So in playing through the port of Chrono Trigger on DS, I had a rather jarring realization that it has not only been ported, it has been relocalized. I first noticed this the moment I walked downstairs from my room, and Crono's mother used the word "inventress" to describe my best friend Lucca. "Huh, that's odd," I thought to myself. "She never used that word before."

Later, I picked up an item called "Athenian Water". Athenian Water? says I. What the hell is that? *opens up inventory* oh, it revives. What was wrong with Revive? That is what it used to be called, right? It seems an increase in item name length limit made some of the localization team creative. Power Tabs are now called Strength Capsules, for example.

I reached the peak of my righteous anger when I first got to Manoria Cathedral (which is now called Manolia Cathedral) and Frog, instead of using his familiar medieval English speech by saying "Mine guise doth not incur thy trust," he says something to the effect of "I suppose I shouldn't expect you to trust me, considering my appearance." WTF, the main reason I liked using Frog was to hear him say weird stuff in antiquated English.

But then I got to 2300 AD, and one line in particular really struck me. When I came back to the main dome with the seed, the elder mentioned that we were different from them:
Marle: That's because we haven't given up hope!
Elder: Hope... that's a word I haven't heard for some time. It does have a nice ring to it though.

Previously, it went something like this:
Marle: That's because we're healthy!
Elder: Heal...thy. That has a nice ring to it.

I really like this change, because the new text emphasizes that their mental state, rather than their physical condition, is what really sets them apart. The people of the future are living in a time where a machine keeps their bodies functioning, even though they're trapped in this dome with no food, and the skies are gray and poisonous, and rogue robots and mutants are all that await them if they try to venture outside. We are different from them because we are vibrant and hopeful, and when we see Lavos we do not despair, we try to find a way to stop it.

And it really made me think about the previous example. As amusing as Frog's speech is, why DID he speak in such an medieval dialect? Nobody else in the game spoke like that. All of the other people in 600 AD might have used slightly more polite speech than those in 1000 AD, but Frog is the only one who constantly spoke with Thous and Thys. I really see why this change makes sense. After all, Ayla uses her primitive speech, and all of the other people in 65,000,000 BC do too, so it makes sense.

I think I would have preferred if they changed all of the other people in 600 AD to match Frog's speech, but after working in game QA for so long, I kinda know why they didn't. Not only that, but I've seen what happens when Squaresoft goes overboard with "flavor" by trying to give the characters accents through text (see: Chrono Cross, where some characters have such thick accents that I have to sound out their speech aloud just to keep up with the story) so I'm playing through the game now, not quite as annoyed and angry as I was about this relocalized text.

PS: Not to say Squaresoft is awesome and they can do no wrong, because we all know I have many reasons to hate Squaresoft. However, because rereleasing their most classic games on systems I currently own is the main thing I want from them (they've already proven to me that they lost their ability to make good NEW games after FF7) I'm willing to overlook some localization that I happen to disagree with. I didn't use Frog much anyway.