Gust Thread

I probably wouldnt have played these games if not for the music

also Jacqli a best girl
I would have been seriously disappointed had they not expanded her story in the second game

Yeah there was so much room to expand on since after she's beaten she never speaks, just sings Rig=Veda and leaves

i was under the impression that she ran around naked for 5 years until ar tonelico 2 has her in that outfit and robo suit

yeah, I was atleast hoping for extended ending or something if you fulfilled conditions
atleast Rig=Veda is probably one of my favorites
thankfully the second game gave a satisfactory ending
I was really anticipating how her "path of redemption" would turn out

I was under the impression she ran into Spica after AT1 ending and they became friends

PC port?

It's not like Gust hasn't worked with PC before, but it's been a long time (think the PC ports were back in fifth gen or so and remained Japan only since the series wasn't brought west until the Iris games on the PS2).

What surprises me a bit is that Gust and TK seem to have been open to porting some of their PS2 and PS3 games to the PSP and Vita, but they never bothered with a rerelease of Ar Tonelico I and II. I could have seen a dual pack doing well on the Vita with them (Ar Nosurge already being on there), and it would be a chance for AT2 to get an official retranslation given how bad NISA shat the bed with it (to the point that fans have taken it up), but apparently they're just going to remain PS2 only. Hell, I don't even think they did a PSN digital rerelease of them in Japan either.

did they just run out of money/time by the end?
it seemed to me the spelling mistakes became more prominent by the later cosmosphere stuff
I think there was even one erroneus cosmosphere choice in the extra one

I like MK2 cast. Even the ridiculous bitchy Lily can be tolerable sometimes. The characters' designs are kinda unique, and their special attacks are fun to watch.

MK1 is one of my favorite JRPGs for the PS2, hands down. School setting is nicely done and, except for Vayne and Muppy, all the other characters are fun to watch. Flay is one of the broest characters in vydia, by the way.

I also love all the Atelier Iris games, specially the first one (because I found it during a time when I was starving for a comfy anime-style turn-based JRPG).

There are so many intriguing elements about a tower spanning into the outer space, and what the fuck happened that it became the only inhabitable place on the planet.

From Project Metafalica's "About" page, in regards to NISA's handling of AT2.

I honestly don't see the Iris games brought up that often. I've been thinking to start there when I get around to Atelier, albeit bearing in mind that they're somewhat different from the Arland/Dusk games after them, since they're the earliest ones in English and might be a bit hard to go back to down the line. How are they?

id say charming without any huge faults.
as a secret of mana fan i was thrilled to see another set of games use cute elemental mana spirits.

I just remembered them sending you to wrong place near the end after you made the tower appear

is this a text translated version?
never heard of this before

They are different from the other Atelier games in some points:

Atelier Iris 1 I find the comfiest of the bunch. Atelier Iris 3 has the best girl.

I could be wrong, it's been a while, but as I understand it, this is basically what happened

1. The first tower was created by humans living on the planet and the Teru, some people with magic and dragon features.
2. People used the first tower to attack people in Sol Cluster, which has the side effect of damaging the planet's "heart" and destroying a village of Teru in The Seven Bloodscars incident.
3. Teru, buttmad that one of their villages was destroyed, invaded the first tower and set it to overload and explode.
4. The tower overloads, the crystalline disks shatter creating a nearly-impassible sea of plasma at a certain altitude and damages the planet yet again in an event called Grathnode Inferia (Grathnode being the name of the crystal the disks were made of)
5. The planet, which has a will of its own, gets so angry it floods the entire surface with a noxious gas and antibody monsters to kill all humans.
6. Eventually the planet is saved thanks to the efforts of Mir, the first game's villain, and the protagonists of the third game who use the third tower, which was basically designed to be a massive railgun used to launch a party to repair the damage done to the planet, to reach the core and basically beg the planet to forgive them as they heal it before it dies of its injuries.

...

Fan retranslation. Actual patching effort, not just a textfile translation like some games have (Tales of Destiny 2 and Rebirth for example, have translation scripts on gamefaqs, but no actual patches). Site for the effort is here. at2.metalbat.com

There's a few issues so far as far as acquiring it patched though: It's still a beta (with updates every so often; most recent one being 5a last month or so) so it's not considered 100% finished yet, and while the Beta patches are available to download for testing, you need an account on the forum they use to access them. And for me, there's the added issue that my toaster doesn't really like patching programs much anyhow, so even if I did get the patch file, I couldn't patch the game myself.

They did manage to apparently get one of the coders who's been working with the French fan translation team for one of the PS2 Atelier games to help out since they've got better experience with working with Gust's code, and apparently have uncovered and translated previous unused content in AT2 as well.

I suppose NISA's always had issues with bugs and such, but looking at that one greentext screenshot that goes around, AT2 seems like the first big case of them shitting the bed bad, and rather than getting better over time (as you might expect would happen as a company gets more experienced), they've only gotten worse.

I see. Are the three games same universe or anything, or just sharing themes? I was thinking of playing in order anyhow, but I'm wondering if they all have a story connection as well.

That, I don't believe in. I mean, compare the opening from AT1 (very tame and standard) and AT2 (all that lesbian vibe between Cloche and Luca). Besides that, if I remember correctly, there is exactly ONE instance of "cheap hook" in AT1, when Lyner has to "install" the Grathnode Crystal on Aurica (I can't remember if there's a similar event for Misha or Shurelia).

How do 2 and 3 compare to the first one? I've never played them.

The battle system is painful and I want to slap both of the lead girls
Finnel for being and idiot and Saki for being literally retarded

Protip if you don't like either girl, when you get the option to "choose" one of the girls, don't make the same choice each time or you're locked out of the third's

i dont fully remember. from what i remember it seems ambiguous but i was under the impression the first two games were connected.
i never beat the third game because of some irl shit.

sorry, but where can I find this patch?
trying to seach the forum where it apparently should be posted maybe Im just too retarded or drunk
or do I need to log in to see it

nvm Im retarded

I guess he means Atelier Iris 2 and 3, not Ar Tonelico.

AI2 is very similar to the first one (it's actually a prequel). It plays similarly as well.

AI3 is quest based (much like the Mana Khemia games), but the cast is very minimalist and there's a gimmick where you have limited time to stay on each World, so when you're questing, you have to take that into account. Zey Meruze is a fantasized version of Venice, it tickles my comfy bone.

Why.

Why do they keep lolifying characters.

Ah I've been drinking. I guess I misread

The first and second ones are connected (AI2 is a prequel to AI1). AI3 is completely different.

...

Because lolis are popular right now? I don't know. I distinctly remember reading something, a long time ago, about how some Japanese "fans" were revolting against Rorona because it was implyied by the first game that she was "used goods". Maybe they making her a loli on Atelier Meruru was supposed to address that?

Yeah, I'm not sure if requires a certain amount of posts or whatever to get at (I've seen some forums in the past do that to make sure people that can download it are active), but again, I've had to rely on the helpfulness of other anons to get at prepatched game files. To be honest, I was under the impression they were likely to stop at Beta 3, but apparently getting that frog to help out has been a gamechanger, hence them being on five major patches thus far (and I think me asking in the share threads over the months for a prepatch whenever a new iteration of the patch came out might be annoying to see).

Huh, so I assume play Iris 1 before 2, given how some prequels assume you know about events that happened in games set later and might be spoilers?

Yeah, probably is for the best, but the plots aren't that complex to begin with, there's not much to spoiler about, I guess. perhaps only the role of the title character.

because gust is a loli and she wants friends

Kill yourself Astrid Zexis.

I will always hate Otaku and Fujoshi for ruining good character development in the series

guess Ill just keep waiting until it is finished
hope someone can share the finished product

I still havent played Cloche route, which I sorta anticipate, because she seemed best girl when I actually played the game (I initially liked Luca, but her Infelsphere sections made it hard for me to tolerate her, then again I got the impression from other people Cloche's Infelsphere isn't that dandy either)

will be fun when if I get the proper version

I thought that game had to end up being fan translated. -or is that the point?

I've been trying ahold of whatever the most recent patched versions have been, what with fear over TPP and Obongo wanting to hand the internet off to global community. Wouldn't surprise me if stuff gets cracked down on, and I'd rather have something (hopefully working) in case an actually finished version never comes out.

You can read about the content related changelog from Beta 4 here (at2.metalbat.com/?p=537). Beta 5 was mostly polish and bug fixes.

No, it came out in English. I saw a copy a few days back for $50 preowned.

The only Atelier game with a fan-translation in progress that the west never got at all is one of the dual packs on the PS2 (the Salburg games, I think), and even then, at the moment it's only been into French and is still unfinished. For such a big, long running series, it seems odd there hasn't been more of an effort to fan translate the games we missed here, but I wager that's what happens when a series is more niche than most.

cutest song?

cutest song

dang, `seems the official translation really butchered a lot of stuff

Gust games target Otaku and Fujoshi. Fuck off and play your gay WRPGs if you don't like that. They have all the ugly 60 yo you love.

Gust games target Otaku and Fujoshi. Fuck off and play your gay WRPGs if you don't like that. They have all the ugly 60 yo you love.

Well, the effort has been part bug fix, part restoration (full Japanese dub since the NISA one cut about half of it, or something), and part retranslation. And recently it's gained a reimplementation factor for content that went unused even in Japan.

It also apparently hasn't been the easiest thing for the people working on it to actually work with. I remember seeing some archived update from some years back (they've been in it for the long haul; the projects over seven years old now) with examples of some of the shit they'd had to go through, such as in trying to fix NISA's inconsistencies, sometimes doing so wound up breaking shit. I'll see if I can find the post on it.

Did they ever bring her back?

Found it. It was about trying to fix stuff on the graphical end of things, from January 2014.
at2.metalbat.com/?p=471

Praise kek.

I figured it would come off that way to someone, but yeah, getting that coder from the french Atelier Traduccion team, or whatever it's called, to lend a hand has probably let them accomplish more than they could without him, or at least far sooner.

...

Just chiming in to agree wholeheartedly with these posts.

AT setting, lore, and music is some truly spectacular shit you don't and won't see anymore these days.

ALL OF THEM

But okay one of the best games I ever played that blew Rockstar and Bioware out of the water:

Too bad nobody appreciates Gust games. They were all butchered by NISA.

I have to wonder if, with Henkaku opening new possibilities, maybe Ciel Nosurge might get a fan translation, since from what I know of it, the lack of its predecessor being playable in English causes some to be leery of playing Ar Nosurge (I mean, there's that subbed series of youtube videos, but that's not the same as actually playing something).

Well I imagine it would be a massive undertaking, Ciel Nosurge has a lot of text. I'd love to play it! I only read the plot synopsis on some fantastic site.

Irks me a bit.

If they could get that guy on youtube to help out or at least permission to borrow from his subs, I expect it could help save on time.

How long is CNS' script anyhow? I mean, I've seen images comparing the script size for Legend of Heroes with the first twelve books in Wheel of Time (an estimate that just five LoH's game scripts surpass the size of all twelve of the books), and a photo of an entire bookcase just to house Dragon Quest VII's script, but with Ciel being Japan only and Ar Tonelico/Surge Concerto being really niche out here, I can't say I've seen anything like those for it.

It look like a pain in the ass to translate properly, not only do you need someone with huge moonspeak knowledge you also need some hardcore fans of the series to get all the fancy terms back in context. Then on top of it you need someone knowledgeable in Jungian psychology to get all the mumbo jumbo sorted out.

Well there's a reason why NISA fucked up. And they got paid to do it.

You would need some seriously dedicated autistic fans.

Like with Legend of the galactic heroes.

Yeah, but I suppose that's the sort of things a fan translation has going for it. Odds are, whoever's involved cares enough about the game to do their best to get the English script right, and since they're not on a budget, can take the time to double check stuff, do research, etc, that some "professional" teams won't have the time of budget to feel like doing. Plus, they can consult with other fans (and a fan translator properly knowing more than one language broadens the amount of input they could get, such as double checking with both English and Japanese fans).

Yeah, not being cancerous fucks looking for pointless things to change just to inflate a paycheck certainly help.

Well, to be fair, not every fan translator is willing to let a game speak for itself and avoid tangling their own beliefs into what is or isn't acceptable for the west to enjoy, but for most it's a labor of love for a game they enjoy and want westerners to be able to play in English too (or in the case of retranslations like AT2 and BoFII, provide a better English experience), even if every company at the time it was current made it a Never-Ever.

question: do you have idea if the animated cutscenes are gonna get subbed too?
or maybe that was just me playing on emulator, but there weren't any subs even though the language was set to japan

If there's no actual text on the screen it would probably need to be hard subbed, rather than found and replaced within the script. Still, as Absolute Zero has shown with some preview videos of their progress Tales of Destiny DC, it's very possible to add text where there wasn't any originally, both for animated FMVs (I assume that just requires ripping the video clip, adding subs to it in some program, and replacing it in the files, but I'm not a hacker or anything, so I can't say for certain) as well as gameplay related stuff like post-battle victory scenes, where text has to be manually added since there was nothing in the actual system script to translate. I expect that with AT2 it would be quite possible as well.

I'm not sure if the AT2 retranslation is going to be doing that or not, but I would be very surprised if someone hasn't asked them about that, either in the update comments or on that A Reyvateil's Melody forum they use. Looking at a video someone on youtube posted of it running on their CFW PS3, it doesn't look as if the opening FMV is subbed, but considering they uploaded it early last year, it was probably Beta 1 he was using, so maybe things have changed since then? Not sure.

Just checked beta 5a, the first moonspeak song ingame was subbed.
I never got my hands on the retail, someone remember if it was subbed by default?
If you intend to play on pcsx2 grab the latest git version, they have fixes for the graphix.

What the fuck, NISA? It's like they are actively spending unnecessary time and money for no other reason other than to fuck with people. Who was responsible for these decisions?

I would assume it's ineptitude, lack of QA, and not sending their translation scripts to the original company to insert properly (I think Actill does that with Gust's stuff now, but I could be wrong), but yeah, the fact that even their fuck ups can be hard to fix at times almost feels like a middle finger. "Fans might want to touch up our work? Fuck them." The good news is that, digging through their notes about Beta 4, they seemed to finally get past some of those with that French guy's help.

Honestly, NISA's weird. Their whole shtick is to bring niche games west, they seem to have only gotten worse over the years, to the point you can expect bugs and typos at best and outright broken, censored, or fucked with localizations at worst, and they actively seem to hate the various aspects that make the games they bring over niche in the first place (and thus tend to ruin them for western players). At least some companies like Spike Chunsoft have taken it upon themselves to watch NISA like hawks, and Gust has dropped them since be bought by TK.

If you have a prepatched 5a file, would you mind uploading it to vola or mega or something? I'd appreciate it, and some other anons probably would as well.

I'm planning on playing through a PS2 with an IDE drive set up, but I'm still waiting on some parts while I grab various games, especially ones that are otherwise expensive or required patching to be playable.

How do you feel about this?

I have a 100kb/s upload speed (being a student is fun) and the file is 4gb so I'm going to pass on uploading it.

You can just grab the base iso from emuparadise and apply the patches, all you have to do is get xdelta, put it in the same folder and run some .bat

That upload speed sounds pretty bad, I can't blame you if you're stuck with college wifi or something. Unfortunately I'm stuck having to rely on prepatched files since my toaster and patcher programs don't get along real well. Maybe some other user with it and a better upload speed might be able to dump it.

How big are the patches themselves though, and is it the English or Japanese game file they use as a base for it? Might try to rope a friend into helping patch it since his computer's probably better.

can you at least upload the patch somewhere?

It just makes me want a playable Earthes.

1.8gb total in patches, it work with EU or US version, the EU just need a 223mb patch on top of it.

Used mega to put all the links together, no uploading required.
You need the base .iso EU or USA and xdelta.

mega.nz/#F!U9xGULJB!LYRULsnTNoHjMIljruxpzA

Thanks user.

Is there a Holla Forums recommendations guide for this series? I've always wanted to try it but the strange naming schema makes it hard for me to understand where to start and what games are good.

Atelier Iris is most people's starting point, at least in the west. That three pack of the Arland trilogy is also good.

I, like many of you, suffer from problems. My problems don't involve any of your implausible ones, but mine are worth voicing to you in hope of getting some advice.
Anyways, I began to play Ar Tonelico about a month ago, and as I dove deeper and deeper into the game, the more and more I fapped to hentai of it. I continued to do so until the last fight.
Then I played the game again…and again… and again… I found myself checking out Jakuri every on-screen moment she had. I began to stop going to my regular sites just to look at hentai of one person: Jakuri.
I eventually had 1000s of pictures and some doujins of Jakuri. I began to spend what others called absurd amounts of money on merchandise, and my apartment is coated with Jakuri everywhere.
I've shut myself off from family and friends and felt an urge to just snuggle with my Jakuri dolls.. Jakuri is all I need. She probably wouldn't like the way my family is or how my friends behave.
I'm in love with Jakuri. I keep praying that she'll come to see me one day and decide to live with me. I have nothing left to live for but Jakuri. I know she can hear me, so I always talk to her telling her to come and visit me so our union can take place.
So, this is where you guys come into the picture. You're an all-purpose video games board. You definitely must know a way to help Jakuri break free from behind her glass prison.
Please help! She's my perfect girl, and she's longing for me as much as I long for her.

There's a pair of graphics for Atelier some user made some time back and was too lazy to ever fix typos and misinformation on (it also didn't bother to mention the Iris or Mana Khemia games if memory serves). I've considered doing a revamp of them somewhere down the line, but I either need good input from other anons that are fans of the series to do so, or wait until I get more experience with the franchise myself (and given how many games in it the west has seen since the PS2 era, that could be a while). I suppose I'd also need some help from anons that know moon as well to provide information from experiences with the games we never got.

Anyhow, from my knowledge, depending on who you ask, you either start with the Iris games (while keeping in mind they're a bit different from the games before or after them, being more standard JRPGs, or something; probably why they were the first ones brought over, if the prior ones were considered too niche to take a risk with), or Rorona for the Arland games, or Ayesha for the Dusk games. Might be worth noting that Rorona Plus is an overhaul of the original Rorona and is the version to go for there (but be aware that it has post game content that can spoil stuff in the later two Arland entries, or something). Ayesha for the PS3 is also dub only due to being caught between TK buying Gust and the series localization rights going to Actill instead (all games brought over since then have been dual audio again); it has an undub patch for use with CFW PS3s though, or if you have a Vita the Plus version has native undub.

As for Ar Tonelico/Surge Concerto, there's no Holla Forums images/guides for them.

Thanks. To double check though, is that fix for the infamous Raki bug included in one of the beta patches as a default now or something? Just curious since there isn't one specified in the mega folder, and the read me document doesn't mention it either.

Eh, it kinda works of Escha.

Yeah, fixed in beta 4a.

Thanks. I just remembered in the past seeing some prepatches of the game on vola that specifically listed them as being the beta retranslation, undub, and raki fix. If it's built into the beta now, that's cool.

Trying to download the patch files now. I think the last time someone dumped them for 4.0, for some reason I couldn't get them to extract or something (which is odd, rar files generally don't give my toaster shit), but hopefully this goes better now.

I haven't played any of Gust's games before, but I'd like to try out Atelier, and I just got a Vita Which one should I play?

As a heads up about the Vita entries, aside from Escha and Logy Plus getting a limited Physical print run, all of the ones on there are digital only, and TK likes to leave them up at a full $40 or so aside from a few sales per year. The did make a bundle of the Arland games now (and unlike the PS3 one, it includes Rorona Plus; TK having the rights to that version but NISA doesn't) that is essentially three games for the price of two, but that's still $80. They're also somewhat big games at about 3 GB each if I've heard correctly. Just some things to keep in mind.

If the vita is running 3.60 piracy is available as well.

That is a fair point. Has anyone dumped them yet though?

I see four atelier game on the russian google doc, two confirmed working two unknown.

...

I've got Rorona, Torori, Meruru, Sophie, and Eschalogy.

I haven't tested/played them thoroughly, but I did start them up and watch the intro for each for basic troubleshooting, so I can confirm those are 'working' at least.

...

Boy I sure do love being stuck on a connection that alternates between slow-but-manageable and worse-than-no-internet.

Quick question about the mega link up there: Is that one some user uploaded, or does Project Metafalica maintain that one? Just wondering if the same link might also see more patches like a Beta 6 and higher down the line; wondering if I ought to bookmark it.

Reminder that irresponsible meming killed Stu's voice actor. Meme responsibly.

Really, Sony could have avoided a lot of issues for the Vita here by making the cards more reasonably priced for the amount of space they have. That, and actually promoting the system with the right game and not tying saves to game data.

I pasted the mega links from the devs to my mega.
If you want up to date links your best bet is to have an account on their forum, just use a trash email or something

I see, thanks for the advice.
At least all the sections after Beta 1 seem smaller in size.

So what exactly does that EU to US patch in there even do, swap the region coding so they didn't have to make versions of all their patches for multiple regions?

Maybe, my guess is that the EU version had more languages files in, yurop ps2 games often have French, German, English and Italian on the same disc to save on cost.
But don't really know for sure.

Huh. Well, either way at 220mb or so, it seems a bit large, whatever it actually does.

Oh, and one more question: Is Beta 1a even needed at this point? I see files for "Beta 1 to Beta 1a" but also a "Beta 1 to Beta 2". I assume the latter has the fixes from 1a included (unless it's a typo), but I figure that double checking would be smart, since for the 4, 4a, 4b, and 4c patches, it looks like you need each of them in order to patch to 5 properly ("beta 4c to beta 5").

You need all of them in order, each patch build on the previous.

Okay, so assume "Beta 1 to Beta 2" should be "Beta1a to Beta 2" instead then? I'm just going off of what it's listed as in the mega, since there's no letter included.

Also getting an error code trying to unrar Beta 2 to Beta 3. Tried two programs so far, first one (which I've used to extract the prior ones just fine) gives an error of "no files matching the mask" and the second program gives an error of "The structure of the archive is damaged." Can you extract it just fine on your end? Wondering if it's a problem with my toaster of the file itself.

I didn't touch the filenames, the names are what the devs decided to use.

Extracted just fine with 7zip here, if it keep giving you problem I can put the files in a folder and upload that.

Alright. I will say that extracting that Beta 1 to Beta 2 provides a Beta1a to Beta 2 bat file, so I guess it's just the rar itself that was named wrong.

And yeah, if you could redump the beta 2 to 3 files, that would be nice (considering how small it is, I think even a school connection could upload it pretty fast). I'll see if there's any issues extracting the other parts as they download and post if there are.

Added a folder with 2 to 3 in the mega.

None of the following extract right, at least on my end:
Meanwhile, Beta 5 to Beta 5a oddly extracts just fine (no issues with the files prior to Beta 2 either).

Thanks, I give that a try then.

I'll just put them all into folders then, no big deal.

Cool, thanks again.

I'll need around 30mins to upload 3 to 4, my uni throttle upload for some stupid ass reason.

Alright, I was going to say that Beta 3 to 4a seemed to be missing the Xdelta file myself, but I remembered it was a bigger one than some of the others. I'll just check back in the mega later for them.

Damn shame she doesn't have a vagina.

YES

It's a BIG GUN.

BEST. FUCKING. SETTING. EVER.

I want an anime series, I feel like the subpar gameplay actually gets in the way of the story, characters, and setting detail. I would love to see it all animated and its songs sung all translated on screen, and scenery porn.

Aaaand translated music.

Might be wrong, but didn't Ar Tonelico have an OVA or two for a few of the games?

Just one shitty OVA. ;_;

Yeah, I suppose OVAs aren't the best way to go for lengthy games, since there's only so much you can get done in a half hour to an hour. Looking at something like the Tales of Phantasia OVA miniseries, while the dubwork was MUCH better than in the GBA port that came west (one of the big pluses to the OVAs), you can't properly do a game that's at least 30 or so hours long credit in just four fucking episodes. Something getting a full season, like Tales of the Abyss, manages better than as OVAs, but as far as I'm aware it still leaves out some parts of the story that weren't exactly essential (even if it sometimes causes moments of confusion that the game clears up).

I suppose maybe Tsuchiya Akira, or Gust in general (given how even with Atelier they've only done a single anime series, and to my knowledge it was pretty iffy in quality), just prefers the video game setting to having them be an outright anime. Might be for the best too, given the current trend towards anime being only thirteen episodes per season as opposed to twenty-six or so that they used to see. If even a twenty-six episode series can still have issues properly adapting a JRPG, I doubt halving that can do it justice unless it's one of the shorter ones around.

...

One of us has to become a millionaire.

It's our duty to make an Ar Tonelico animated series.

I doubt the average user has that kind of money, but if memory serves one user was going to try to buy the rights to Earthworm Jim recently, so who knows.

It doesn't exactly help matters though when something is really niche to begin with. I suppose Ar Tonelico and Breath of Fire have been lucky in that they've managed to acquire among the western fanbase people that know moon and are devoted enough to them to retranslate the second game in both series after the official localizations were all manner of botched. But that's "labor of love," do it for free sort of stuff that isn't costing anyone anything but time (and maybe acquiring programs and/or the game files to work with).

At this point I actually wish the games I like would remain fairly unknown. If I sound like a hipster so be it, just stop shitting on the work of others you fucking hacks.
I really, really, don't want more games to suffer the fire emblem / xenoblade treatment and get butchered by a mix of fags looking for excuses to make money and "moral" guardians hating everything that isn't 1:1 of their fantasy world-view.

My Nights of Azure game is still sealed. I fell like I have to be in the mood to play a yuri game.

the bath dialogue was probably my favorite in the game

Thanks again, got all the parts now.

True, I do think that some series benefit from their nicheness, being able to get away with more due to being underplayed, as opposed to cutting/censoring stuff to try to make the game appeal more to the masses. Shadow Hearts, for example. The devs, as well as Midway/XSEED, seemed to get that the games were aimed as a niche audience that would likely become livid if too much was changed to pander to the mainstream (likely to Aruze's annoyance), and while the games got lighter in tone as they went on, the weirdness factor increasing kept them somewhat low on the average person's desire to buy them (though IGN did name Covenant as RPG of the Year 2004 in their vault), to the point the series is a bit of a cult classic rather than a mainstream hit.

Of course, there's little fear to be had over changes being made for [CURRENT YEAR] mindset since Aruze got mad enough at the series having low sales that they canned it and dissolved the dev team. Though I do have to wonder, if it ever were to see an "HD" collection or something, would whoever picked it up just use the existing scripts (I wouldn't might if they touched up a few typos along the way), or relocalize it, changing characters and removing potentially offensive content?

That's a weird case, really. NoA didn't want it coming over here, but NoE picked up the slack and brought it to Europe, and did what seemed like a pretty good job localizing it (leaving the lewd outfits intact and even including the Japanese dub for people that don't like britbong dubs). Then when enough people pestered NoA about bringing it over, they didn't bother to print enough copies to meet demand because they deemed that the potential fanbase was too small to warrant better availability (they'd later relent after a year or so and ship more to Gamestop, who tried to scalp them), and it still sold better in North America than Japan or PAL, to my knowledge. You'd think XCX would have gotten a similar quality localization after it was proven that there were enough fans in NA and PAL to market it to, but nope, NoA/Treehouse (I forget which exactly ) and 8-4 pozzed it (debatable whether they wanted more money for changes, thought censoring and memeing would make it do better in sales, or just plain didn't agree with the content). Maybe if NoA had rejected it again and left it in NoE's hands it might have been better (though considering how they blacked characters in the latest incarnation of Style Savvy or whatever, I'm not even sure).

It's rather sad that the idea of letting a game speak for itself (and leaving changes to a minimum) has become rather rare outside a handful of companies. And the ones that tend to be the worst about it (NISA, 8-4, etc) still keep getting a lot of work despite their fuck ups, likely due to having rather large track resumes of games they've handled over the years. Looking back at various older games I enjoyed and didn't see much that stood out as being notably bad with the localizations, digging through the credits you can sometimes see that the company that handled the translations being some more or less unknown that is next to impossible to find information on these days. It just makes you wonder who they were and, given they could do a pretty decent job, what happened to them?

If/when I get a PS4 I plan to look into that, but I am not really fond of the way various multiplat PS4, PS3, and/or Vita titles keep getting made into PS4 exclusives out here. I mean, I'd much rather a system be able to stand on the merits of its own library before I pick it up, rather than Sony enticing various devs/publishers to make it exclusive out here while ignoring the other systems its for. I suppose with Nights of Azure though, Gust and TK have a bit more reason than most, in that I hear the Vita version had some notable issues compared to the PS3 and PS4 versions in Japan.

...

well i observed a short period where it seemed as if censorship and or overbearing localization was falling out of popularity but its not something i kept up with fervently in the first place. in any case, i believe it hasnt really 'become' rare so much as that time period was sadly an anomaly. particularly, the trend of embracing (and exploiting) heterosexuality.

Sixth gen up through part of seventh gen seemed to be a sweet spot where localization quality was pretty decent (after fourth and fifth gen were rather bumpy at times). I mean, sure, you had some shitters like what NISA did with AT2, or Mastiff censoring La Pucelle (which I hear they have since regretted having made the decision on), but overall it seemed like games got away with more. In contrast, I really could not see something like Shadow Hearts coming west intact with the current mindset most companies have for localization (that series has a lot of eccentricities, some of which some of the usual suspects might consider "offensive"), and from what I know of Ar Nosurge, it surprises me a bit that it came west intact as well, and even managed to slip by with a T-rating (also surprises me that I can't recall the gaming media kvetching about it like they have about other games they deem as "inappropriate," but maybe it simply went under the radar or was released shortly before that trend really hit).

This is why we can't have nice things.

Yeah, unfortunately a lot of companies seem keen to pander to complainers that aren't even liable to buy their games and try to appeal to them, thinking they speak for the average person (though you've also got some companies that just go ahead and fuck around and censor because the team thinks they should).

I suppose older games a bit safe from being given the outrage treatment, as the "journalists" are generally more prone to cover newer stuff because that's where the interest/money is (unless the site they work for does retro reviews; kudos to Techraptor for taking some time for SH:C and giving it a fair shake, despite it being over a decade old now) and that there's not much they could hope to impact at this point. Though I still have to wonder, if certain games were to suddenly see a PSN rerelease, would stand be reason enough for the "professionals" to throw a fit and try to get them removed, since that's about all they could do at this point.

so how many other gust games does pamela feature in?

According to Atelier wiki, she has appearances in eight of the main series games, and shows up in Trinity Universe as well.

Might be worth a bump to mention that this weekend's PSN flash sale includes the entire Arland Plus Trilogy for the Vita. $32, down from $80.