I took the liberty of looking up what was changed, just in case I didn’t give it a fair shake. I shouldn’t have bothered.
Seriously, dude? Instead of the self-help booklet, we get this garbage? How could you even consider this piece of shit translation?
It takes itself way to damned seriously. Not only does it look boring, it’s riddled with errors, grammatical and otherwise:
The original names may have worked for Japan, but they sound ridiculous in English. There was a reason that it’s Kefka and not Cefka- it’s clear that it’s pronounced with a hard kuh sound. If he was called Cefka, I’d think se, which just sounds silly. Furthermore, if you look at the list of the things that he changed, he really doesn’t understand how a translation is supposed to work. Instead of lore he said “Memorized Technique?” Now, I’m leaving Strago on the airship regardless what the Hell you call his skill, but if you look up lore in the dictionary, wouldn’t it be a much less cumbersome way of saying something memorized?
Yeah, I understand the complaints that FFVI was censored blah blah blah, but isn’t “Son of a submariner” much more INTERESTING than saying son of a bitch? Something I noticed when re-playing FFVI: [spoiler]Kefka’s comic veneer makes him more menacing. He’s a hidden threat. Up until Doma, you think that he’s just a rotten henchman, a silly little nothing. The sudden change is shocking. If we take him completely seriously, as Sky Render seems to be doing, he becomes completely ineffective. He’s just a flat psychopath. Boring. If this is a faithful translation, I’m glad Woolsey took the liberties that he did, because I wouldn’t take a straight Kefka any more seriously than Exdeath.
Let’s put it this way: what’s more frightening? A generic villain who says something like “You have outlived your usefulness. Now, die!” or one that can call General Leo a “violent brute” while simultaneously snuffing his life out? My favorite character moment for Kefka is one a lot of people think is stupid. In the same scene that he speaks of poisoning Doma, he gets into a few “fights” with Sabin and Shadow. When you hit him, he jumps up, and Sabin says “Wait.” Kefka says, “Wait? Do I look like a waiter?” The line itself is stupid, but it’s actually messed up if you think about it. The same guy who orders genocide one moment makes bad puns the next. I’m not sure if that’s what Woolsey was aiming for, but that’s what it comes across to me. It shows his complete disregard for human life even more than the act of genocide itself.[/spoiler]
It’s sort of like a giant forum where people edit the same post instead of posting new ones.