A couple of you have linked Tales producer Hideo Baba’s brief interview wherein he recommends a Japanese game for its story to English-speaking Tales fans who can’t understand said story, thereby proving that Namco Bandai Games is more than a match for KAJITANI-EIZAN’s Patch Site in the arte of trolling, and additionally that Mr. Baba is a pretty cool guy. I would feel bad pulling a double whammy on you guys, so this will be a post that is (almost) entirely free of trolling.
You may have noticed that updates come every few weeks or months and that I don’t really communicate much with each update. The former part of that statement is true, and the latter is also true, if you are one of the few individuals that may be somewhat observationally challenged. There often isn’t really much to tell you regarding the translation progress front. For example, our translator is busy with multiple other commitments and progress is therefore currently slow. Other times he gets stuff done. I doubt this is news you would find particularly interesting, so instead I have been entertaining you with updates about exciting new Translator’s Cut game features. Speaking of which, in case you hadn’t worked it out, yes, Translator’s Cut is a real thing. No, the features will not necessarily function exactly as they appear to function in my trollan-laden posts, but there is a modicum of truth to them… maybe even more than a modicum.
There are other features that have been shown but not verbally mentioned. I will mention one now that I had not previously talked about, at least on this site. You may recall that I had previously talked about a bug fix for the Heal Stone. Translator’s Cut will also feature a change in how the Heal Stone operates. The original game limited your use of the Heal Stone in two ways: the amount of Heal Energy you had available, and the number of times you could use the Heal Stone per battle. As you generally had plenty of Heal Energy, this encouraged you to make each individual usage of the Heal Stone as effective as possible; the optimal strategy was essentially to set it so that it would fully resurrect your party from a party wipe, completely reversing what would otherwise have been a Game Over… an incredible 5 times per battle. This rendered all other Heal Stone setups pointless, stifling any creativity you might invest in an otherwise fun game mechanic. Enter Translator’s Cut. The number of uses per battle has been changed to a “charge” system. Each battle, the Heal Stone is charged with a certain amount of Heal Energy from your total Heal Energy pool. Only up to this amount may be used in the current battle. So, you could save your charge for big Game Over-preventing heals like before… but then you won’t get as many uses out of the Stone. Or, you could opt for many little heals. You could focus on stat boosts and elemental resistances. You could have the stone obsessively heal you every time you take damage and actually have it be a semi-legit strategy. It’s all up to you. As an added bonus, this change makes one of the game’s many accessories not be completely useless… Hooray!
Of course, this and all other Translator’s Cut changes are completely optional. If you want to experience the original game that Mr. Baba played, you have that option as well — after all, the Japanese cartridge is always available.
And with that, I bid you adieu! As a parting shot, I would like to note that those of you that like to cheese their way through difficult battles using strategies that would be described by most people as “cheap” will find their efforts, shall we say, stymied in Translator’s Cut. I look forward to the delicious tears.
(Postscript: If you want some numbers regarding the Heal Stone: fully upgraded, the Heal Stone can hold 2000 Heal Energy. A full revive costs 150 energy (100 for 100% HP healing and 50 for reviving from KO). Five of these would cost 750 energy. Therefore, under the old system, you could easily have 5 full revives for a tough boss battle, assuming you had at least 750 energy going into the battle. Under the new system, fully upgraded, you have up to 300 energy per battle. You could spend it all on 2 full revives, or you could spend it on various tactical perks throughout the battle: each stat boost costs 10-20 energy, and each 1% HP healing costs 1 energy.)
October 27, 2012 at 10:52 am | Permalink
Then I suppose we can only hope that ToH:R gets localized in the future, though I still have the feeling that ToH:R and ToI:R could’ve sold way more on the 3DS because of the already existing fanbase (Tales of the Abyss 3DS, nevermind the original DS games while the Vita has a real messed up issue regarding its compatibility with PSP games) WHICH of course may have guaranteed us a higher chance that they’ll come to the west.
Then again, ToI:R is one of the best-selling games on the Vita in Japan.
Personally, I don’t think they virtually belong to Sony compared to Final Fantasy, Persona (wait, it never did go on a Nintendo console right?) and Kingdom of Hearts.
Anyway, I just hope that the 3DS may expect some Tales Of greatness in the future again, soon. Until then, I’ll wait for Kajitani’s Super Special American Tales of Hearts Edition something something.
October 29, 2012 at 7:37 am | Permalink
Namdai just opened the site for Hearts R.
http://toh-r.tales-ch.jp/
Doesn’t have a lot of info at the moment, but by the snapshot it’s clear they are abandoning the sprite models. Maybe the battle system will have free-run instead of side-scrolling fighting.
October 31, 2012 at 5:04 pm | Permalink
Yeah, it seems to be so. Which is quite a shame actually. I really liked the whole 2D Fighting RPG Hybrid battle system that Tales of Hearts had. I was like, ‘This is most likely the best RPG battle system I’ve ever played and most likely the closest battle system that comes to a full-fledged 2D Fighting RPG Hybrid Battle System’.
But noooo, they have to go all TotA battle system (which wasn’t bad. It was actually a hella lot more fun that ToS’ battle system, but… I really wanted to see the 2D BS x3)
October 31, 2012 at 7:06 pm | Permalink
It’s official:
http://www.siliconera.com/2012/10/31/tales-of-hearts-r-screenshots-are-in-full-3d/
November 1, 2012 at 6:38 am | Permalink
so it means that the TOH on ds translation will be drop because of this TOH R?
November 1, 2012 at 12:12 pm | Permalink
Kaji hasnt said anything, but seeing as both games seem to be significantly different in combat system and ToHR is unlikely to be localised, maybe it wont be droped.
November 1, 2012 at 7:46 pm | Permalink
You guys are silly, Hearts Reimagination is just a japanese translation of the Translator’s Cut: American Edition: Reimagining version Kaji is making.
When he spir-linked with Hearts development team to improve it, the develompment team liked it so much that they are translating his translation and more high ohgeez.
November 4, 2012 at 7:27 pm | Permalink
ahh THANKS GOD!! i thought because of this TOH R,,kaji will drop the translation for TOH and focus on translating TOH R
November 7, 2012 at 12:50 am | Permalink
Yeah, now that they are releasing ToH:R, this 2D ToH is even in more need of a translation. It will become a relic.
November 7, 2012 at 1:13 am | Permalink
Indeed. Aside from my selfish desires, I think completing the translation ASAP will raise more attention to Hearts R, especially with how easily people can emulate DS games now :O Just look at the people still wanting VesPS3… I have no idea what Kaji is thinking about this now though, soo… xD
November 7, 2012 at 4:58 pm | Permalink
@OLHearts
Tales of Vesperia for the PS3 is currently fan translated by a dedicated group of Tales fans. It may seem difficult and all, because PS3 continuously updates its firmware to be one step ahead of hackers and all. However, it’s the risks a person must take if it wants to be able to play such a game in English.
It doesn’t bother me a bit. Never played Vesperia on 360, never will, it just doesn’t seem that amazing and all compared to other Tales casts.
Though, I’d love to play that White Knight guy, Flynn, in the PS3 version, but I’m not gonna risk my account or PS3 to be able to enjoy the game in English.
It’s funny you know, how DS games are translate-able while PSP games can’t get translated or something… according to the guy who translated Tales of Innocence and all.
November 7, 2012 at 8:09 pm | Permalink
First trailer of ToH R:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ol8nNKrcjAg
November 9, 2012 at 3:44 pm | Permalink
HeroOfGames16
Who told you PSP games can’t be translated? Various japan-only titles received fan-made translation patches like Monster Hunter 2ndG and 3rd; Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep – Final Mix; Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 and 3; even Final Fantasy Reishiki was translated, but for chinese instead of english.
November 9, 2012 at 3:56 pm | Permalink
Who told me? Just like I said, the guy who fan translated Tales of Innocence. He got asked by people if he’d like to translate Tales of Narikiri Dungeon x Phantasia (something something) for the PSP, but he said that he can’t because he doesn’t have the debug software to do it and all. However, he said he’d really like to.
November 9, 2012 at 6:31 pm | Permalink
Well the he, throughhim413, can’t. He never said PSP games can’t be translated. just that he doesn’t have the means to it.
November 12, 2012 at 10:45 am | Permalink
There’s a menu patch of NDX…
November 26, 2012 at 6:35 pm | Permalink
Come forth, Kaji! We need your opinion about how the remake will affect this project. Or just an ordinary update, a trollpost, anything. Please?
May 3, 2018 at 9:50 am | Permalink
The full translation is here.
April 1, 2022 at 2:12 am | Permalink
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