Legend of Door: Translation Notes and More
This translation was handled entirely by me (NingenDesu) with some additional playtesting and QA provided by fellow Patchy Illusion Team members Hong and Amber. It is the result of nearly two and a half years of labor.
Along the way, I encountered personal hardship as well as complications with regards to its creation, but nothing could match the pain I felt losing one of my dearest friends, Paolo. Even worse after learning he was a victim of suicide. Although he was not involved in its production, he was such an important force in my life for so many years, and without him, I surely wouldn't be writing this right now. I dedicate this work to him. Please rest in peace, my good friend.
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"Lance"
Lance's name (and perhaps his laugh) is indeed a reference to the legendary Rance series. While you could argue keeping "Rance" is a good idea to remain faithful to the English translations for that series, he is one who stays true to his name by using lances as weapons, and he even has a son named Pike, so it's clearly not JUST referencing Rance, which is a title I believe was chosen moreso for copyright reasons than accuracy-based ones. Plus, he is such a different character that you could interpret this decision in a meta sense, where it's Rance, but "corrected." Both in terms of the translation (in my personal view), and that he's depicted as a genuinely good, morally upstanding guy, far from “rancid.”
"Tremmers"
Yes, this is a reference to the movie Tremors. The spelling was just to make it feel distinct and more like an actual name.
"Balto"
Reference to the famous dog of the same name.
"Fortmaneaux"
More "accurately" rendered as Fatimanix, but I liked this as a connection to the word portmanteau.
"Lu-sis"
In the original, Elle calls Lucia "おねえちゃん" (Onee-chan), which is clearly meant to mirror Anna's "お姉ちゃん". The difference is that Anna's version contains the kanji for sister (姉), but Elle's does not, implying a distance. I think this works in English as a way of showing how Elle is "insisting" their closeness through a forced nickname. Meanwhile, Anna just calls Lucia whatever she wants.
"Midas Island"
The island where the Free Market is held is called カリマッカ (Kalimakka), which is a play on an Osakan phrase roughly equivalent to: "Hey! Gettin' your money up?"
"Champollio Library"
I believe this is referencing Jean-François Champollion.
"Grom"
Grom's species, the Brownie, is actually based on real Scottish folklore. He doesn't say "lassie" for no reason!
"AVOCADOOO!"
Sometimes enemies will say "Tawaba!" or "Hidebuu!!" When they get beaten easily by Lucia. This is a reference to Fist of the North Star's various death screams. ひでぶ is just a messed up version of いてぇよ, or 'ouch!' As a result, I decided to occasionally go a bit wacky with these, as you might imagine.
"The Red Heroes"
There is a good chance that Ly, and the concept of a "Hero of Red" more broadly, is a reference to Falcom's Ys series, specifically the character Adol. There are probably other Falcom references, but I'm too stupid to notice them.
Translation Changes
There were a few minor errors made by the game's developer (Denjirou) that I decided to go ahead and fix. This included names not matching who was speaking on occasion, as well as some instances of forgetting to remove the face graphic for Lucia.
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Additional Notes
This game underwent massive changes over the years through content updates by the developer. Its final version (v.5.12) was released in 2014, seven years after release. Here are a few notable tidbits:
- Friendship Events did not exist until v2.0.
- Many CGs did not exist until v3.0+.
- The Gallery Point system did not exist until v3.0+.
- Fortune Event EX did not exist until v3.0+.
- The Hanger Rank Up system did not exist until v4.0+.
- The party member to have received the most nerfs is Rain. This is funny because she's still arguably the best character in the game.
- The airship used to be slower.