Cognition Dissemination: Oh Boy, NIS America Is Localizing Trails of Cold Steel III

The day Falcom fans were dreading for months arrived this past week, when NIS America confirmed that they’re localizing The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III. Given the quality (or “quality?”) of their previous translations, their concerns are justified.

What makes this a bit more devastating is how this news came after renewed faith that XSeed, who provided stellar localizations of the first two games in the series and several previous Trails installments, might handle it after all. They recently announced rereleases of the first two Trails of Cold Steel games for PlayStation 4, which will come in limited edition Steelbook packages for the physical versions. From there, it seemed like this was leading to the announcement of the third game. Clearly that wasn’t the case.

XSeed has been occupied with handling titles from parent company Marvelous, responsible for franchises like Senran Kagura and Story of Seasons, which hasn’t left them much time to handle other titles. This was presumed to be the reason why Falcom titles Tokyo Xanadu and Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana were handled by Aksys Games and NIS America instead, and neither of their efforts were on par with XSeed’s. Another reason why XSeed was unlikely to pick up Cold Steel III was due to several staffers instrumental in obtaining the rights to and localizing Falcom titles leaving the company over the last year, including Tom Lipshultz and Brittany Avery. Even without them, people still trusted XSeed to work on the games instead of other companies, so it’s a pity that won’t be happening.

NIS America’s localizations have been subpar to say the last, and several recent examples have been documented in this Twitter Moments list. It’s especially egregious to see some examples from the company’s own flagship Disgaea among them. But the most standout one is Ys VIII, as it was the last Falcom game they released. It included a laundry list of localization issues when it launched for PlayStation 4 and Vita in late 2017, including lines that read badly, awkwardly-translated location names (a team of people seriously thought “Archeozoic Big Hole” was okay?), lines partially left in Japanese, and assorted typos and sentence structure issues.

The job was bad enough that news of it even hit Japanese blogs, which ensured that Falcom themselves was aware of this. It’s why NISA issued an apology and fixed all the issues remarkably quickly, to the point of even having several lines redubbed. It’s a shame this newfound penchant for quality didn’t pass on to the subsequent PC and Switch versions, both of which launched in disheveled states and needed immediate patches. But the localization fix was clearly good enough that Falcom wasn’t worried about them potentially screwing up again, hence why they’re handling Cold Steel III. This, to no surprise, has not put fans at ease.

Like other Trails titles, Cold Steel III has a massive script; but this one is large enough to surpass even The Witcher III’s, making it a massive undertaking that NISA needs top talent assigned to. It sure wasn’t encouraging when they announced the game on Twitter by misspelling the name as “Trials of Cold Steel III,” resulting in the deletion of the initial tweet and giving it another shot. The panel about the localization at PAX South was a good chance to lower the level of tension surrounding it, and they mostly did a good job convincing anyone nervous that it could be a worthwhile effort.

Three staffers who worked on the localizations for the first two Cold Steel games are on this game’s team. They include Ryan “Disgaeamad” Thomson, the aforementioned Brittany “Hatsuu” Avery, and Kris Knigge. It doesn’t sound like they have large roles given Avery’s clarification, but their presence should ensure that the result is at least nearly as good as the work done for the previous titles. NISA tried their damnedest to shoot themselves in the foot by listing the franchise name as “The Legacy of Heroes” on a Power Point slide, botching the title again. But fans are more confident than they were.

Note that “more confident” doesn’t mean they’re completely confident. But I think fans should have some faith here. I realize asking this is the equivalent of being sure that Lucy won’t move the football so Charlie Brown can’t kick it this time, but after stumbling, it feels like NISA wants to get this right. They also know they won’t be able to contain the level of rage if they don’t.

Trails of Cold Steel III will release this fall on PlayStation 4 in America, and maybe Europe. They’re likely not porting it to Switch like Ys VIII due to the first two games not being on the system, while the PC version could come down the line. If it does well, they’ll localize Trails of Cold Steel IV. Ys IX: Monstrum Nox, due for release in Japan this fall, should also come soon after its Japanese release. It will be tough to adjust to XSeed not handling these, but it will be fine if the localizations turn out well.

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