vita or PC.

 

[Shake Appeal]

From a branding perspective, it would better if they were listed on Steam as:

Trails in the Sky: First Chapter
Trails in the Sky: Second Chapter

And yes, there should be a discounted bundle for both games this week.

 

[krYlon]

I wish they could drop the "Legend of Heroes" moniker. It's so generic and uninteresting (while Trails in the Sky has a nice ring to it - but that might just be because I'm not an English native speaker) and since the series is mostly is getting referred to as Trails/Kiseki these days, it's not even important.

I thought this when they first released FC. It should have just been Trails in the Sky. The Legend of Heroes has little history in the west and has mostly negative connotations because of the Gagharv PSP localisations. And it's too generic.

I think they wanted to do justice to the moniker's reputation as it is highly regarded in Japan but now Falcom have even dropped it from the latest Trails games it seems like a misstep.
If they bring the Gagharv games to Steam and GoG it might make more sense (please).

 

[Elaugaufein]

I thought this when they first released FC. It should have just been Trails in the Sky. The Legend of Heroes has little history in the west and has mostly negative connotations because of the Gagharv PSP localisations. And it's too generic.

I think they wanted to do justice to the moniker's reputation as it is highly regarded in Japan but now Falcom have even dropped it from the latest Trails games it seems like a misstep.
If they bring the Gagharv games to Steam and GoG it might make more sense (please).

I wonder if that's even possible given that Namco was the publisher at the time. Guess it depends on the contract, its unlikely they'd want to use the original localisation, for those, so it'd be more of a matter of if there was an exclusivity clause / how long they got it for.

It'd also be really confusing given that they were released in the wrong order in English too.

 

[SpaceDrake]

Then again there were only so many weeks this year that didn't have a noteworthy release coming out. When should they have delayed it to if it was ready to come out this year? 3 weeks of the next 2 months aren't even looked at for potential releases because of the holidays, every other week has "something" worth mentioning being released.

This is another facet to the "exposure" problem the game is having: at this point, there's always going to be some kind of other big-profile release happening at the same time you release. Maybe a couple. All throughout the year.

I think part of the reason Recettear did so well back in the day was that there weren't quite so many releases - not just hitting Steam, but coming out in general. Our only real competition was the original Amnesia, and Recettear and Amnesia are so damned different that they didn't exactly compete with one another. And beyond that, it was pretty quiet that week and even beyond, so we didn't have a ton of competition stealing the spotlight.

Trails SC? Neptunia V3 PC launched the next day, and let's be honest, there probably is some competition for dollars there, Galak-Z launched the same day, two major free to play games dropped updates the same day, another one launched and Binding of Isaac launched its expansion the day after (and that's another one where I do think there's a bit of user overlap and competition for dollars) and then a couple more games launched yesterday. Yokai Watch drops this Saturday, and next week, for example, comes Fallout 4 and a huge update to Final Fantasy XIV - on the same day! - and all three of those are also after a lot of the same dollars we are.

The market is goddamn flooded, is what I'm saying. Visibility for any product is getting to be a problem. At some point you just need to get your product out there, and have enough faith that the people who want to find it, will find it, and you're only going to get so much media attention no matter what you do unless your name is Activision, EA, Nintendo, Bethesda or maybe Square-Enix. The Halloween sale made things slightly rougher, but to be honest, the market is so flooded that announcing the release a bit further away from the game going on sale wasn't going to help, and pushing the release date back or forward wouldn't have helped, either.

 

[zero shift]

Is it likely that Carpe Fulgar and Xseed will ever work with each other again?

 

[krYlon]

I wonder if that's even possible given that Namco was the publisher at the time. Guess it depends on the contract, its unlikely they'd want to use the original localisation, for those, so it'd be more of a matter of if there was an exclusivity clause / how long they got it for.

It'd also be really confusing given that they were released in the wrong order in English too.

Ys VI was released here on PC by XSEED (despite being released by Konami on PSP in the west first I think), so hopefully it would be a similar situation to that? But yeah I don't know what the contract would be like.

I'd imagine they would want to start from scratch with the original PC releases and forget the PSP ones exist.

 

[Eusis]

I think they wanted to do justice to the moniker's reputation as it is highly regarded in Japan but now Falcom have even dropped it from the latest Trails games it seems like a misstep.

Legend of Heroes is still in the name, Nayuta just dropped it because it was an unrelated game that was an action RPG anyway. You look up Sen no Kiseki II online and its there.

I also think it's a reputation reasonably safe to shake (or so I'd hope.) The Gagharv games were low profile releases on the PSP, one of the biggest reasons they're awful is bad to mediocre translations, and the DEVELOPER has a very good pedigree with Ys so I think a lot of us were willing to give another chance, especially with XSEED translating and Falcom themselves having ported it. I'd sooner attribute just about anything else but the LoH name to poor sales post-word of mouth.

EDIT: Also the Gagharv games are probably easier for XSEED to license and release than Ys VI was. Totally different versions, and while closeness of translation is an issue I feared with Ys VI, uhh, if that comes up this time then XSEED failed us all anyway, haha.

 

[krYlon]

Legend of Heroes is still in the name, Nayuta just dropped it because it was an unrelated game that was an action RPG anyway. You look up Sen no Kiseki II online and its there.

Oh OK, I thought they dropped it for Sen but I was probably thinking of Nayuta!

 

[vagabondarts]

Bought it on gog.com.
I don't know when ill finish part one let alone part two, but I'm sure I'll get to it one day.

 

[YankeeDonB]

Perhaps they need to give the full names "First Chapter" and "Second Chapter" out more?

This is probably the easiest thing they can do from now on, and I think it's worthwhile.

Agreed, a simple change, and I totally get trying to shorten the already overlong mouthful of a title, but aside from GAF I've seen really limited awareness of second chapter's release, even among jrpg fans.

Bigger, bolder, better, sequel to oldschool jrpg critical hit legend of heroes, hit people over the head with this stuff!

Edit: Oh, and yeah, Trails in the Sky is a way better title than Legend of Heroes.

 

[h0tp0ck3t]

I wasn't planning on buying this till I finished FC but holy cow after reading that article I bought it just now to support all that effort you guys did.

 

[Armoured Priest]

Bought SC as soon as it was released on Steam...if my finances improve I may double dip on PSN.

I've long been a Falcom fan (Ys is pretty much my favorite series). I'm also a fan of the Legend of Heroes series as well. I played through the TG-16 Dragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes. I've also played through the 3 PSP non trails Legend of Heroes games that got state side ports (Moonlight Witch, Tear of Vermillion, Song of the Ocean)...I do need to finish Song of the Ocean, though. I played through them one after the other and burned out a bit.

Man, I can't even image the ordeal for that translation/localization for SC, and I've been through the game development process a couple times (nothing with anywhere near that much text).

A heart-felt thank you to all involved. This has been an amazing year...a lot of games that had been written off as never getting their sequels released/translated...and here we are. You guys capped off an awesome year of announcements/releases.

 

[wyrdwad]

Ys VI was released here on PC by XSEED (despite being released by Konami on PSP in the west first I think), so hopefully it would be a similar situation to that? But yeah I don't know what the contract would be like.

It would be exactly the same. Konami doesn't own Ys VI, nor does Bandai own the Gagharv Trilogy -- those are Falcom titles, so there's no reason we *couldn't* release the PC versions here.

They'd be an awfully hard sell, though (as they do look and sound fairly dated compared to other Falcom titles), and they'd be hell for Sara to work with (seeing as all three of them are older than the oldest PC release she's handled for us to date -- all three were programmed with Windows 98 compatibility first and foremost, I believe!). Add to that the fact that they'd all be fairly lengthy titles to localize (and we would most certainly re-localize them from scratch), and... yeah, I wouldn't expect to be seeing any of those games anytime soon.

Both Brittany and I are big advocates of working on them eventually, though, so hopefully one day we can convince the powers that be to let us give them a shot.

-Tom

 

[Eusis]

Hopefully we get an update that does them justice sometime. That might be the wedge needed to be able to take those games on, as much as I'd like the nostalgic appeal for the Gagharv games.

 

[Shizuka]

I'm still waiting for the Steam price in Brazil to match the PSN price here.

 

[StereoVsn]

Man, that English word and page count is certainly daunting. I have ran projects with localization components before but it was nothing compared to SC (software in general isn't too bad unless you are releasing say Office or SAP ).

Many props to Xseed for the hard work and kudos to Jason for great read. He is one of the main reasons I still follow Kotaku (sneak press fucks and all).