And for the most part, I’d say they succeeded.

I’ve played both the official GBA translation of the OG games and the Japanese OGS. In fact, I’ve replayed the Jap version God knows how many times. SRW has always been my go-to game to practice my Japanese, and I keep replaying whenever I get to a certain level of Japanese Proficiency.

Now, while there’s a special place in my heart for Atlus’ localizations, I’d say Kingcom’s team did a better job here. Gamers fresh off the official localizations of both V and X would feel right at home with this one. I especially like the way they handled Lamia’s “arimasudesu’s” and the like, their translations of which I find cute–even hilarious, at times. Of course, I’m still in early stages playing OG2, so my opinion on that might change later.

That said, no translation will ever be 100% perfect. Any translation will reflect a translator’s bias, no matter how well they temper it. So I understand why anyone would have a hard time translating–or even bothering to translate–Sanger’s samurai-speak. Short of making him sound like a medieval knight, I can find no other way to accurately bring across that jidaigeki-laden vocabulary of his. (I once did that while applying for a translation project. Never heard back from the project lead.)

I would concede to Atlus’ handling of the GBA version’s translation on one part. While Sanger’s “The sword that cleaves evil” is closer to the original Japanese, I can’t help but prefer the impact of Atlus’ “The sword that smites evil.” A minor distinction, perhaps, but writing poetry has made me appreciate those little things, nonetheless.

I also noticed that, in OG1, the translations for Ryusei’s and Kyosuke’s route are slightly different in tone. That’s all right with me. After all, they’re different points-of-view. However, I can’t help but feel that some of the dialogue, which should be identical in both routes, also sound slightly different.

I could rationalize that by pretending that Ryusei and Kyosuke are relating the story to someone, and that they remember certain dialogues differently. Still, it might be something for Kingcom’s team to look into if they ever decide to release another version.

Besides that, most of the other issues I’ve found are cosmetic. For instance, in some unit menus, some of the unit bonuses have their text running over the menu’s right border. Also, I’m not sure if it’s an issue with my PC or what, but it took almost an hour for me to successfully patch the 1.2 into my ISO. For some reason, I couldn’t use the xDelta UI, either.

Lastly, I’d like to thank Kingcom’s team for bringing an enjoyable translation of one of my fave SRW games. I hope that, someday, the team will reunite to work on OGG. It would certainly be great to see that one get the same love that they gave this one.

Would that be wishful thinking?