NIS America promises that Trails and Ys RPG players won't need to wait as long for future English releases. 'We want this timeline to be shortened'

Few gamers have had to develop patience as much as Japanese RPG fans. Nihon Falcom Ys has traditionally taken over a full year to get an official English translation. Ys 10 Nordics is set to launch three months faster than its predecessor Ys 9 Monstrum Nox compared to the respective Japanese release. Publisher NIS America believes it's an indication of things to come.

During a digital showcase of Ys 10 Nordics, I asked NIS America's Alan Costa if in the future we can expect faster turnarounds for RPGs like this. His response was simple: "Yes."

Costa said that they have been working hard on localizing [Falcom games] faster. "We announced that Trails Through Daybreak 2 will be released next year. This is a significant reduction in the timeline we used for Trails games. As you can probably guess based upon the timing of this title, we also worked on Ys 10 simultaneously.

The Trails series is also developed Nihon Falcom and has a reputation of being difficult to localize because each game contains a large amount of text. Many fans of the series were therefore surprised when NIS America announced that Trails Through Daybreak 2 will be released in early 2025. It announced the news one day after Trails Through Daybreak was released worldwide.

Costa said that "you can expect [a wait period] because these games are released in Japan, and we license them." "But we want to reduce that timeline."

Costa said that quality was the most important factor, regardless of how quickly NIS America could localize a game.

"We want to get [games] released as quickly as we can, but we don't want to sacrifice the quality of localization... We've been working hard on finding that balance for years, and we are getting better." We hope to continue seeing a shorter time between the launch of [games] in Japan and their release in North America and Europe.

It's only natural that NIS America would prioritize translation quality, especially with the Ys Series. NIS America's first Ys localization was 2017's Ys 8 Lacrimosa of Dana. The game received so much criticism over its English script that NIS America retranslated it. Ys 8's PC port had a number of issues when it was launched, and the company decided to enlist Peter "Durante” Thoman to oversee the series' PC ports going forward.

NIS America seems to have erred on caution in order to avoid another controversy such as Ys 8 but is now rebalancing its balance towards output. The positive reception Trails Through Daybreak received since last month is a promising sign.