No gaming community has had to learn more patience than Japanese RPG fans. Series like Nihon Falcom's "Ys" usually take a year or more to get an official English translation. However, the latest in the series, "Ys 10: Nordic," will be released worldwide three months earlier than its predecessor, "Ys 9: Monstrumnox. According to publisher NIS America, this is a sign of things to come.

At a recent digital showcase for "Ys 10: Nordic," I had the opportunity to ask Alan Costa of NIS America if we should expect to see such RPGs translated more quickly in the future. His answer was, "Yes."

"I can't speak specifically to what we've done internally to achieve that, but I can say that we've been working hard to localize [Falcom games] more quickly," Costa explained. It was recently announced that "Trails of Dawn 2" will be released next year, which is a much shorter schedule than we used for the "Trails" games. And as you can guess from the timing of this game, we were also working on Ys 10 at the same time."

The "Locus" series, also developed by Nihon Falcom, has a reputation for being difficult to localize due to the enormous amount of text. Therefore, many fans were surprised to see NIS America announce that "Trails of Dawn 2" would be released in early 2025; NIS America announced this news just one day after "Trails of Dawn" was released worldwide.

"Given the fact that these games are being released in Japan and that we are the licensee, it is expected [that there will be a wait]. But we are hoping to shorten that timeline."

Nevertheless, Costa stressed that regardless of how quickly NIS America can localize a particular game, quality is a top priority.

"We want to get [the games] out as quickly as possible, but not at the expense of localization quality. So we hope that the time between the release in Japan and the release in North America and Europe will be shortened and that a high level of (localization) quality will be maintained."

"We are very pleased with the quality of the localization,"

especially with the quality of the game.

It is natural for NIS America to focus on translation quality, especially when it comes to the Ys series; 2017's Ys 8: The Treasures of Dana was the first Ys game localized by NIS America, and in the face of criticism over its English script, the company retranslated the entire game. In addition to this, the PC port of Ys 8 encountered some problems at launch, leading the company to ask Peter "Durante" Toman to handle future PC ports of the series.

NIS America has been on the cautious side to avoid another Ys 8-like controversy, but now seems to be tilting the balance toward output. The warm reception Trails Through Daybreak has received over the last month seems to be a promising sign.