Yakooza 3

[AC9breaker]

So I've been playing the crap out of this puppy and totally loving it. However I've gotta call bullshit on Sega for taking out the shit they took out of this game. First off the original opening theme song, Loser. The one they have now isn't bad, but it doesn't give you that same Bancho Badass feel of the original song. It's got a lot of emotion and even if you don't know weeaboonese, you can still appreciate the cynic mellow gritty feel of the song.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWa9xpFkJeA



Secondly, Hostess bars. Now I really didn't care that they took these parts out but if they where to take it out they should have removed all aspects of it out of the game which is the courting of a hostess. Basically you get a chick and build up your "relationship" to the point where you get to unlock a side-mission correlative to the hostess you chose. However in the game you meet these chicks at burger joints and it just feels so out of place having them there.


Then there is no real work to unlocking the mission. Just take them out on two dates then you get the mission. You don't get to choose the girl as there is only one at the burger joint. and when you complete a mission for one then a different girl appears the the burger joint. Then it appears there was another meta game where you could earn a girls affection by buying them gifts such as purses jewelry, clothing, etc. these items still exist in the game but they have no use in the American version since the way you go about unlocking these mission now and the whole aspect of hostess clubs have been removed/dumbed down.


I think the reason why all the changes where made to this game was not as Sega had stated which was; to make easier to understand to us round eyes, but because the staff in charged of localizing this game was too fucking inept and to not have too hard of a time getting past ESRB regulations. Some talking points I have, first the cover, the original cover was badass, but I'm sure this was changed because of the cigarette. It's no big deal, whatever. Second, the hostess bars, I'm sure the main reason this was cut out was because one it saved time on having to translate shit for the whole relationship building meta game it had and also to not draw to much attention from the ESRB for "sexual content"


Then finally, I've noticed quit a few English errors in some of the subtitling. Which only cements my opinion that the localization team is the most fucking inept people ever. I'm of the opinion that Sega should just dissolve the North American branch and just outsource their localizing efforts to other more skilled companies such as EA, or Ubisoft. Or at the very least grow some fucking balls and devote a serious fucking team for localizing their games to the Americas like Capcom and Square Enix. not the half ass bullshit they do. Shit they could even stay within their country with Atlus or Nippon Ichi.

[HAYABUSA-FMW-]

TEXT Bomb sorry. Didn't expect to write all this.

Casting call to up and comers learning that Nihongo, doing the translizatin' as homework and for their own gaming enjoyment, as in the same vein they casted a community guy with adequate PC skills (PSO got those 14 bosses! epic video) who wanted to be passionate in house about the company he liked, SEGA, with Ruby Eclipse is one way to go about it.

Insane how full of a game Yakuza 2 was, game breaking bugs that were in JP version that were pretty specific, as in only a tester might duplicate -not your average gamer were patched up, all the "G-Queens" based on real life models/movie"stars," diaper Yakuza thingy mission you fall into on accident with the boob jokes as a response to pick. Hard as hell no primer Shogi, and pretty fun even for a beginner like me Mahjongg that was quite a big mini-game.

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Dad had an old high school friend that worked at Sega way back when, Americanized Japanese guy, helped us fix a broken controller pin input fast, forgoing that customer service calling runaround. Of course probably not there anymore, even with US offices having less turnaround than in Japan where people branch off to build their own studio from the talent overflowing at one big dev house, and maybe even all the hard working guys from localizing all of Yakuza 2, then putting it out at a fan -working with us- budget price, aren't there anymore now?

Or they got whipped to rush out this thing at the last minute after tons of getting stuck in limbo whether they were going to do Yakuza in the West again with 3. Announcement to release came pretty quick. And the announcement they were doing it came not that long after they continually said they were not planning to bring over Yakuza 3.

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I guess the important thing is we all got the game, when we didn't expect it at all, for a multitude of reasons. Smoking image is on the title screen I heard. They could have went with every tattoo newb's thing again, the dragon on the back, even if it might be played out a third time for the slip cover.

but mishandling the last month up to release saying there's cuts, and the nerd rage/community rushing to find out what was cut, list it all up, was definitely backfire, hopefully not burning a bridge between the customers and the company who was weary of trying it all over again in the first place.

Would everyone have been happy to wait another year, like Yakuza 2 took about 2 years to come Stateside, with everything in it? Hard to say. Since by then Yakuza 4 would be a year old, add a few months of quick botch job translate and put that out instead? Skip the earlier tech PS3 debut?

[Zeek123]

I'd chalk a lot of the dropped content to the amount of time it would've taken to translate it. Since the Hostess Bars weren't relative, they were left out. It just wasn't worth the time/money.

I haven't seen the cover art yet. I'll come back after I have. I'm guessing it's just a picture of the main character on the front? A lot of localisations seem to pull this, since studies show, in the U.S. at least, games with characters on the front tend to sell more. Which sucks, cause I loved the way the Heavy Rain cover looked for EU.

[HAYABUSA-FMW-]

Some Cigarette Heat action was supposedly taken out though.

Can't go Punisher on somebody. Remember that series getting a game and that was one of their touted featured, environmental actions/finishers.

[Weeaboolits]

I hate it when they remove content from a game during localization, particularly if it's to make the game feel less foreign, just explain it or let us think it's weird, the xenophobes are too busy not playing foreign games anyway.

Translating songs is perfectly legit, assuming they don't half ass it, for example, after hearing both versions of the ToV opening, I like the English one better anyway(although I suppose it's worth noting that both versions are performed by the same artist, which surprised me considering how not-engrishy it sounded).

It's somewhat understandable if it's something they can get away with there but not here, I mean it happens both ways anyway, remember the whole unexploded nuke subplot in Fallout 3 being removed from the JP version? But even so, they should be careful about that and not let it interfere with major game mechanics.

I'm going off in a little bit of a tangent now, but it's somewhat related, I suppose, but I hate it when they go and hire what I would assume to be the janitorial staff to do the English dub. I mean, it's not just me being a big weeaboo when I put it on subtitles with Japanese audio, I just appreciate it when there's a difference in the delivery of a battle-cry and asking for directions to the restroom, or that the character's voice actually meshes properly with their appearance. Not to say this game in particular is guilty of it, not having played it myself, but in general.

[HAYABUSA-FMW-]

A shame some people consider themselves on the fence about the game and then hearing the rage about the cuts, now won't buy/try at all anymore. If its not just huffing and puffing to try to be part of this "movement," doing what everyone else is trying to be popular.
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Killing off the whiny English voice actor'd character in Way of the Samurai 3 last night, for a key scene near the end of the game, he was replaced by a bearded dude now (with a big ninja star on his back?!), voicing the same lines. But he did it with a lot more conviction, sounding like he was in the moment, sending troops out to kill the traitor.

I will have to kill that kid everytime from now on.

Or find out why after I switched it for JP language and it plays English instead, until I go check it was on JP still and switch over twice/reset to get it working.