Note: This review comes from testing the patch, rather than playing it all the way.

It does exactly what it says; it restores dialogue that was lost in the original localization, and updates the English terminologies to be more in line with the rest of the series. In spite of what the homepage says, the Translation Improvement patch is more of a SNES/GBA localization hybrid, that only uses the Japanese script to decensor and fix sentences whenever necessary.

My only complaints I have with the patch comes from the minor glitches I’ve encountered, and the lack of information on the homepage.

I’ve encountered some sprite misalignments with the text in the dialogue box, starting with when Princess Zelda mentions Sanctuary and the Old Man/Loyal Sage for the first time, and when Sahasrahla’s spouse mentions the Master Sword myth.

Another issue occurred when I talked to the boy in Kakariko, who marked the location of Sahasrahla on my map. A line of dialogue “Ok, but don’t…” was skipped, due to the limitations of three lines in the dialogue box.

Note: I said skipped not deleted. The line of dialogue was in the game, it was just glossed over.

The Translation Improvement’s homepage should be more informative to those who want to know more about the patch before they play it, like setting up a list of changes in the readme section, that have and have not occurred; and the homepage should’ve warned me whether or not the rom itself should have an intro and/or a header.

I do know that in situations involving headers and intros I should’ve just checked the Patching Info and the ROM/ISO Info, but in my situation, the Patching Information was misleading; the patch won’t work when the rom has a header. I just wanted to throw that out there.

Overall, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - Translation Improvement patch is still a great recommendation for those who want the localization/translation to be updated and fixed, but still want to keep the vanilla experience. I just wished that the author would have spend more time polishing these issues.