But I'm sure you could stop at any time, right?

Thread seems pretty dead, but for those of you interested, X-SEED did a peice on the localization of this game.

http://www.1up.com/do/my1Up?publicUserId=6027588

"Rune Factory Frontier: “It’s geeky. It’s ridiculous. It’s the kind of game you will never admit to liking or playing to your Gears of War crew. It’s your dirty turnip secret.”

Hi, and welcome to the 2nd installation of the questionable content coming out of XSEED Games. This round of localization talk will center on Rune Factory Frontier, our soon to be released simulation-RPG-esque game for the Wii. I’m an editor here at XSEED and, not unlike a man confessing his sins, I will own up to my part in localizing it.

In this first post I want to talk a bit about how RFF started taking shape on the American side, even as the game was being set to release in Japan. For those who aren’t familiar with the localization process, Mike (the other editor at XSEED) expanded on it quite, er, viscerally, in his Retro Game Challenge blog last month. For those with weak visual stomachs I’ll explain it clinically and then leave it up to you to add the gore.

What is localization and what does it mean for your RPGs?

Localization is the process by which games are brought over from Japan and made consumable for the American market. What this usually involves (at least in our case) is a team of speedy translators, morally bankrupt editors, marketing gurus, PR gods and suffering interns. Together we cannibalize a Japanese game and spin it back to you in English. What usually confuses people though is that localizing a game and publishing it under our name doesn’t involve messing with the nuts and bolts of the programming. We don’t design the game or alter gameplay. The game is essentially what it is in Japan, just now in a language that makes sense to you, and is presented in a way that’s also going to make sense to you. And for good or for bad, the localization team will flavor the game.

Rune Factory Frontier is my first title here at XSEED, and while this admission might alarm the many hardcore fans of the franchise, I can assure you that the other members of the localization team caught most of the off-color humor I tried to smuggle in. Most of it anyway.

Due to our company’s relatively tiny size (localization has a mere 5 doomed souls), we tend to work on games in mostly autonomous pairs of two that are decided by a flurry of pointing fingers, or the ever popular, volunteer them when they’re in the bathroom method.

As the only girl in localization the powers that be thought it would be a good idea to assign me to a game that might require a…softer touch than they were used to employing. Luckily for them, the translator I was working with (Doh) tends to name his home bases in our prep games things like “Biscuit Farm” while mine skirt more sinister ground as “Blood Gulch” and “Boneyard.” So in that sense they got at least one soft touch, though not from me.

In localizing a game you have to always keep in mind that you’re trying to make it accessible and palatable to the fans. To do this it’s best to set the tone beforehand and have a general compromise on how the story is going to flow. We do this by playing the Japanese version first and getting a feel for it. And, as no one in this office can really lay any claim to being normal, we also follow strict guidelines that generally keep us from inserting inappropriate David Hasselhoff jokes or over-abusing the phrase, “lovely coconuts.”

For Rune, Doh and I made additional compromises early on in the editing stage. He was to be severely limited in his use of the word “awesome” in the dialogue (as it wasn’t exactly RPG canon), while I had to steer clear of any references to the disturbing nature of some of the accessories in the game (see here ?)[ ] and inappropriate readings of the word “strawberry” (I still managed to sneak one in though so please try and find it!).

Between Doh’s avid delight in pursuing the game’s girls and my own monomaniacal approach to the game (making money through farming, fishing, and selling Runeys into slavery, in this case), Rune Factory actually ended up pretty balanced.

This is how we approach all our titles, and thus what you’ll see in the upcoming game is an honest effort for Rune to retain its original essence, but with a bit of quirk where we could coax it out.

On that note I’ll cut off here and hopefully still have some people at this point to say to…

Next time on the Rune Factory Frontier blog… To the OCD farmer in us all."

Haha that blog post was pretty funny.

I forgot all about this game. Might purchase it sometime in the next few days.

Picked up my copy today. It's probably going to be hard to track one down: I had to go to four separate stores, and even then I snagged the last copy. To those of you who are interested and haven't picked this up yet, good luck!

Oh....I was really considering buying this game. But I just bought Madworld yesterday and feel guilty for buying another game the next week XD
I really want it, though. But if I won't be able to find it quickly, then I can wait.

Check out the review at IGN, they gave it 83%!! Urgh, when is the game going to drop in my mailbox.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/963/963797p1.html

Buy this game people! If you can't find it with your local stores, which are too stupid to buy in great games like this one, check online retailers like CDuniverse, Gamestop, Ebgames, Videogamesplus.ca (Canada, where I bought mine), they sure have the game in stock.

Thanks a bunch! Updating the OP.

And my personal impressions: fun game so far. The complaint about it being unclear how to get new tools is valid, but I found them all by the end of the first week (except the fishing rod, which you can't get until the second week), so it's not like they're buried away or anything. For people who are curious, here's a brief how-to:

Axe: Speak to Stella in the evening when she's at the tavern (after 9 PM)

Sickle: After harvesting some crops, speak to Erik.

Hammer: Get to the Whale Dungeon, and pass the first room. In the second you'll find Melody, who will not only give you a hammer, but move into town and open the invaluable hot spring (100% HP/RP restore for only 10 gold).

Pet Glove: After going to a dungeon, speak to Kross.

Fishing pole: Talk to Cinnamon when she's fishing. The creek near your home seems to be her preferred spot.

And for those who have played the game a bit, is there a more reliable way to get iron ore than random monster drops?

Just like last game, break rocks in the dungeon (not the ones on the field) with the hammer. The nice thing is one hammer swing will break up multiple rocks in one shot. The annoying thing is you still have to go through the 2-3 second animation to pick up each individual object.

Oh and the economy does not seem to be broken from mining anymore, an extra level in an item only adds 20% to the base value instead of 100%, and the different ores don't scale up insanely in value too.

Thanks DKII. I just assumed that, like those in the overworld, you needed an upgraded hammer to break those rocks. This should make things much easier!