They need to do a lot more market research, and get some better people in both their PR and editing departments. I can’t say I’m all that impressed with how unprofessional they’ve been thus far. Here’s to hoping they live up to their word and get those fixes and changes their claiming done. Hopefully things really will change, now that plenty of feedback has been forced on them.
Well, I did say that my hypothetical figures left something to be desired.
Given what I have seen, they have until Da Capo comes out to get their house in some semblance of order. I get the feeling from what I’ve observed here that it will be the title that makes or breaks them.
Despite the absolutely horrible translation, I have to say I’m really enjoying Edelweiss. It reminds me a fair bit of Hourglass of Summer (but I do find Edelweiss a lot funnier. I actually laughed out loud at a few scenes, and games rarely make me laugh). In fact, Mizuki Hinata’s path is extremely similar to Mana Kawamura’s from Hourglass of Summer. I’m glad Edelweiss is not a sex romp (I don’t enjoy them).
Anyway, I have a couple of questions.
Is there an English walkthrough for Edelweiss anywhere? Mangagamer isn’t providing one. I’ve finished all six endings I think, but I don’t have all the CGs yet. So I’m a bit confused.
Can someone provide their review/opinion of Which Girl Should I Choose? Is it a slice of life game, sex romp, or something else? Is the game short?
TIA
If you want a funny game, try Snow Sakura. 
I don’t believe there’s an English walkthrough out there, but I could probably just make one based on a Japanese walkthrough. I’d just have to fast forward through everything to get the correct English wording for each choice.
From what I gathered from Japanese reviews, it’s a more story-based game, but it’s extremely short.
Ok, it seems like the Japanese walkthroughs don’t correspond to the actual game well. I cross-referenced two of them and the events didn’t happen like they said they would, so after a lot of trial and error, I corrected it.
Here’s a walkthrough to get all CGs. This isn’t a walkthrough you use if you want the most conversations/events with your desired character.
[spoiler=Edelweiss walkthrough]Haruka:
<Save 1>
Eat Haruka’s lunch box.
Ask Ran.
Find Mizuki.
Pick Mei.
Nobody.
Because you are my friend.
I’m going to hang out with Ran.
Haruka.
Go see Haruka.
Your parents found your poem
<Save 2>
Listen to what they are talking about.
Mizuki:
<Load save 2>
Ignore them.
You started to write poems all the sudden.
<Save 3>
Can’t lend her.
<Save 4>
Leave them alone.
Collarbone
<Save 5>
Wait a minute.
Help her get out of this.
Ran:
<Load save 3>
Lend her.
Natsume:
<Load save 4>
Find her.
Mei:
<Load save 1>
Borrow lunch money from Mei.
<After getting CG, load save 5>
<Save 6>
Of course she can.
Normal:
<Load save 6>
Wait a minute.
Based mainly on http://g-seeker.net/game/a/edelweiss.html[/spoiler]
That’s ominous. Does anyone know if the walkthrus DO correspond to the Japanese version? That would mean they’d changed more than we thought.
I own it.
Thank you very much for the walkthrough and for your opinion on Which Girl should I Choose. 
It’s just the timing of the choices didn’t match up with the Japanese guides. I believe all the choices were still there. The Japanese guide even mentions that some of the choices don’t always appear at the time indicated, though it happened to me a lot more than the Japanese guide indicated.
It could just mean the game randomizes events more than previously thought. Someone else should go through the game using my guide and see if the choices match up.
Or the guide could have just been poorly written…
I say the game could have been poorly ported.
No. Wait. It WAS poorly ported. Nevermind.
Everyday that this drama with Mangagamer continues, I can’t help but be astounded at how the proverbial wisdom of “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” was forgotten. I’m no business major (hell, I’m no major in anything) but isn’t one of the first rules of business to know your customer? Given what I’ve seen so far, I can’t help but get the feeling that the company is headed by suits without any passion for our hobby, unlike Peter Payne whose passion is readily apparent.
Well if the worst case occurs, we can only hope PP (or a similar company) will aquire their game catalogue if they go under. Then improve them and sell them properly (with hardcopies and such).
But the translation is effectively their only product. They are selling a visual novel, the quality of writing is pretty much THE selling point … and theirs sucks. So this means Edelweiss could have been even better, but they bungled it, so now it’s only good. That’s honestly sad.
Indeed, it looks like MG looked at this market as “anime porn”, i.e., “no one’s going to be looking at the translation when there’s nekkid anime girls on the screen!” It’s showing in their sloppy translation and their game marketing (Edelweiss isn’t a sex romp, but the marketing sure made it sound like that…). Clearly, someone didn’t do their market research homework.
I’m not sure it’s going to get better because the concept of h-games = anime porn might be so ingrained that it’s impossible for them to think outside that box. It’s sort of like convincing someone that you really DID buy that Playboy magazine to read the articles… Only time will tell, I suppose.
Except that it isn’t— unless it’s pop culture. The “study” that claimed Wikipedia was “almost” as accurate of Britannica turned out to have been critically flawed. For instance, it didn’t actually compare Wikipedia articles against Britannica articles— it had compared Wikipedia articles against WIkipedia articles, it failed to record the number of errors their auditors actually found in the Wikipedia articles, etc.
Britannica spent considerable amount of time trying to drag out which of its material was used, and that was fought by the study people for a long time. It was in that fight that Britannica discovered all the errors.
If you want to know about game characters or pokemon, it is certainly a fantastic source. But beyond that? Best to take what it says with a ton of salt.
Sorry about going off topic—
Anyways, with MangaGamer saying 5 activations, well, that is enough for me to be comfortable enough with their DRM to actually buy some of their products. I’d prefer unlimited, of course— for those rare games that I love so much, I “reinstall” once every 2 years or so and play again. Of course, that “reinstall” may be on a new machine— I do upgrade my game machine from time to time. But I guess for those instances, I’d just go get a cracked version of my purchased game or use a virtual machine with one of my last remaining activations/installations and preserve that image for future re-use.
So right now, I’m holding back to see just how bad my fellow game enthusiusts find the translations. If it is really that horrible, I’ll pass on giving them my money unless their is a game that is just so good, it shines through despite the bad translation. That, I’m sure, we’d hear about.
So, have they said anything or responded in regards to these translations issues yet?
Look man, as crappy their translations have been, you’re going to have to chill if you feel the need to take it out on a random poster. I don’t appreciate having my post quoted with a snarky response.
I went against my better judgment and purchased Edelweiss considering the recent response from Mangagamer about issuing further activations once your five were used up.
Needless to say, the game itself is great, and I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys a decent story, it drove me to get the Japanese version. However… As has already been pointed out from demo’s and others, the translations are -really- bad in some areas. Making matters worse, their editing is beyond terrible. I can’t really even recall how many times I saw ‘eye rids’ and various other Engrish type mistakes. As others have said, the naming is an extreme issue as well. Not only because they reverse the first and last names, but because they have absolutely no consistency with it, not to mention 30% of the time they weren’t even using the right person’s name. Entire lines being left untranslated or being summarized as “wow thanks!”. You can also tell that multiple translators were used, and this is again a fault on their editing, because they had no real consistency. Most times you can just simply over look things like this to enjoy a game, but this… It’s so glaringly obvious there was little to no editing done, and the translators were extremely lax and lazy… Maybe it’s just me, but I have an issue with ‘Baka’ being translated into ‘You son of a bitch’ just to give an example.
All in all, as I said the game itself was great, aside from the fact Rin and Sakura’s paths are in the soon to be released fan disk which probably wont be translated. At any rate, I wont be wasting anymore money on Mangagamer unless there is -serious- improvement. Da Capo may be their saving grace provided they can get their act together before it’s released, otherwise, I can’t say I see them lasting very long unless the company that’s backing them continues to do so despite their profit/cost ratio.
Either way, here’s to hoping they get their act together and help further the English market.
You were criticizing the quality of a Japanese walkthrough, based on the accuracy of the English version. Given all the evidence we’ve seen, the walkthrough is more likely correct and the Westernized game is off. I strongly disagreed with your “random post” because of that. I was heavy handed in my response, because you yourself have been heavy handed in the past with your comments as well – not to mention your forum name can be construed as condescending and insulting, so I assumed you were as thick skinned as OLF and myself ¬ñ to which we take such comments in stride. If you took personal offense to my reply, that was not my intent.
“My sex slave is a classmate” is already available today
http://novelnews.net/2008/07/18/updates-on-mangagamer/
(also talks about their DRM system in a bit more detail)