New news are new, and therefore good ｡◕‿‿◕｡
Posted by Gemini on August 29th, 2009
It’s been a long time since the last update, but we aren’t dead, yet. Not much has happened lately thanks to summer and all the other distractions we all get during this period of the year, but hey, I should have probably posted something soon. Sorry for the big delay. Sooooooo, let’s go in order.
Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers
This one contains both bad and good news. I’ll start with the good one: the main translation is done, so pretty much every dialogue concerning the story was translated and ready for insertion. The last thing Tom was working one are the demon talk files, and he still has to tackle down dungeon and map dialogues (which I haven’t extracted yet, but it’s not because they’re hard to dump). This is where the bad news kicks in: I asked him to take a break from that and work on other projects he’s interested in. You’re asking why? Well, the reason is because I have done absolutely no hacking on Soul Hackers in all these months. Zero, nada, nihil. Ok, I’ve actually done a vwf hack on Xenogears that can be recycled almost entirely on SH, but I haven’t bothered to adapt the code yet, and I probably won’t until at least Echo Night 2 and Dracula X aren’t released. Which leads me to talk about…
Akumajō Dracula X: Gekka no Yasōkyoku
Everybody’s favorite Metroidvania! Okay, maybe not everybody’s (including myself) because of Ecclesia and Aria of Sorrow, but it definitively needs to be mentioned for having the best pixel art and characters in the series. Back to the translation aspect, there is something new (for the blog) to post about this one:
Currently all the dialogue scenes are edited (thanks to Tom), but some still need to be resynchronized with the audio. A tedious task based on never ending trial & error. I’ve also started using Kingcom’s assembler to update most of my old hacks on this game to the new syntax, but something’s gone terribly wrong causing the equipment screen to crash whenever I access it. :S
Echo Night 2
This one is very close to being complete, at least on the translation side. Pretty much everything’s in English now, except for messages embedded in menu code and random stuff appearing on textures, like the “NO! Smorking” sign. The book files have been translated and the text routines responsible for showing them has been reprogrammed correctly, too. Still need to figure out how to reinsert dialogues without having the game doing funky unexpected stuff. Other than these “small” issues, all’s good for this project, and that pretty much sums it for all I had to say.
Oh, while I’m at it I’d like to add one more thing: the last secret project mentioned several times already is not “Rhapsody 2″. Also, calling Little Princess “Rhapsody 2″ is retarded as it sounds. Please don’t do it or I’ll have to cut your hands so that you won’t be able to type it like that anymore. ｡◕‿‿◕｡
August 29th, 2009 at 15:18
Fuck yeah! Those shots look sweet, it will be awesome to replay Gekka no Yasōkyoku with a proper translation!
Good to hear you’re still alive, Gemini. ;*
August 29th, 2009 at 17:11
So the secret project isn’t Rhap– uh, Little Princess. Time to start guessing again. ｡◕!!◕｡
August 29th, 2009 at 17:14
Damn, Wordpress cut my emoticon’s face in half.
August 29th, 2009 at 17:27
That’s because Wordpress sucks.
August 30th, 2009 at 03:36
Looks good.
August 30th, 2009 at 22:21
Great news I never for one seond thought you guys were dead. I am not the type that needs to be briefed everyday to feel happy. I know you work your ass of on this translations. Very happy to hear Echo Night 2 is near its completion, I am really looking forward to that even if the graphics are rather crude. I am not upset about SOul Hackers you did mention it is not on your priority list and everything cant be Shin Megami Tensei. ( i cant believe I am typing this.)
Thank you so much Gemini and Tom
August 31st, 2009 at 00:18
I love news! Now that you are translating PS2 games…maybe you can one day translate:
1) Shadow Hearts 2: Covenant Director’s Cut?
2) Heart no Kuni no Alice PSP version?
3) any of the Final Fantasy Internationals?
4) Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2: Final Mix?
For some reason, no one has tried to translate them… Well, I hope we hear more good news soon. Keep up the good work.
August 31st, 2009 at 03:08
Final Fantasy X International is in English, or rather, it can be if you set it to be. Final Fantasy VII International is the US released version. I think Final Fantasy X-2 + Last Mission is only in Japanese, though.
I, personally, would pay money to keep the KH games from being translated again.
August 31st, 2009 at 13:57
@Jokerking19: nobody’s translating PS2 games here.
August 31st, 2009 at 14:22
“I, personally, would pay money to keep the KH games from being translated again.”
I, personally, would pay money to keep them from being made.
And yeah, that “Now that you are translating PS2 games” part cracked me up.
August 31st, 2009 at 21:44
I would pay money not to hear final fantasy x-2 being mentioned…
Seriously guys there are countless of PS2 gems out there that never came over and you want an update to an already crappy game…
August 31st, 2009 at 22:02
I liked FFX. Most of the game was just “ok” but all of the side-quests were a bonus, plus I liked the customizable weapons. I played through FFX-2 really quickly and never looked at it again. Both KH games I beat out of principle. They seemed like a wasteful use of developers time. They had a promising battle system but featured short levels, too many pointless boss battles, and a story that no human being alive could honestly feel touched by.
I was really almost surprised when at the end of KH 2 the main characters didn’t touch dicks. I half-expected it.
I don’t wish to seem pretentious, but the KH games were just plain awful, I seriously think Paladin’s Quest on the SNES was a better game than either of them.
September 1st, 2009 at 00:44
FF X is a great game and I will defend it no matter what, although it does feature a weak story (yet it’s still better than FF VII’s and FF VIII’s stories). The main reason I like FF X so much is it’s battle system and all those bonuses they’ve added (I’m talking about PAL version that has the good things from the International Edition). Customizable weapons is one of the examples of how awesome FFX battles are (for a FF game, of course).
FF X-2 is “a piss weak vague resemblance” of what FFX is. Motomu Toriyama is a fucking idiot. I remember seeing him in some interview where he said that it’s cool to make FF games that are more laid back. Too bad he went to far and made a fucking fuckfest out of FF with X-2 and he’s doing it again with XIII. A fucking twat that guy is. Only Wada is worse.
Kingdom Hearts games after KHI are absolutely pointless. The first one – as it was NOT written by that Nosferatu Writer Nojima – was quite fun as a something new, it had its charm. With Chain of Memories the series started to degenerate itself and with KHII… Oh.. my.. God… KHII is a game I couldn’t bare to watch. It’s so stupid that I can’t believe there are people who actually love it. Instant death sentence for them. The other KH games are even more stupid and I refuse to accept their existence.
September 1st, 2009 at 08:20
FFX’s battle system, to me, was its number one selling point. It made excellent use of all of the characters. I did not care much for KH, but KH II was an atrocity. Each of the games stages were like, fifteen minutes and there was really no twist and turns in them. The game, to me, seemed like boss fight after boss fight and then a climax that made me glad I bootlegged the game.
FFVII and FFVIII dropped the ball for me when they gave you a large cast of characters, but really only focused on one or two of them. They all had a bit of story when you recruited them, but after that…nada.
In FFX every character had a recurring storyline focus throughout the game. Now, I am not saying characters are the most important thing to me, I just hate it when the game focuses on the least interesting character (usually the protagonist) and ignores the other ones (Cid, Red XIII, Irvine, Quisits, etc.)
Cloud Strife is about as heroic to me as a can of tomatoes. That’s one reason why I liked FFXII, the main character had fuck-all to do with anything. He was just along for the ride.
September 1st, 2009 at 10:26
<blockquote cite=”I haven’t bothered to adapt the code yet, I probably won’t until at least Echo Night 2 and Dracula X aren’t released”>
…and since neither of those games are released yet I guess we’ll be getting Devil Hackers in no time, right? Seriously, though, as long as this project doesn’t get stuck in limbo for all eternity like so many other fan translations (your own Persona 2 being a fantastic exception, of course), I for one promise not to be too impatient…
September 1st, 2009 at 10:29
[Meant Soul Hackers and intended to use proper XHTML if I only knew how.]
September 1st, 2009 at 16:07
I did like KH2 to an extent, I thought the gameplay was immensely fun, the music was really good, and I even thought the story was decent enough. I do agree on what you guys said about the level design though now I think about it. More than half the boss fights in that game were unnecessary and the level design was way too linear. It completely blocked you off of paths that you weren’t supposed to go on destroying the exploration entirely.
I agree the about the story issues in FF VII and VIII entirely, I’m glad FF IX fixed that to a certain degree.
September 1st, 2009 at 19:28
It’s been very long since I played VII so my memory is kinda blurry, but doesn’t Cid get a whole main quest revolving around him going into space long after his recruitment? Then again in the spotlight when he became the party leader for some while?
Granted, I can’t remember anything about Red XIII other that brief plot about his petrified father.
Never played VIII myself.
September 2nd, 2009 at 03:42
FFVIII really should have ended at the end of Disc Three. The plot was all there, the game was done. The whole fourth disc was unnecessary, they could have punched the story down to three discs. FFVIII is the only Final Fantasy I have played through less that four times (being one time, btw).
Of course, after playing Xenogears, FFXIII seemed, well, blah.
September 2nd, 2009 at 07:14
Just wondering, is it more difficult to translate a PS2 game than a PS game?
Plus, I agree that KH2 was a tad (okay, very) boring, especially in the beginning. I didn’t give a shit about Roxas so I skipped all his cutscenes (I was very confused at the end of the game). But I did like the first one. I liked FFX, but the voice acting was HORRIBLE. I felt like covering my ears each time a cutscene came up. At least, they got better in KH2, X-2, and Dissidia. I liked VII and VIII, but like everyone, I felt that the others characters weren’t fully developed. XII was the best in terms of battle system wise, but Vaan=FAIL. He looks like a girl anyway.
Surprisingly, no one has mentioned Shadow Hearts 2. If in the future Gemini begins to translate PS2 games, that one would be the only one I would like to see. The bonus stuff added in the director’s cut would be well worth the translation. I think that game is one of the best games I played, storywise and it has a great battle system.
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:53
I’m not a fan of Shadow Hearts. Actually, I wouldn’t touch the game with a 10 foot pole.
September 2nd, 2009 at 14:10
I liked the first Shadow Hearts immensely, however the sequels both failed to impress me that much. The second suffered from poor pacing and the anachronisms started to get more silly than camp. The third game was a travesty to me. The funny thing is, I absolutely love Victorian and Edwardian genre anything!
The Director’s Cut content is not that impressive, you basically get two extra characters who are not as good as Uru, Kurando, Kallen, and Blanc, and you get an optional super boss which dies with one Third Eye/Gamble Ring/Infinity Key anyway just like the oddly anti-climactic final boss battle.
Koudelka and Shadow Hearts are the canon of the series to me. Aside from cool soundtracks, SH II and SH III will collect dust on my shelves never to be played again.
I sold Kingdom Hearts, and I downloaded Kingdom Hearts II.
I would like to mention also, that I still have a copy of Guardian’s Crusade on PSX, which I consider better than either KH game.
September 2nd, 2009 at 18:41
@Chaoticprime: Is your attitude towards the Shadow Hearts series specifically directed towards the story? If so then I can kind of understand where your coming from, although I admittedly liked the story in Covenant, especially the best ending. I honestly think From the New World is a wonderful game, the story had a very slow start but kicked off at the end of the game. I get the impression that you’re mostly disappointed with the story, so I’m just a little curious. As for gameplay I definitely think From the New World wins hands down.
There’s one thing the irks me about the director’s cut of the Shadow Hearts 2. The US version got some of the extras but not all of them. We got the modified Judgment Ring, the new music tracks, etc…. but we didn’t get the new dungeons. All in all it doesn’t really matter to me since I imported it, but it still leaves me pondering to this day.
For the record, Koudelka is of the best PSX RPGs I’ve played in terms of story and voice acting. In fact, it has my favorite voice acting in a game period. As for Guardian’s Crusade… well… it had a good soundtrack, but that’s as much as I’ll say about it. :P
I imported the Final Mixes for both Kingdom Hearts, so that should tell you a little bit more about me. ^_^
September 2nd, 2009 at 22:18
Personally, I felt that the story in Shadow Hearts 2 was more dynamic, (I loved the characters) and had the best “good” ending. Not to say that the first game’s story wasn’t but I just liked Covenant’s more. I really didn’t like how From the New World was more of a spin-off then a sequel. The characters and the story failed to make an impact on me, so I didn’t really care what happened to them… I was kinda pissed that the bad ending from the first game became canon for Covenant. It kind of defeated the purpose of having a good ending (and a waste of 100+ hours of my time).
@SlyStrife: I agree with what you said. I don’t understand why we basically only got half a director’s cut…but whatever.
September 3rd, 2009 at 01:14
Koudelka and Shadow Hearts were -horror- Covenant and From the New World were not. I will be the first person to say the latter two games had excellent battle systems, but if I were in the market for a battle system with a game attached I would be touting about Grandia Xtreme.
What’s important to me is how the game flows, if that makes any sense? I hate plot twists that seem to be there for the sake of having a plot twist. Understand? Some twists I like, such as Star Ocean 3’s pretty damn big one, and Xenogears numerous ones (although many of those were not twists, rather just filling out speculation in such as way as to leave the player not expecting such a result).
I think in SHII when they ‘revealed’ that Albert Simon was only in it to defeat Rasputin made me want to wretch. I mean, seriously, Rasputin? You couldn’t think of a better villain, guys? At all? Nikolai should have been that games principle adversary, but you got stuck with Kato and his inexplicable source of divine powers and whatnot coupled with the fact that he turns into a Japanese God at the end of the game? Where the hell did that come from? In SH III they established that Malice can transform a person into a horrible monster such as with Vera and Lenny, but how in the hell does Kato turn into the Japanese Deity of Storms?
You fought fucking Hastur at the end of the first game. Hastur. And in two, all of your trials and tribulations result in a miss-fire plot of a war between three demons resulting in a Japanese guy beating everyone because he can and then trying to end the world with a book that someone not only raises the dead but can also erase time? I know RPG’s are known for their stupid plots, but after Koudelka and SH I came to expect more.
What was even the point of mentioning Albert Simon when all they did was piss on how cool of a villain he was? They used Rasputin. EVERYONE uses Rasputin.
And SH III was not even a little fun for me until the end when I firmly came to believe that Lady and Killer were the protagonists and your party were just their murderers.
Anyhow, that’s why I didn’t like SH II or III. Make any sense?
September 3rd, 2009 at 07:05
It always bugged me as to how Kato became the main villain out of nowhere, I’ll definitely give you that. I’ll even give you the horrible plot twist with Albert turning out to be a not so bad guy, I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard that. As for Rasputin, I never thought of him as more than a filler villain, if that makes an sense to you. He felt kinda squished in, even when I first played the game. As for Shadow Hearts 3, I guess our tastes in story must differ a little, the game had a slow start, but at the end I thought it was pretty solid. The major plot twist involving Johnny was pretty good I thought, the only thing I was severely disappointed with in both SH 2 and 3 was the change in tone.
The horror atmosphere was dropped in 2 as well as the cool monster designs (they weren’t nearly as weird and scary as Koudelka and SH1). That made me very sad.
September 3rd, 2009 at 08:46
Yeah, I wanted my big ol’ ball of dead babies.
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:41
@Gemini, in your post you mentioned that you were doing a VWF to Xenogears…I am not sure, but that does stand for Variable Width Font or something? Regardless of that, I am interested in hearing if you have any hacking plans for Xenogears beyond that. I know some guys got together and fixed a few problems with it awhile back such as button config and voice dubbing. Do you have anything in store for it?
September 3rd, 2009 at 16:43
^
Really? I’ve ever heard of such a project. If you don’t mind can you post a link to show this? I’d play this game with the dubbing fixed. :P
September 3rd, 2009 at 19:08
@chaoticprime: yes, that’s what VWF stands for. For the moment I don’t have any plans on Xenogears. I made that hack in collaboration with another Italian romhacker, but he lost interest and I ended up using the hack just for playing the game on my PSP. Initially we were going to release it as a standalone patch+sources for whoever wanted to use that for providing a superior translator, but I haven’t put any download links because of some random glitches involving names in menus (i.e. “Bart” appears as “Bart t”). I was thinking about releasing it as is and let somebody fix it if they actually wanted to implement the hack, but something tells me nobody would ever do that.
September 3rd, 2009 at 21:08
@SlyStrife just look up Xenogears 2.0, its easy to find.
@Gemini, I think it still sounds interesting at least. One day I would like to do something to fix Xenogears, but no amount of hacking could simply ‘fix’ the second disc. I guess I’ll just stick to my annual playthrough of the game and keep dreaming, haha.
September 4th, 2009 at 01:48
It’s nice to hear that everything is going well with translations. Can’t wait for Echo Night 2 patch and a delay of Soul Hackers isn’t a big deal.
@Jokerking19: In my opinion from FF Internationals, only FFXII is worth the trouble of transalting, it would be nice if FF X-2 were in english but this game is waste of SquareEnix potential, the same thing goes with KH. If somebody ever translates those games to english it would be nice but if not, oh well nothing will happen. There are a lot of games which could be translated to english, some of them are better than SquareEnix games. Other thing is that I wasn’t never into playing extended versions of games that I’ve once beaten.
So the secret project isn’t Rhap– uh, Little Princess. Time to start guessing againI’m guessing it will be a Cooking Fighter Hao ;] If it will it would be nice because this game look very cool ;d
September 5th, 2009 at 00:35
I’ve gotta find some money to donate to you guys. Seriously, you rock so much. <3
September 6th, 2009 at 01:01
Go team Devil Hackers, go! :)
September 6th, 2009 at 17:10
Well. If it’s not Little Princess 2. I can only guess it’s Cooking Fighters or Angel Blade: Neo Tokyo Guardians ?
September 6th, 2009 at 17:54
LOL, you guys just spoiled the fuck out of SH 2-3. I don’t care for those games but really… :P
September 10th, 2009 at 18:52
So many pussies here. Shadow hearts 1, horror? Do you guys get scared for the boogeyman. And kh2 bashers, grab final mix and defeat the optional bosses, then come tell me about weak battle system.
September 19th, 2009 at 21:37
Hello,
I love Echo Night and Echo Night Beyond games and I’m impressed you are translating Echo Night 2!!. It’s definitely the last game I’m still waiting to play for PSX (well maybe Septentrion, too xD).
Thank you very much. I look forward for the patch.
November 2nd, 2009 at 17:41
Amazing guys, thank you VERY much for it, you’re awesome. When are you going to release it? Can’t wait :D
November 2nd, 2009 at 17:42
Echo Night 2 i mean :D
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:01
The next release on schedule is the last secret project, not Echo Night 2, so that’ll have to wait a few more months to get full time treatment. I’ve done a lot of progress on “secret project” lately and I’m almost ready to reveal it to the public. Still, this doesn’t mean I’ve lost sight of Echo Night 2. Have a little more patience and you’ll see something great soon.
November 11th, 2009 at 11:19
Eh, I’m actually glad you guys are working on other projects before Soul Hackers. If it’s another PSX game, you might like, learn something cool in terms of hacking that might make doing it easier or something. I dunno.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:28
Like I allways say: “Life is an eternal learning”
I hope this meaning doesn’t lose to translation.
February 16th, 2010 at 08:38
aah, 8 months waiting for echo 2… i cant stand it any longer!!!
March 30th, 2010 at 08:22
I´m here just to say
I´m enjoying Dracula X (Akumajō Dracula X: Gekka no Yasōkyoku) thanks to your great work and love it.
Thaks!!
You have a little place in my house now.