Old Man Yells at Clouds – NISA is Ruining Good Things

Usually with 'Old Man Yells at Clouds' I talk about stupid things that no one else cares about, but I don't think that really applies to NISA. At the same time, I don't know if me yelling about this will really matter, and unlike a lot of other things I write for these articles I don't actually get that angry over it, I just like to rant. Just know that this one does come with a bit more legit anger then other things I'll post here.

But this is different because I hate NISA. The kind of niche games they localize is exactly the kind of games I like to play, but the problem is they are terrible at it. The first being how consistently bad their localizations are. Now, back in the PS2 era, it wasn't nearly as bad, though not perfect. I remember reading discussions about Mana Khemia, and the issues people had been largely overblown back in the day, but the problem is as time went on they didn't improve as a company y, they got worse.

The worst and most obvious case being the recent Ys debacle, where the localization was so terrible they had to issue a public apology, and it never was truly fixed. The PC port was a buggy mess of a release, and this is part of a long history of them releases games with game-breaking bugs that were never in the original releases of the game, only the localizations.

This isn't even getting into their tendency to insert jokes where they weren't in the original, for example in the Atelier series they renamed a character to Esty Dee. That is both a terrible joke, and kills part of the reason I love these kinds of games, it's a different perspective and takes on things that another culture would have, and that's what I want. I don't want some localizer inserting their shitty jokes into it where there were none before.

Then comes issues of censorship, and you don't even need to take my word for it. Here is a link to NISA's page where they talk about what got censored in Criminal Girls 2.

https://nisamerica.com/blog/CG2

There is a long history of censorship that comes along with this company, and it's frustrating. Content that clearly would not cause an AO rating has been cut before,

The reason I am so pissed now is I have already committed myself to avoid any NISA releases for a while now due to how bad of a company they are, they are like the EA of the localization world, cancer that needs to be cut. But then came the announcement they are localizing the new Trails of the Cold Steel game.

And I will stick by that conviction of mine. I hate censorship, and I am not going to support a company that actively censors as much as NISA, and comes with a history of terrible and buggy releases like NISA. And I am pissed because I really wanted to play the new Trails game. The first two were fantastic, but now I don't really have a way to play them without actively supporting one of my biggest problems with modern gaming.

And while the post is old, this is a list of stuff they fucked up as far back as 2014. (There really was only one issue with Mana Khemia, but it's there none the less.)

https://www.reddit.com/r/vita/comments/2a046m/reminder_not_to_buy_any_nisa_games/

Fuck this company.