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Nidoking
Jan 27, 2009

I fought the lava, and the lava won.
At least it seems to capture most of the humor from the original series. (I read as much of the manga as Tokyopop published before they folded, and watched a few episodes of the anime fansubbed.) I liked the Tales series-style combat as well, the few times I've actually played the games. I just never managed to complete one. This could be the perfect game, in other words.

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Nidoking
Jan 27, 2009

I fought the lava, and the lava won.

Kgummy posted:

What does the tinier, grey text that shows up in dialog signify? Is it something like clarification or some kind of modifier? Or is it just something like alternate word choice using simpler characters?

Those are furigana. They tell you how the kanji are pronounced. If you'll pardon a bit of :eng101:, there are three scripts in Japanese: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. The first two are phonetic, with katakana used to write words borrowed from languages other than Chinese or Japanese and hiragana used for Japanese words, generally things like inflections or prepositions. Most words that carry meaning (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) are often written using kanji, which represent the specific meanings of those words. There are thousands of kanji in the language, but most Japanese people only know a few thousand. To be considered literate, I think there's a set of about 2000 that you need to be able to read and write, and you're considered fluent (minus some technical specialty) with about six thousand. Children who are still learning the language will know considerably fewer kanji, which would make it difficult to read the text in a game like this, where a lot of jargon is used. Children reading a more phonetic language like English can attempt to sound out the words and match them with words that they've heard, but not necessarily seen written, to figure out what they mean. That's what the furigana are for in Japanese - you can ignore them if you recognize the kanji, but if you don't, you can tell how they're pronounced, and thus what word they represent.

Nidoking
Jan 27, 2009

I fought the lava, and the lava won.

Rodyle posted:

If you want English Keroro material, the manga (which is all I'm personally familiar with, having read it a lot at the library when I was younger) actually has an official English release, which should be cheaper to get a hold of than the anime's.

Would ideally be, but it was published by Tokyopop and they've folded. I haven't looked to see how hard it is to find copies, but you may be looking for used books in various places if you want to collect them all.

Nidoking
Jan 27, 2009

I fought the lava, and the lava won.
Quite a clever translation of that pun, I must say. Although I suppose it almost makes itself, given the original.

Nidoking
Jan 27, 2009

I fought the lava, and the lava won.

EphemeralToast posted:

Is that "In other words, [rephrase]?" supposed to be a recognizable verbal tic, like Japanese Valley Girl speak or something?

In other words, typical moe?

Nidoking
Jan 27, 2009

I fought the lava, and the lava won.

Rabidredneck posted:

In the anime subs I've seen she uses "You could say?"

I've seen a trend in various media to translate common phrases differently, even within the same series. It all depends on the tastes of the translator and their experiences with the languages involved. Heck, in this very series, the Tokyopop manga transliterated the Keronian name of Earth as "Pokopen" for no reason I can imagine, when it's "Pekopon" in Japanese and everywhere else I've seen it. (I suppose it could have been "Pokopen" in the Japanese manga as well, but I really doubt it.) If I wanted to capture a more "valley girl" flavor with the translation, I'd probably have translated this phrase as "Like," but there are a lot of subtleties. I don't think I'll ever learn a language well enough to translate it very well.

Nidoking
Jan 27, 2009

I fought the lava, and the lava won.
I'd like to say that the tales/tails pun doesn't work in Japanese, but the anime series Tenshi no Shippo: Otogi STORY (Angel Tails: Fairy Stories) seems to be titled using just such a pun, once you think about it hard enough. I've never heard the word they used for tails in this game, though.

Nidoking
Jan 27, 2009

I fought the lava, and the lava won.

How Ingratiating! posted:

Namco really has a thing with dressing up their characters with its own games, doesn't it?

I think Namco is a self-reference company that happens to make games on the side.

Nidoking
Jan 27, 2009

I fought the lava, and the lava won.
I think it's never a good sign when a minigame is so much fun that you'd rather play it than the main game. That's one of the reasons I never got through Xenosaga - but only one. Or three, depending on whether you count each minigame separately.

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Nidoking
Jan 27, 2009

I fought the lava, and the lava won.
Keroro has a point - in most RPGs, if you haven't talked to enough people in town, the castle guards will turn you away. There's either someone in town who gives you some way into the castle, or the guards just mysteriously know enough about you to feel comfortable letting you in once you've talked to absolutely everybody (a la Startropics).

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