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 General content warning! This game gets very dark in places and spends time on things including animal torture; suicidal ideation; attempted suicide; child abuse and neglect; school shootings. This list is not exhaustive! Spoiler Policy: none. Not in tags, no coy wink-wink, nudge-nudge stuff either.   Holding The Holy Pain (Recommended watching; they made an actual anime OP and then just shoved it onto a DS)  Holding The Holy PainLux-Pain is kind of a visual novel for the DS. It was released in March 2009 to just about zero fanfare whatsoever and for good reason (and also bad reason). The game is primarily a psychological horror mystery and it's not bad at being that. It's mostly just hampered by having two different translations mixed in here together. One of these translations is competent-ish but weirdly decides to help with inconsistencies in things like "where the game is set." So that's fun. This translation is used exclusively for the voice acting. The actual text itself has a translation that I will generously describe as dogshit. It was done by Killaware (the developers) in-house. Pick a thing that you can mess up. Any thing. There's an example of it in here. Probably more than one. It is genuinely so terrible that it has been held up as an example of What Not To Do in at least one book. So, yes, Lux-Pain is a game that is mostly text driven and it gets that very same text horrifically wrong. Very often. It is a bad game. It is tonally weird and will probably give you mood whiplash at least once. I still really enjoy it for reasons I cannot explain. Maybe you'll agree with me. Maybe not. Let's find out together. Table of Contents Pandora (Part One) [CW: animal abuse] Pandora (Part Two) Mystery (Part One) Mystery (Part Two) Mystery (Part Three) Mystery (Part Four) Nocturne (Part One) Nocturne (Part Two) Nocturne (Part Three) The Sphinx (Part One) The Sphinx (Part Two) The Sphinx (Part Three) La Natura Dell'Aurora (Part One) La Natura Dell'Aurora (Part Two) Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Apr 22, 2021 |
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Jun 1, 2020 01:18
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So, these things are how they appear in-game. It's... quite awful. Naturally spoilers may be abound if you're not entirely caught up yet. Character Profiles In alphabetical order for convenience. Second/third/etc. portrait is second/third/etc. page of the profile.                       Data The in-game encyclopedia... of sort. It's interesting, even if some of it is a mess. Highly recommended to at least skim through! Group  Personnel SIGMA Places Miscellaneous Bulletin Board System Kisaragi's local BBS, accessible conveniently at a terribly designed internet cafe in the middle of town! Transfer student?! Group suicide?! Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jun 1, 2020 01:18
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Content Warning: This update includes direct, explicit mentions of animal torture. From the point of view of both the animals and their abuser. Pandora covers the whole update; its a good way to compare the differences between the written and voiced dialogue  October, year unknown. Pandora, the first woman, was given a jar containing all the world's evils before it broke, releasing them.  This particular tale begins a fair bit later than that, though. On a moonlit night on October 1st...  Near an apartment complex in a fairly large city. Dark Noise    The boy has beautiful ash hair & a feminine white face, but his black, shining eyes are especially unforgettable. Anyone who looks into them are met with the feeling they are being hit with a strong searchlight.   So, we begin in media res. You're not really given any time to play catch up, so try not to get left behind. It also decides to start with the more focused horror aesthetic, which is (in my opinion) the game's biggest strength. Also, as far as I can tell, the dubbed voicework was done by Funimation. Pretty much every voice actor in this works for them (or, at least, did in 2008). Atsuki here is voiced by Jason Liebrecht, who's other roles of note include Akira Takizawa in Eden of the East, Hei in Darker than Black, Rob Lucci in One Piece, Lavi and the Millenium Earl in D.Gray-Man, Qrow Branwen in RWBY, Dabi in My Hero Academia and (most recently) Vulcan Joseph in Fire Force.  The... very similar names are just a thing you're gonna have to deal with. When the first two we get are Atsuki and Natsuki that is not a great sign. Silence Somewhere, a blue haired girl's pendant begins to glow.  This covers part of her body in strange tattoos...  Which is a good visual cue for her using a type of clairvoyance.  As she sees a projection of the apartment building and the surrounding area, two points of particular note stand out... Dark Noise Natsuki is voiced by Monica Rial, who is stuck doing her incredibly high-pitched voice yet again. She has good range, and can do other stuff really well, I promise! Her other roles of note include Bulma from Dragon Ball Z Kai/Super, Lulu Bell from D.Gray-Man, Kuina and Tashigi from One Piece, Shiro from Deadman Wonderland, Tanya Degurechaff from Yojo Senki, Tsuyu Asui from My Hero Academia and Mereoleona Vermillion from Black Clover.  The target is a little bit past where Atsuki is now. There are many small Shinen, so I think it's an apartment building.Specific terminology like this is thrown out pretty fast and loose, especially early on. Mercifully, I find it pretty easy to figure out what it means from context. We're lacking any useful context right now, but it'll be apparent quick enough. There's also an in-game glossary accessible later, which is, uh, incredibly unhelpful.  But there are two possible matching Shinen... I can't be sure which one's the target... It's okay. I'll check it out. Okay. Be careful. Scare Bell  This seems like it'd be a "okay but how does that work" thing. Nah, this is one of the times where it actually makes sense and is internally consistent. It gives very, very little to go on though...  We know the Original is here, because this is where the Shanghai Silent infectee incident started. That man infected ten thousand people in only three months. As a result, thousands of crimes and suicides have occurred. We found him and checked. He wasn't the Original. He, too, was infected by someone. We found out he was infected here, in Kisaragi. Dark Noise  Everyone in the building seems to be aleep. All the windows are dark.  Hurry, use Sigma to find the target's hiding place! Okay; I'll search now. Silence Much like Natsuki, Atsuki has a strange piece of jewelry that begins to glow. In his case, its a ring with a lion signet.  Natsuki's strange tattoos are a pair of wing, but Atsuki's appears to be a large animal paw. Looks like a lion's, even, matching his ring.  Atsuki's eyes light up with a golden glow, finally making that weird searchlight line make a bit more sense. Kinda. Natsuki's did this as well, but it was less clear.  To Atsuki, the world around him shatters...  Revealing an etherial version lying underneath it all. Dark Noise Sigma is, uh, short for... Signum-Anima apparently. We'll be seeing this particular thing a lot.  Or I will at least. Σ -SIGMA-  Atsuki's Sigma is one of our most common gameplay mechanics. We see the etherial version of the world on the top-screen and the normal version on the bottom. There's usually (but not always!) two Worms we need to find here, which are those red circles up top. That tells us their general location, so we just Erase parts of the real world to get to them. It's not really complicated or difficult, but there'll be more wrinkles to it later. For now, we're just getting used to the mechanic.[/i] Silence Each Worm represents some kind of topic. Their names are displayed on the bottom, and a general summary up-top. I'll just edit these down to one-screen for every single one in the future. Whisper  Also, they're generally all incredibly well-done and should be viewed in full. So, I'll make videos of them all and link those as well. You really just can't get the right experience and feeling from them otherwise.  Dark Noise Silence Oh yeah, and there's weird RPG levelling mechanics that affect Atsuki's SIGMA segments. I genuinely don't know why this is even here. It adds nothing and is completely ignorable. It does make a difference, kind of, but it's very minor and you would almost never notice if you weren't actively trying to spot the differences. You pretty much just level up at fixed points too, so it's even more useless. Dark Noise Both Residual Shinen feel strongly like death. I'm gonna take on the target and bring Silent out! Atsuki, wait! Liu Yee will be there soon! Silence  There are cardboard boxes and trash everywhere, like a garbage dump. Atsuki notices a large Residual Shinen on a cardboard box in the back of the room.  Just two more of these to deal with. Nothing too difficult here either. Basically a repeat of the one we just did in that respect.  Mist   Horns of Dark  Dark Noise *Back of the room. From the Shinen, it seems he died two weeks ago. The Shinen of the animals he'd killed was on the box. He was a sadist who enjoyed torturing animals. He was infected by Silent, but not our target. If he was the Original, there'd be traces of Silent. The Residual Shinen on the fifth floor must be it.   The darkness is teeming with violence, waiting. It feels like it's waiting for an opportunity to pounce, like a hungry beast.  Silence  Silent infectees must have gathered together to die. I ate the mind of one who was still alive, but not the Original. Dark Noise So, two things here. First off... that text. Just... yeesh. It's not even the worst we'll be seeing in Episode 0, never mind the game. But that's not a defense. Secondly, Liu Yee is voiced by Chris Sabat. You definitely know who that is, but in the off-chance you don't, he's been in like almost every popular anime ever. Other notable roles include Vegeta, Piccolo and many more across the Dragon Ball series, Roronoa Zoro in One Piece, Officer Yusuke Saito in Darker than Black, Yami Sukehiro in Black Clover, Major Alex Armstrong in Fullmetal Alchemist and Toshinori Yagi (All Might) in My Hero Academia.   Your job is finding infectees and targets, right? Don't do that again. You should tell us when you arrive! I made securing the target a priority. From what I gathered, they were having a falling out. If I didn't hurry, they all may have killed themselves. Okay, okay, I got it. You'll have plenty of reports to write... I look forward to them. Silence  The vicious growls of animals can be heard coming from beyond the bushes.  No, that's not the dog speaking. It's a small child talking to the dog. Mystic  This small child, specifically. The girl bows her head and points to the second floor apartment Atsuki was just in.  Um, mister... did you know? The guy on the second floor killed a bunch of animals! I'm gonna turn him in! That's why I came again with Melody to look for evidence. Woof! But that guy... he never comes out of his apartment.  That's what Melody says. What do you think? So, uh, this is a weird thing. During scenes like this, or down-time, or... most of the game, really, Atsuki is treated like a regular silent protagonist. He gets the occasional dialogue option but otherwise says nothing. And then during important scenes, or basically anything that's ostensibly plot related he actually gets dialogue and says stuff. It's like they couldn't decide what to do between the two, so they just kinda threw in both. It's not a big deal or anything, but it's very noticable and just plain bizarre. Maybe you're right. This just happens on the top-screen sometimes. It's never explicitly made all that clear whether or not this is good or bad, or even what it means. You can kinda piece it together eventually at least, and it's pretty simple even though its obscured for literally no reason: It can either fill from the top to the bottom, or vice versa. As you'd expect, top-down is a decrease and bottom-up is an increase. The colour is indicative of the emotion effected, and we'll learn what they all are later. Some are pretty obvious (red is anger, yellow is joy, blue is sadness etc.) at least.  I... what?  I knew right away, because Melody said so. Woof! The girl turns around and walks back to Atsuki.  Nami here is voiced by Cherami Leigh. She's pretty much exactly who's voice I'd mentally read Nami's dialogue in, honestly, so I cannot complain about this at all. Notable stuff includes Asuna in Sword Art Online, Kneesocks in anty and Stocking, Sailor Venus in Sailor Moon, Lucy Heartfilia in Fairy Tail, the Wild Wild Pussycat: Pixie-Bob in My Hero Academia, Makto Niijima in Persona 5 and Ulala in Space Channel 5 VR: Kinda Funky News Flash. I won't tell anyone about your powers. If someone finds out, you'll get bullied... like me.The girl chases after the white dog as it runs up the stairs to the apartment.  Why did she know about his power? The power of Sigma is top secret. No-one has ever found out about it before. The shadow of uneasiness grows over Atsuki's heart. EndIn all honesty, as an opener, I really like (most) of this. The prose and clunky translation don't do it any favours, but the idea conveyed is pretty solid and interesting and the Sigma Viewer is a fairly unique idea that lets us see the Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Jun 2, 2020 |
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Jun 1, 2020 01:18
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Ah, I see your trying this again. Despite all it's flaws, it's a game i actually like.
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Jun 1, 2020 01:40
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Oh hey, I think I remember an earlier attempt at this. It'll be interesting to see where it goes!
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Jun 1, 2020 01:41
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Oh man I was so bummed when the last LP of this fizzled out. I want to see what happens without actually playing it myself, damnit. Good luck!
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Jun 1, 2020 02:09
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Ah, Lux-Pain. It could have been beautiful, but, well... if I were to LP this, I would have titled it, "Atsuki Saijo and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Translation". Looking forward to seeing this thread. PS: Cute girl and a cute dog? I think I saw this anime once upon a time...
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Jun 1, 2020 02:13
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I'm glad that you're trying this LP again. I'm sure that it will work this time. Right? I hope I didn't write the exact same thing the last time this LP was attempted.
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Jun 1, 2020 03:50
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I remember this game. I'm pretty sure I still have it. At the very least I know that I have a mini artbook for it (which is also very cavalier about throwing around random terminology without any context). I don't recall if I ever finished it, but I do remember the translation being horrid, as you said. Dragonatrix posted:October, year unknown. Pandora, the first woman, was given a jar containing all the world's evils before it broke, releasing them. Yes... it broke  .Weird how they got the "jar, not box" aspect, but not the "opened and not broken" part.
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Jun 1, 2020 11:44
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This has been somewhere on the back of my list of games to sometime play for a while now, and the thread inspired me to fire it up in Japanese and play through this first update doing a line-by-line comparison with the translation. It's... weird. I'm pretty sure the text was written by a native English speaker - there are choices made here I don't think even a fluent Japanese English speaker would've made unless they were an experienced translator, and if they were I'm pretty sure they'd also be a better writer. There are several aspects to why this script feels so awkward. First is that, yeah, it's just clumsy writing. The Japanese script won't win awards for prose, but I've read much worse and it does occasionally come up with a nice turn of phrase. The English script, on the other hand, just reads like someone who doesn't really know how to write. More importantly, though, is that it almost looks as if it was under a strict character limit constraints - the translation takes the Japanese text and strips it of almost everything that's not essential to the bare meaning, and sometimes also of stuff that is. It's missing fine details from descriptions and all sorts of nuances that makes a better logical flow between sentences. There are also some real translation mistakes, some of which you pointed out (but I'll add that I'm pretty sure the line with "The vicious growls of animals" actually refers to just one animal - the dog that shows up immediately after it) Finally, "Shinen" is one of those words that really shouldn't have been left in Japanese. It's written in Kanji in the Japanese script (思念) and is a common word meaning "thought" or "contemplation". It's obvious from the way it's used that the characters are using it as a technical term and not for its bare meaning, but at least you get *some* idea of what it's all about just by looking at the word. Also, since you're talking about voice actors - the Japanese cast is, for the most part, veteran voice actors you've probably heard somewhere before. Atsuki himself is Mamoru Miyano who is probably best known to VN readers as Steins;Gate's Rintaro Okabe, but while I loved him there in this game it sounds (so far) like he phoned it in.
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Jun 1, 2020 13:25
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orenronen posted:This has been somewhere on the back of my list of games to sometime play for a while now, and the thread inspired me to fire it up in Japanese and play through this first update doing a line-by-line comparison with the translation. My recollection from looking into it is that yeah, the people involved really should have been able to produce a much better translation than this, so the final product is kinda inexplicable. Programming limitations would make sense; the other best guess I had was just total lack of communication in the team, leading to stuff like the voiced lines getting translated twice, proper nouns getting multiple different translations depending on which chapter you're in, etc. On the latter, I wonder if you could confirm what the main character's organization is named in the original text - it seemed like you could tell how many people were doing translation work by how many different ways it gets translated/mistranslated, and I'm curious if "Fort" is accurate or another character limit restriction or something (I suspect the latter).
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Jun 1, 2020 20:27
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Some stuff I've seen makes me think it's just FORT in English (it's displayed as such during the animated intro, for example), but it might be inconsistent about that in-game. It does manage to get mangled very blatantly a couple times, so I can really only guess. If it's not that, then it's likely a character limit thing because it'd have to function as an acronym in both.
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Jun 1, 2020 20:46
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I might be recalling it incorrectly (I mean, it's been over a decade since this came out) , but I remember Ignition Entertainment saying that the developers were the ones that created the English translation, and Ignition felt that it was good enough and kept it as is. Ignition clearly did create their own translation for the dub, so I'm not sure why they decided to keep the poor translation over the dub translation.
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Jun 1, 2020 21:26
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Yeah, I figured probably character limits as soon as the text said 'apt' where the audio had 'apartment building'. The text has pretty much been an abbreviated version of the audio so far, though I guess there's still plenty of time for it to get worse.
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Jun 1, 2020 22:30
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Nick Buntline posted:On the latter, I wonder if you could confirm what the main character's organization is named in the original text - it seemed like you could tell how many people were doing translation work by how many different ways it gets translated/mistranslated, and I'm curious if "Fort" is accurate or another character limit restriction or something (I suspect the latter). The one time it's mentioned in this scene they use katakana フォート (fōto), which as far as I can tell is only used for the loan word "fort". Here's an example of I mean by the translation being abbreviated:  The Japanese here literally translates to roughly, "The current target's nationality, age and sex are unknown, and the only thing known about them is their strong appreciation for art". Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention in my previous post is that sometimes the highlighted words don't match which words are highlighted in Japanese.
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Jun 2, 2020 00:12
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quote:Natsuki's strange tattoos are a pair of wing, but Natsuki's appears to be a large animal paw. Looks like a lion's, even, matching his ring. You mean Atsuki? quote:This just happens on the top-screen sometimes. It's never explicitly made all that clear whether or not this is good or bad, or even what it means. You can kinda piece it together eventually at least, and it's pretty simple even though its obscured for literally no reason: Near as I can tell you always want it to go up. Regardless of the colour. That was the principle I used when I played this game and I got the best ending. There's kind of a weird convoluted thought process to it that I kinda intuit but the game never explains. I'll remove this if the OP doesn't want it here, it's not plot spoilers and the game never explains this mechanic: Basically when the thingy goes up, it means you achieved an emotional response in the target, which in turn means a likelier chance for a Shinen to appear thus letting you learn more about the target. AFAIK the colour of the emotion is more or less irrelevant, with exactly one obvious exception. So long as an emotional response is achieved, you're closer to the Shinen and thus closer to gaining more info on the person. orenronen posted:Finally, "Shinen" is one of those words that really shouldn't have been left in Japanese. It's written in Kanji in the Japanese script (思念) and is a common word meaning "thought" or "contemplation". It's obvious from the way it's used that the characters are using it as a technical term and not for its bare meaning, but at least you get *some* idea of what it's all about just by looking at the word. Yeah this bothered the hell out of me since it took me ages to understand what the gently caress a Shinen was. Though TBH the best translation for it would be something like a Psychic/Emotional/Mental Trace rather than Thought. Seraphic Neoman fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Jun 2, 2020 |
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Jun 2, 2020 01:19
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BTW! I'm told someone is doing a retranslation project.
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Jun 2, 2020 01:21
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Godspeed, this game is long as gently caress.
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Jun 2, 2020 01:22
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That's amazing and I wish them luck with it. That it hasn't updated in 6 months is not really much of a surprise, though.Seraphic Neoman posted:You mean Atsuki? Oops. Fixed, thanks!
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Jun 2, 2020 01:25
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Lux De Luna  Now that we're done with checking out that apartment, we're in Kisaragi proper and have a fair few places we can go.  There's more than the two we can see here, even, but before we get to that...  ...We'll take a gander at the Menu options, right quicklike. Viewing is something we'll use properly later, but it's what Natsuki did before. Item is empty and useless right now, and Mobile is something we'll use at least once per Episode. Well, not this one though. It's too late at night to give us anything. That FORT option, though, is one that we are going to use right now. FORT  This is where we can... select the Viewing option again... for some reason. Data is where we can see the in-game datalogs and stuff. You can find 'em in the second post if you wanna read it. I recommend it because it's utter nonsense. Both by design and because of very bad translation. Record is actively unselectable right now. We'll see it later, maybe. Advice is a bit self-explanatory, but sometimes it has actual scenes hidden behind it. Like right now, for example! Translation Is Hardhighly, highly recommend you check this out if you can!  So, normally I'd just transcribe the voice acting in scenes where I can. This time I'm not doing that, because it makes a bit of a silly decision. I'll be using most of the voice clips still, because the text is maddeningly bad here as well but... What's up, Atsuki? Nola's checking something. Or maybe... *giggles* You wanted to see me? "Photo." They... they translated FORT as Photo. Ordinarily, I'd ask how does that happen, but not this time. As pointed out by forums poster orenronen, while referring to another scene... quote:The one time it's mentioned in this scene they use katakana フォート (fōto), which as far as I can tell is only used for the loan word "fort". Most likely it's the same here, but someone else did this bit, saw that and lacked context.  I know what this is trying to say here. You should be able to roughly figure it out from the intro we saw already. I have no earthly clue what this is actually saying.  The text for this scene uses Japan and Japanese places where relevant. The voice acting for whatever unfathomable reason decides to make it America. This will not be the last time something as basic as "location" gets confused. I wanted to go to Japan too... Using "Viewing" is easier at the actual scene. But the Chief says no. How mean, really! "I know why. You just wanna see Atsuki, right?" That's what he said. What do you think? No, I wanna go to Akiba and I want to see Genjuku. Also, I really wanna try the food there. I've never tried it before. I said so, but he ignored me... Ah, we finally have a name for our blonde-haired lady in charge. Nola is voiced by Colleen Clinkenbeard. Much like Chris Sabat, if you're reading this you know who she is. Her noteworthy roles include Son Gohan in Dragon Ball Z, Monkey D. Luffy in One Piece, Mia Fey in the Ace Attorney anime adaptation, Ran Mouri in Detective Conan, Erza Scarlet in Fairy Tail and Momo Yaoyorozu in My Hero Academia. Natsuki, could you come here? Gosh, she's so annoying. Natsuki, hurry! Something is happening in Hong Kong! Oh, leave me alone! Nola's calling me. I gotta go! You should go home and get some rest. See you. Bye bye! End So, with that we're done with FORT for the time being. We'll take this moment to check out the two locations we have in our immediate area. Starting with this one, since it seems more chill. Malum   Meanwhile, two blabbering girls are coming closer. They seem a bit sloshed.  I'd like to fall in love and get married, but there's no one at the police station!So, this scene is very weird. It features two characters other than Atsuki. It features voice acting. Only one of these two characters has a voice actor.  And what she says only vaguely gestures in the same direction as the written text. Very occasionally. If about half the scene wasn't purely text only, it'd make for an even better example. Case in point: the second quote here IS voiced...  No way! You know I don't like the quiet types!...Yeah. There's a few times the difference might be worth noting, so I'll flag the audio-line as such with that icon.  Well, you're stuck. It must be hard for the prince waiting for you from afar. It's okay, 'cos I've got you. Cheers, to us two beauties! Yeah, cheers!The two girls saw Atsuki's figure drawing nearer.  Of the two people here, Yui has the voice acting. She's voiced by Colleen Clinkenbeard, same as Nola.  Hey, boy! What time do you think it is? It's already... um, one second.The two girls glanced at their watch for who knows how long. They're probably too drunk to get a clear look at the time.  As mentioned earlier, Mako does not have a voice actor. This is frequently jarring, like, for example, in this scene.  Well, it's already 1AM. You should go home too. Mako's right. It's 1AM! 1AM! We're gonna arrest yoooou for being out so late, you got it? Very occasionally, there's little things like this. Almost like it remembers to try and be interesting when it's just being a Daily Life Simulator.   You okay, Yui?! Uh, I... I think so... Oof. I think we may have had a few too many. Hey, I won't let this happen again. Go home! We'll be put in protective custody if we don't...I'm pretty sure that "we" is not the pronoun you're looking for there. Now, whether or not this is just another in the astronomically long line of mistakes, or intentional, is hard to say. Almost, almost deinitely a mess up though. The girl called "Mako" wandered off with her drunk companion.  We're kicked back out to the map here, of course. Only one spot left to go by the looks of things. Pale Ophelia Nocturne   He hears a poem on the night breeze I see a sentence that has no punctuation.   Not the best poem I've ever heard, but it's not even remotely close to the worst either. Low bar, I know. A man watchs the ocean under the brightly glowing moon. He read the poem and seems to miss someone as he looks to the heavens.  Is this a dream... or an illusion... Show me your smile, one more time.When he stops, the world is silence. The only sound is the ocean. ...Then it's not silent. Like, c'mon. Took all of one sentence. He looks off to the distance. It's hard for him to leave or stay, but he walks away with sad eyes.  Throughout this scene, this guy is in fact voiced! By J Michael Tatum, at that. As is usual, he's super prolific and has been in pretty much anything you can think of. Some highlights include Zarbon (and many more) in Dragon Ball, Kraft Lawrence in Spice and Wolf, Isaac Dian in Baccano!, Sebastian Michaelis in Black Butler, Enel in One Piece and Tenya Iida in My Hero Academia.  He also just automatically has a negative reaction before Atsuki can even say or do anything. You're smart people. I'm sure you can gues what emotion blue represents.  Atsuki feels a strange presence about him.  He also serve as our introduction to using Sigma on people! Σ -SIGMA- There's a bit of a noticable difference here compared to when we were using it to find Residual Shinen, huh? We need to switch to that Search function for this one.  This lets us scan Arthur to find here his Shinen is currently located. The search area is larger than it looks, and it's even colour co-ordinated. It uses a blue/yellow/red scale which is a bit weird but whatever. Easy enough to get used to.  Once we've found 'em that way, we'll switch back to Erase and it works like before here. If we're too slow at that, though, they disappear and need to be searched for again. Plus, after a bit, they just appear on the top-screen anyway. This just means that you can skip using Search if you really want to. The whole process is a bit annoying, but whatever.  Strange Boy Scare Bell  That Girl Memoria  Nocturne He just looks at Atsuki and leaves. End Lux De Luna Back to the map we go, and this time a more general overview of the city. From here, we can see that it's broken up into 7 areas. Helpfully numbered one through seven. It lets us know where there's anyone to talk to in the city, and even roughly where they are in each area.  We could've come here before either of the places in Area 6, incidentally. There's not much of an indication you can do that, other than the Return option in the bottom right corner. By the way, it's unrelated to that but the DV in the Church description stands for "Domestic Violence." Top of my head, that is never relevant, thankfully. Mystic  A large man stands in front of a church-like building, trying to operate a strange-shaped machine. He utters his thoughts. Describing a church as a "church-like building" is... it's certainly something. I can't even say it's wrong!  Well, this will have to do. I think I'm done for today.The man stands up tall. Huh?He notices Atsuki. He approaches Atsuki with a smile on his face.   Are you talking a walk this nice autumn evening? Oh, sorry, I'm not some kinda weirdo. I dunno, this still seems kinda weird to me... ..Um, can I ask a question? I know its abrupt, but... Do you believe in powers that you can't see? Like demons and spirits and things like that. Maybe...We could say that we don't believe it, sure. But we use a literal magical artifact to read people's minds.  Of course agreeing with Takano here makes him happier. That's just expected, really. Really! So you believe? That's good to hear! Heh, a lot of people just make fun and don't listen. Ah, maybe I'm a little bit over-interested. Don't attempt to ever try and figure out whether or not this is supposed to be in America or Japan. The game can't agree with itself. Not even between text and voice acting, either. The text has already flip-flopped between the two!  When I told my mom, she screamed my ears off... Heh. It a machine that measures life energy called "odo." Basically, it's a radar that can spot the unseen. On full moons like tonight readings are more accurate.Shame it doesn't help the text any. Anyway, "odo" is a pretty blatant orgone equivalent. Why they didn't just call it orgone is anyone's guess though. Maybe it lacks power, or the cycle's off, but... The measurements are low. So I figured I'd call it a night. Sure, let's go with that. Well, see ya around boy.As Takano spoke, he carried the heavy machine and waddled back home. Lux De Luna Tohodo is the only place available at all now. We can back out to the larger city overview, but it's a waste of our time. Mystic  No narration or anything this time, huh? Just a "choice" between leaving the area or entering the building. How generous.  We'll be spending very little time actually in here. It's functionally just a place to sleep for the night. Fair enough, really. It's a new apartment complete with the furniture Atsuki requested. FORT It's unfortunate that it wasn't the target, but... One suspect has been eliminated. That's good. One more thing. Before Liu entered the room, they were mailing someone. It's interesting... What's a high school got to do with group suicides? You may be able to find something out. In Shanghai, a similar case was reported. The group suicides had the same motive as our target. 
Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Jun 4, 2020 |
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Jun 3, 2020 00:38
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quote:He hears a poem on the night breeze And how shall I begin? / To spit out the butt-ends of my days and ways. Seriously, hearing Natsuki (voice) be like, "I wanna see New York!" Is just ... yeah, this game's translation is something special, in that discomplementary way.
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Jun 3, 2020 00:55
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Dragonatrix posted:
I'm sure the was a conscious choice for reasons...
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Jun 3, 2020 15:53
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I don't necessarily hate 'this is America actually' but you really have to put in the effort to make it consistent, and, well. Hmm.Dragonatrix posted:We'll be put in protective custody if we don't... This is some classic 'there's no stated pronoun in the Japanese dialogue so you have to guess*' * unless you're actually reading the scene in which case it's pretty obvious from context. Whoever translated this bit either didn't figure that out or they didn't have the full scene to work with for some reason.
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Jun 3, 2020 22:18
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Second post updated to include the in-game character bios and what's intended to be the in-game encyclopedia. Recommend giving at least that a brief once over, if only because some of it is genuinely interesting... primarily in how bad and dumb it is, but hey. Meant to get them up a wee bit earlier, but better late than never.
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Jun 4, 2020 17:46
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Polsy posted:I don't necessarily hate 'this is America actually' but you really have to put in the effort to make it consistent, and, well. Hmm. I can't stand it, personally. A small part of it is a personal reason of me just hating foreign stuff that's been "Americanized." That's not limited to only Japanese media. The bigger reason is that it's almost always poorly done, as is the case here and in games like the Phoenix Wright series. It brings to mind the days of 4Kidz anime dubs. It takes a huge amount of work and effort to effectively transform a game from a completely different culture into one that naturally feels like it's from a local culture. Stuff like social etiquette and architecture/design are still present in dialogue and backgrounds. You need to do a hell of a lot more than changing a few names to avoid it turning into a laughable mess. For example: Ignoring the fact that the dude has a Japanese as hell name and teaches in a clearly Japanese school, 50k Yen (which is like $470), suddenly turns into 1.5x the annual salary of nearly every primary/secondary teacher in the US. This dude apparently just routinely drops that on personal projects. Then of course you've got all the Japanese place names and signage and stuff that might pop up in backgrounds which the localization team can't change without putting in time on redrawing artwork. And what does it all come down to? Who are these changes for? The fans of anime/Japanese stuff will hate it because it's loving stupid. Meanwhile, people that would be bothered by a game being too "foreign" are sure as hell not going to pick this  off the shelf. Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Jun 4, 2020 |
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Jun 4, 2020 18:20
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Psycho Knight posted:Ignoring the fact that the dude has a Japanese as hell name and teaches in a clearly Japanese school, 50k Yen (which is like $470), suddenly turns into 1.5x the annual salary of nearly every primary/secondary teacher in the US. This dude apparently just routinely drops that on personal projects. This was actually Americanised - he says 5 million yen. Apparently the character profile is right to be suspicious.  Psycho Knight posted:And what does it all come down to? Who are these changes for? The fans of anime/Japanese stuff will hate it because it's loving stupid. Meanwhile, people that would be bothered by a game being too "foreign" are sure as hell not going to pick this off the shelf. But yeah, that's a pretty good point.
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Jun 4, 2020 18:50
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 Pandora was functionally an in media res prologue. It gave us our setup, and introduced the main concepts we are about. Mystery is our proper starting point to figuring things out. It's also a lot longer. Nightmare Noir   I cried from deep inside my soul at the regret, sorrow and urges of rage that I felt. My father died two years later. I can see his eyes. He smiled on his death bed and said, "the world's full of sorrow." Seeing the images of my parents, I realized how much I loved them. There was no reason for them to die. I see my little sister's smiling face, bright and wise. She had a beautiful smile. The intruding monsters overtook me in my sleep and devoured my sister.For once, I feel like the text works better here so I left it as-is. "Devoured" is just stronger and more emotive than "ate [her] up". I let out a war cry. Wanting to burn everything around me to the ground, I howled furiously. Mirage  A lump, tasting like metal, tightens up in my chest. My mouth tastes bitter. The cold sweat on my body feels like blood. I used to dream, long ago. Since joining FORT, I haven't dreamt once.Atsuki rubs his left arm. That's the same arm he uses to scan with Sigma. It's a fun little detail. Blood builds up in Atsuki's face and arm, and he loses consciousness.  FORT Okay, let's start the briefing! Target, age and sex unknown. All we know is they love art. FORT intelligence is confident that the target is in Kisaragi. It's the same place the Shanghai Silent Infectee Incident started. Yeah, we know. It's basically the only detail we've ever been given about that. It's just background lore in practice. The repetition of it implies that nothing beyond this was really thought about, though, which is fair enough. As a result, thousands of crimes and suicides have occured. We found him and checked, and he wasn't the original infectee. Someone else infected him with Silent. Checking the infection path, we found Kisaragi City. You'd think this'd be a detail worth looking into then. What that guy did while he was here, where he went, who he met with? Forget about it. As far as our investigation cares, the Guy From Shanghai was never here. Your job is to find and confirm any Silent infectees. Last night's incident seems to be Silent related... I wonder who they were trying to contact. They sent mail to your new school. Right, Atsuki? It's a good opportunity. Look into that for me, okay? If we find anything new, we'll contact you. It's creepy that she knew you had powers. If you find anything by Sigma, let us know. EndFinding an unknown recipient of an unknown email, huh? And all we know is that they're at this school? I feel like if we know that much, we should know who it was a well. They'd be likely using a school related email address in that case, but whatever. It's a start. Lux De Luna We're dumped right at school. This is a pretty common occurrence, for obvious reasons. It's technically an eighth area, and it sure feels larger (to me) than the other seven. We can't leave for a while, of course. Kisaragi   Since this is clearly dialogue between two different characters, maybe they should have speech marks here. It's clear and all, but it's presented like normal narration so it's kinda... messy and very amateurish. I'unno, just a thought. A teacher is at the gate. She's checking each student that passes by. She looks serious, and makes sure to look each student in the eye as she greets them. Suddenly, her gaze stops on a group of students.  Hey, wait!On the subject of remembering speech marks, they did include them for this line.  Oh no, high schoolers... holding hands?! In an instant, the romantic atmosphere had completely disappeared. What are you doing, holding hands like that?!The speech marks are gone again, here. "S-sorry!" ...And here, they are indeed back. This. This is what makes it messy. Actively alternating between whether or not to include them is incredibly jarring. They split up and run into the school.   I transferred here today. We could play coy and act like a regular normal student, but that has a negative reaction. Maybe best to not do that.  Oh, I see. Nice to meet you. I'll introduce myself. "Which language?" "Yes." I hope you like it here!The teacher's cheeks suddenly turned red. Apparently noticing this, she starts talking again.   It must be hard to transfer this time of year.It's October. If we take the presumption that we're in Japan, yeah, this makes sense. That'd put it about halfway through the school year, since it starts at the beginning of April. If we take what we've mostly been presented, so far, we're in America. That means we're about a month into the school year. In my completely inexperienced perspective, that sounds like a very relaxed and easy time to transfer. "Good morning, Ms. Matsumura!" Incidentally, no speech marks here (again). No comma either, which somehow bugs me marginally more. Good morning! Oh yeah... If you need anything, let me know right away. I hope you enjoy it here! Lux De Luna We've a couple places we can go now that we're in the school proper, it seems. The art room is a bit of a longshot, but we're looking for someone who really loves art and also someone at the school. It's unlikely, but not impossible, for those to be the same person. It's worth a shot at least. Yayoi Kamishiro Bona Fide   There's no one else there. She concentrates hard on the canvas, the only audible sound being the movement of the brush. She holds the brush out and checks over the painting. Then, she finally realies that Atsuki had entered the room.   You're here early. Here to paint something?  We haven't, right...? You're a transfer student! The teacher said we'd have a new student today. Existing pretty much to prove what I said in update 1 right, Yayoi is voiced by Monica Rial. Here she gets to do a normal, sensible voice and it sounds good and fine.  ...Okay, this? Right here? This is what makes the half-actual character, half-silent protagonist thing jarring and nonsensical. Atsuki talks and does things! Just have him actually ask! I'm here because Arthur may be coming back soon. He works as a substitute teacher here. What an opportunity, huh?  Recently, he's been sick and hasn't come...Atsuki can't take his eyes off a particular painting. It's because he felt a fleeting, but black and bent, Shinen from it. Mirage So, I didn't mention it before but the timer is 90 seconds long at the moment. Except it starts running before we have contol, which is a tiny bit inconvenient. Also of note is that the timer is only around when using Sigma to scan people. That it's here means that we're also gonna pull something out of Yayoi's psyche, along with the Residual on the painting.  Colors Fade Noir  Seems Kind Nocturne  It's not super common, but now that we've got these two Shinen they combine into a third... People Memoria  There's something mildly inconvenient to me about this sliding bit. It feels like an unnecessary step that just kinda gets in the way.  And it's a lot of hassle to learn the name of the thing we just sat through. Bona Fide I'll be in the classroom. See you later! Twilight   Same as the man at Rainbow Hill last night. This seems like a bit of a stretch, but I guess when you're dealing directly with people's emotions and psyche it's easier to draw conclusions like this. As for Silent, he's closest to the target from what I can tell. EndWell, that didn't pan out quite the way I'd have liked. Still, we did get some useful information and learn a thing or two about our strongest suspect for the Mysterious Art Lover. Atsuki is jumping to conclusions here, though. We've technically met two people that we can presume like art. Of course Arthur is the closest to the target at the moment. We don't have any other realistic candidates yet.  Seems unlikely that there'll be any overlap with the email stuff, then. Worth our time to go and check that out directly. Mystic  He's sitting at a computer, working on something.  Okay, finished.He's done transferring data onto a portable PC. He gets up and trots over to the exit, and sees Atsuki.   I haven't seen you around. Are you new? Well, whatever! We've just met. No point in discussing that. Okay, I'll hurry! Whisper  Someone infected with Silent, like them? If anyone here is infected, it would be a strong Silent.Presumably he means if they were infected via email. We know literally nothing about how a Silent infection is caught or transferred or anything, though. The Original must be very powerful....And that has nothing to do with anything here.  Mystic If their partner received their mail, then Residual Shinen must still be here.  I don't know why it bothers giving us a choice here. We can leave, sure, but it doesn't help. We can't do anything else until we get the Residual so..  Suicide Spot Scare Bell Twilight The Shinen tells me he read that mail. But, he's not related to them. He happened to find the mail. His Shinen tells me he went home to trace the sender on his own. Mystic That boy must've erased it. Hm, that's kinda suspicious. If he didn't know what it was or who it was from, why get rid of it? FORT How about the boy on the computer that morning?Atsuki tells her that, judging by Residual Shinen, he wasn't involved. He reports that since the boy had erased the mail in question, he had certainly seen it. I see, let's follow these two routes. *someone else We've got to find them. We need to find out what that mail said.Well, the Residual we just read does sorta tell us. It was in code, so That Kid doesn't know yet either. Okay, Atsuki. Work on those. Only one option available now. Guess it's time for class. Sunny Spot   Aoi said this while looking around the room. Oh, it looks like Naruse isn't here. Well then, everyone, take good notes and show them to the absentees later. Oh, Nozaki, you weren't here either?  What!? Oh my, oh my... Is that so? I'm sorry! Ryo wasn't here either...Aoi says embarrasedly as her cheeks turn red. Then she turns her attention to Atsuki.  After that, I'm a bit afraid to ask, but... Saijo, what do you think of this school? It's great!Our only options are to be enthusiastic or unsure. Being unsure despite being here for less than an hour gets a negative reaction. Yep.  Really? That's good. I really hope that you enjoy your time here. Well then, let's start the lesson! Open your books to page 276. Bona Fide ...Uh, wait, what?  This is a real thing, surprisingly. Wakanashu is a collection of poems that was written by Shimazaki Tosen and published in 1897. Before that, he was an English teacher in Tokyo (from 1891) and then Sendai (from 1895). Wakanashu is generally considered to be the first thing created specifically as part of the Meiji era of Romanticism in Japanese literature. Shimazaki created four more collections of poetry following the positive reception to Wakanashu, before becoming a novelist in 1906 and...  form, it's called Japan's own romantic anthology.Okay, look. One of his novels, Shinsei, was highly controversial when it was released (1918) and absolutely should still be now. Because it was an autobiographical account of his incestuous relationship with his niece. Who, shortly after Shinsei was published, he got pregnant. At which point he promptly fled to France for nearly a decade. He went back to Japan eventually, becoming an English teacher again and kept writing novels until he died in 1943.  ...I, uh, maybe Wakanashu was republished late September 20XX. Or maybe it's not supposed to be "week." The anthology also contains the well known First Love. Perhaps you've come across it before? Well? Nothing?As you might expect, this is also accurate. Impressively enough so is the translation of that half of the first line: quote:you had swept back your bangs for the first time This next novel should come with ease. Here's a hint: It deals with the Spring, starting anew, the joys and sadness of youth.   ...And then it just kinda gives up being useful or even remotely coherent right at the very end there. Complete babbling messes like this are usually reserved for later in the game. Hmm... such a wonderful love as this... Sunny Spot  Saio, if you need help with anything from today... I'll be in the staff room. Come see me any time. Don't forget to study! Mika Nozaki Ticktack  Mika is voiced by Kate Oxley, who usually does bit part characters, extras, or young boy. There's a few exceptions here and there though. Notable stuff includes Mai in School Rumble, Kimiko Sakurazua in Ouran High School Host Club, Miwako Sato in Detectve Conan, Fuyumi Todoroki in My Hero Academia and Akane Tsunemori in Psycho-Pass. ...Yeah, not really many major roles in her filmography that I can find.  Ms. Matsumura's class is pretty deep, isn't it? Her lessons are so good, because she's so diligent. But, she can get sidetracked easily...  Unfortunately, we're gonna be doing love poems for a while... Next class, she'll probably start from the same place! It's rare, though. It'll get easier again, soon enough. See ya! End It must be hard adjusting to a new school. Please take your time getting used to it. Oh, right! I forgot! Please wait a minute! Rui, do you have a minute? Sure!  Huh? Wha..? You're the new kid, Saijo, right? And you want me to...? I'd like you to show him around during lunch. Hmph. Fine, I guess. Well, whaddya wanna see?  Okay, you got it! ...Since you teach us and take care of us and stuff. Well, let's go! It wasn't unusual for Rui to do this sort of thing, but such intimate behavior is usually reserved for couples. Aoi's face turned red as she watched them. Then, she felt unsure about her decision to let Rui show Saijo around. We've already seen part of the school, but we have a lot more to see. Probably a good idea to take a quick break here.
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Jun 5, 2020 00:23
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The thing that gets me is how tonally all-over-the-place the translation is. In fairness, that sometimes...works(?) for the story but most of the time you get weird poo poo like here. Some kid is sending an email? HE MUST BE CONNECTED TO SILENT gently caress I FOUND THE CELL IT'S AN ENTIRE NEST
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Jun 5, 2020 03:17
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It's weird because it's like this game doesn't understand how email works? So, the creepy guy in the apartments was emailing someone at the school, and they can't figure out who because he was just sending the email to The School or something? Like the school has a big in-box for all emails that all students access from one room. I guess there wouldn't be much of a mystery if Nola could just say "Ah! He's was emailing Larry@kisaragi.edu!" Thanks for picking this back up, Dragonatrix! Despite the awful translation and some other flaws, I really got a kick out of this game back when I played it on the DS. There's some cool stuff in this game that I'm gonna enjoy seeing again!
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Jun 7, 2020 02:24
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bad translation and awkward gameplay aside, I really like this game when i played it as a teen. Thanks for the nostalgia OP
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Jun 7, 2020 05:25
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Mystery (Part Two)
Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jun 15, 2020 00:15
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This introduction to the cast doesn't really work to well IMO. Just too much of a mess and the translation isn't doing it any favors. Which is a shame, they're a likable enough bunch.
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Jun 15, 2020 05:10
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Mystery (Part Three)
Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jun 17, 2020 00:45
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If you do Cool to Akira in the classroom you instantly cut to the Sigma sequence. I didn't know that you could improve other emotion points with him there.
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Jun 17, 2020 01:01
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I have forgotten most of this game but I remember it's mostly intelligible at this point.
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Jun 17, 2020 01:31
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Polsy posted:This was actually Americanised - he says 5 million yen. Apparently the character profile is right to be suspicious. My bad, I assumed that this was one of those lovely (Convert Yen to Dollar) translation errors that gets made constantly. I'm surprised that they correctly adjusted that while doing such a bad job on everything else. Dragonatrix posted:
"Happy" is one way to describe the expression that Atsuki is making. Looks more like he's about to confess some deep personal feelings, assuming that colour is representing blushing.
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Jun 18, 2020 15:13
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There's no one here but me. Did you forget something?
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HI there, folks. I'm sure you've noticed by now that the forums are just a tiny bit On Fire. This is absolutely deserved because this situation is, quite frankly, utter garbage. For understandable reasons, odds are good that this won't be finishing up (definitely not on here at least) anytime ever. I won't begrudge anyone who doesn't feel comfortable posting on this site any more because of Lowtax being a physically abusive piece of poo poo. I know I don't at least. If you're not in it already, all I can recommend for site-related stuff specifically related to LPs right now is joining the official Unofficial Let's Play Discord. Other subforums are making their own too, so check your regular haunts for those. Other things are, of course, to take care of yourselves at this time. I liked to use this site as a way to frequently ignore that the outside world is kind of an awful mess right now, and that's stopped being possible today. I can only imagine that it's so much worse for some other people. Lastly, it's included in the announcement already, but abuse is absolutely not a joke and claims should be taken seriously. If you know of any local shelters or organisations that deal with (domestic) abuse and could use your help, I can only urge you to do what you can. Whatever happens, God bless and it's been fun.
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Jun 24, 2020 18:45
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Dragonatrix posted:definitely not on here at least definitely, adverb def·i·nite·ly (Informal) used for emphasis while not being literally true. So, uh, yeah. Where were we? Mystery (Part Four)
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Jul 14, 2020 12:09
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Welcome back! Happy to see this continue.
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Jul 14, 2020 15:45
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Second post updated too. This time it was a reasonable(ish) gap before remembering to get it done. Woo 
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Jul 14, 2020 19:10
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