Si ça peut aider à clarifier les buts de cette nouvelle traduction (attention, le texte est long mais explique tout )
[spoiler]During free time while we awaited various other things to happen in the project, we decided to try implementing some small enhancements and additions over the original game. Notable items include:
Skits and prologue battle are subtitled
A case of adding text...where none even existed before. Extensive hacks have allowed us to subtitle the prologue battle and all the skits in the game! Perhaps a standard thing to expect in a translation, but hey, adding something like this is no easy task. Not considered a part of the bonus in the ASM hacking progress.
Even more subtitling!
"What now, there's more to be subititled?" you're thinking, right? The answer is yes! We've gone out of our way to subtitle things that aren't usually subtitled in games like this.
First thing may seem rather minor: There are voice clips played when using the Cooking feature. Most characters only have one voice clip, and a couple of them have two, for a total of eight clips. We subtitled them, regardless of how small this may seem. Makes it all a little more complete!
And an even bigger thing. Something that frequently bugs me when it comes to translated RPGs and leaving the voices in Japanese: The battle voices are just a bunch of gibberish noise to the untrained ear. Nuances and dialogue completely lost. Some of it can be rather amusing...and it was always intended for you to understand it. We have attempted to rectify this problem as best as we could--by subbing even the battle voices! When you win the battle, use a shortcut, have an ally fall on you, well...you'll know what's being said! And if this feature sounds like it could get annoying or distracting, we've even added an option to the Customize menu for you to turn it off.
Of note, later Tales games have a lot more battle voice clips than the older ones, so ToP's are pretty simple. There's no conversing between characters at all.
Choose your arte names
While this may not seem like an original idea to most people not directly involved with the project, we totally understand that the arte names are a sensitive issue among some Tales fans. While I've grown accustomed to the naming convention that has risen with the official English releases, not everyone has. Therefore, we present you three naming options:
LOCALIZED: This is the default, and the official list we would have used if we did not add this feature. Nearly all arte names follow the most recent naming conventions used in official English Tales games. There are a few exceptions.
TRANSLITERATED: For those who just can't part with the original Japanese names of the moves, this simply uses the romanizations of the Japanese move names for Cless, Chester, Suzu, AND the cameo battle opponent. In addition, all spell names follow the original Japanese for the few that were modified (i.e. Explode instead of Explosion, Piko Piko Hammer instead of Pow Pow Hammer, etc).
CULTURAL: This is the same as Localized, except for one difference. Maybe you feel translated arte names make sense for likes of Cless and Chester, given their European-like heritage. But then you have Suzu, who is a Ninja, from the game's mini-Japan. Maybe hers being romanized just feels a tad more... authentic? With this option, you have the power to make it so! This is perhaps our favored option. Becomes available when Suzu joins the party.
The name selector has been seamlessly added to the Customize menu for easy toggling in the middle of the game. The setting is also written to your save file.
Additional difficulties
For the seasoned hardcore! We've added two more tiers of difficulty past the Mania rank, named by the legacy terms Unknown and God (previously known as DOOM). While Mania may be plenty hard for most gamers, Unknown, and especially, God modes are there for those looking for a grisly death. They become available after completing the game once, along with Mania.
Unknown is 4x HP, and 1.75x other stats. God mode is 5x HP, and 2x other stats. I also swear that enemies seem more aggressive, tend to deliver critical hits quite frequently, and stun you easily. Are you up for the challenge?
In a [futile?] attempt to make the new difficulties more "fair," we've implemented experience multipliers if you win a battle in those modes. You will be awarded 5x experience points if a battle is won in Unknown, and 10x in God. Experience payout for the original difficulty modes is unchanged. We did this because it seems like a near requirement in newer Tales games to enable a multiplier via Grade Shop if you want to take on the insane difficulty modes without needing to grind forever (or just stay relatively sane). Battles also take much longer to finish because of all the extra HP enemies have, so you are well compensated for the time spent.
Begin the game with a Technical Ring
Cless starts the game with a Technical Ring equipped in his first accessory slot. This will enable Manual control mode from the get-go. Originally, you don't have access to this item until an arbitrary point around eight to ten hours into the game. We felt that this was frustrating to players who are much more comfortable with that mode than Semi-Auto. ToP PS1 is now a very old game in the series, and all of the games that followed it allowed Manual control either right at the beginning or within the first hour of gameplay. So in essence, we feel we're modernizing an archaic convention by allowing this. If you feel this is cheating, you can choose not to use the item's functionality, and it cannot be sold to a shop for extra money.
Dhaos in Monster Book
We never really understood the point of him NOT appearing in the Monster Book menu. Regardless, final bosses always appeared in the Monster Books of later games in the series, so we feel this is another case of modernizing the game a bit more. We reversed-engineered the menu's code and data to make this possible.
This clears up any potential confusion in obtaining Klarth's Monster Hunter title. Even if you've managed to encounter the 233/233 monsters the original game told you during a first playthrough, Klarth will not earn the title! This is because the game also counts the Dhaos encounters in that figure.
Alphabetically-sorted Monster Book
The monsters originally appeared in a Japanese phonetic order in the Monster Book to make it easy to find the monster you want to look up. When the monster names are translated to English, it gets very weird. We have remedied this issue by reverse-enginnering the sorting logic the game uses, and all monsters appear in #-Z order, making it easy for you to find a monster, too!
Monster Book name bugfix
There's a feature in the game where the name of the Monster Book menu changes as you encounter more monsters. Well, supposedly. Unfortunately, that feature was bugged up bad in the original game! I guess it was an easy thing to miss in a beta test. We fixed it to make it work as we believe it was intended.
Tripled message speeds
Probably every single window of dialogue in the English version contains more text characters than the Japanese version. When limited to the original text speeds, it takes longer print out a full text box. The fastest speed became only barely adequate and the rest totally unbearable. This makes text printing at the fastest speed extremely snappy and the slower speeds more usable for those who don't want it that fast.[/spoiler]
