I’ve been having a good ol’ time playing through Ys VIII on the PS4, getting screenshots of the localization mistakes before the game gets patched next month. Then other day, @DigitalEmelas pointed out that the French on the back of the North American Vita version of Ys VIII has nothing to do with the game and doesn’t make sense:
The French text in the black bar in the middle says these two lines twice:
Je suis desolé de vous quitter, mais je dois acheter un chapeau.
I am sorry I have to leave you, but I must buy a hat.
Je vais demander à ces paysans qui viennent au-devant de nous, si le chemin par où ils ont passé est mauvais.
I shall ask these peasants who are coming towards us, if the road by which they have come is bad.
Mike Fahey over at Kotaku did some research and found these two phrases on Omniglot’s list of “assorted ‘useful’ foreign phrases”. He asked NIS America what the heck happened, and they admitted that the weird French text up there is placeholder text that never got fixed before going to print. The box also claims the game has cross-platform play, which it doesn’t.
Somebody at NIS America goofed up pretty hard on this one! Every reprint of Ys VIII on the Vita will have the correct French on the back, so I rushed out and bought one of the last copies of the first printing in my town to preserve a bit of gaming history.
Despite all these weird problems, Ys VIII is really fun.
