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What Skills ACTUALLY Do (Fixing Bad Translations)

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2023-03-21 10:13:49

Introduction

As you may have realised, some of the skills in Octopath Traveler 2 don't do what they say they do. I've gone through all the combat and support skills in both English and Japanese and compiled a list of the most egregious offenders.

While I would personally rewrite most of the skills (changing stuff like enfeebling effects to debuffs), I will try my best to limit this list to only the worst mistranslations. Fixes will endeavour to be as close to the EN localisation's style and terminology as possible. However, some are so bad that I had to include phrasing more faithful to the original JP text to fix them.

This is not an exhaustive list. If you've discovered anything else that seems mistranslated, leave a comment and I'll add it to the list.

Updated as of 2023/03/21.

Overview (AKA TL;DR)

This is a quick list of the skills with fixed descriptions (and occasionally titles). If you want to see what was changed or why it was changed, head to the next section.

Ochette/HunterSupport Skill: Heighten Senses (Gain an increased chance of attacking with initiative. (Equipping multiple characters with this skill will have no added effect.))

Castti/ApothecaryEX Skill: Remedy (Grant random allies positive effects 3 times.)

Throné/ThiefEX Skill: Veil of Darkness (Deal dark-based damage to all foes, and make them miss their next physical attack with a 100% success rate.)

EX Skill: Disguise (Disguise yourself as a single ally for 2 turns.)

Osvald/ScholarSupport Skill: Advanced Magic Master (When the equipping character boosts the intensity of a character's spells, they grant an additional instance of the buff.)

Partitio/MerchantEX Skill: Share SP (Grant all allies 25% of your remaining SP.)

EX Skill: Negotiate Schedule (Pay a single foe to let you act during one of their turns.)

Temenos/ClericEX Skill: Prayer for Plenty (Restore HP to a single ally, granting them HP beyond the maximum if they are at or below max HP.)

Support Skill: Resilience (Raises the amount of HP restored by the equipping character when healing.)

Hikari/WarriorCombat Skill: Enervating Strike (Nullify all positive status effects on yourself, then unleash a sword attack. The more effects you nullify, the more potent the attack.)

Learned Skill: Divine Protection (Grant a single ally 1 instance of invincibility.)

InventorCombat Skill: Elemental Bomb Bottle (Deal the same type of damage as a single foe’s exposed elemental weak points 1 time per weakness.)

Support Skill: A Step Ahead (The equipping character will act with initiative.)

ArmsmasterCombat Skill: Dancer’s Blade: Mischievous Step Dance

This is a dance for the purposes of Agnea's Talent.Support Skill: Arms Refinement (Fills the equipping character’s latent power gauge when exploiting an enemy’s weak point with a weapon.)

ConjurerDivine Skill: BP Boost (Increases a single ally’s passive BP regeneration to 2 BP per turn for 3 turns.)

ItemsHerb of Revival Consciousness (Cures a single ally of unconsciousness)

Detailed Explanations

Everything below in bullet points includes my rationale, alternate translations, and additional information.

[Formatting] Type of Skill: Skill Name (Original EN localisation. My revisions.)

Ochette/HunterSupport Skill: Heighten Senses (Gain an increased chance of attacking first in battle with initiative. (Equipping multiple characters with this skill will have no added effect.))

The terminology of “initiative” is seen in other parts of the EN localisation to indicate getting an extra turn at the start of battle, during which enemies are unable to act.

Castti/ApothecaryEX Skill: Remedy (Grant a random ally 3 positive status effects Grant random allies positive effects 3 times.)

To be clear, this skill at no boost involves Castti taking 3 buffs and applying them to allies at random.

The original EN translation, when read properly, states that Castti will give a random singular ally 3 buffs—this is incorrect, especially compared to the wording of skills like Scholar's Elemental Barrage.

It also states that she will only give positive status effects—this is also incorrect. The skill actually includes what seems to be most (if not all) positive effects, from 1 turn of physical attack up (i.e. an attribute-raising effect, AKA a stat buff) to multiple turns of Sealtigce’s Seduction (i.e. a positive status effect).

Throné/ThiefEX Skill: Veil of Darkness (Deal dark-based damage to all foes, and dodge 1 physical attack make them miss their next physical attack with a 100% success rate.)

Literal translation: "Deal dark elemental damage to all enemies, and grant them 1 instance of an effect causing them to be guaranteed to miss a physical attack."EX Skill: Disguise (Disguise yourself as a single ally for 2 turns.)

Osvald/ScholarSupport Skill: Advanced Magic Master (Raises the number of times the equipping character can use more intense spells by 1 When the equipping character boosts the intensity of a character's spells, they grant an additional instance of the buff.)

These are my localised versions of some of Osvald's skills, which borrow from Pokémon terminology:

Combat Skill: Advanced Magic (Boosts the intensity of a single ally’s spells 2 times Grant a single ally 2 instances of the "Great Magic" buff.)

Divine Skill: Alephan's Wisdom ([Divine Skill] Greatly boosts the intensity of a single ally’s spells 3 times Grant a single ally 3 instances of the "Hyper Magic" buff.)

Support Skill: Advanced Magic Master (Raises the number of times the equipping character can use more intense spells by 1 When the equipping character grants instances of "Great Magic" or "Hyper Magic", they grant an additional instance.)

A literal translation isn't possible without sounding really wonky. Here's a fairly literal translation of Advanced Magic: "Grant a single ally 2 instances of the effect of used "Magic" being "Turned Big/Bigified"."

Partitio/MerchantEX Skill: Share SP (Grant a single ally all allies 25% of your remaining SP.)

EX Skill: Negotiate Schedule (Pay a single foe to let you act during one of their turns.)

Temenos/ClericEX Skill: Prayer for Plenty (Restore HP to a single ally, ignoring their max HP granting them HP beyond the maximum if they are at or below max HP.)

"ignoring their max HP" seems extremely vague and fails to address the fact that this skill only works when the target is at or below max HP.

Considering Armsmaster's Peak Performance is capable of describing "at or above max HP", it's really weird how the localisers didn't think it was important to translate 最大ＨＰ以下のとき to "when at or below max HP" for this skill.Support Skill: Resilience (Raises the amount of HP restored to by the equipping character when healed healing.)

Literal translation: "The equipping person's HP healing skills' healing amount increases".

Hikari/WarriorCombat Skill: Enervating Strike (Nullify all positive status effects on a single foe yourself, then unleash a sword attack. The more status effects you nullify, the more potent the attack.)

“Enervating” only works in the mistranslation. There’s no real good way to translate the 無心 part of 無心の太刀 in a single word, but "Blade of Clear Mind" and "Zen Blade" are options.Learned Skill: Divine Protection (Grant a single ally 1 turn instance of invincibility.)

The NPC for this is at the podium of Canalbrine's church.

InventorCombat Skill: Elemental Bomb Bottle (Deal the same type of damage as a single foe’s exposed elemental weak points 1 time per weakness.)

Support Skill: A Step Ahead (The equipping character will act first at the start of battle with initiative.)

I already mentioned this during Hunter’s Heighten Senses, but “initiative” is terminology used elsewhere to indicate getting an extra turn at the start of battle during which enemies are unable to act.

One thing to note is that, even if only one character has this skill, BP regeneration activates on the next turn of battle, effectively making it like you have Merchant's Boost Start on all your characters for free.

Armsmaster This is "Weapon Master" in Japanese.Combat Skill: Dancer’s Blade: Mischievous Step Dance

This clarification is relevant for Agnea's Talent.

You can argue that "Step" used in this context is clearly a dance, but the original text made it explicit that Agnea's「舞」系のアビリティ([Dance]-type Abilities) trigger effects from people she's Allured. You can see how 舞 is in Japan's version of quotation marks, which is a clear attempt at being unambiguous about which abilities are affected.Support Skill: Arms Refinement (Fills the equipping character’s latent power gauge when exploiting an enemy’s weak point with a weapon.)

Elemental damage doesn’t count. Yes, "with a weapon" was clarified in the original JP text.

Ritualist This is "Black Magician" or "Heretic" in Japanese.

Conjurer This is "Exorcist" in Japanese.Divine Skill: BP Boost ([Divine Skill] Grant a single ally 2 BP at the start of every turn for 3 turns Increases a single ally’s passive BP regeneration to 2 BP per turn for 3 turns.)

The original EN localisation suggests you get an extra 2 BP per turn.

I localised this skill to what it actually does (i.e. even with this buff, you still regenerate 0 BP the turn after you use BP).

A more literal translation: “Secret technique. To a single ally, grant an effect that increases BP per turn to 2 for 3 turns.”

ItemsHerb of Revival Consciousness (Revives a single unconscious ally Cures a single ally of unconsciousness.)

Very vague. "Revive" is generally reserved for bringing back characters who have gone to 0 HP.

気絶 is usually translated as “Stunned” in these types of games. Along with, you know, the swirling stars above their heads.

Extremely Pedantic

Note: You shouldn't read this part. It's very, very pedantic.

Note: You should really skip this part and head for the conclusion. Trust me.

OchettePath Action: Provoke Sic

"Sic" is an interesting word because the animal can either be the subject in imperative sentences (e.g. "Sic 'em, boy!") or the direct object in most other situations (e.g. "John sicced the dog on Caleb".).

This does not apply to "Provoke". Imagine if a character had a Path Action that was "Throw", where they throw rocks at people to knock them out. Now imagine if the prompt for the Path Action said, "Throw this individual?" Grammatically speaking, that is exactly what "Provoke this individual?" is.

If you think "Sic" is too informal, I would like to note that this game localised 強奪 (Robbery) as "Mug".Path Action: Befriend Tame

The Japanese writers obviously named the Path Action where Ochette offers meat to people Tame because it's funny seeing a kemonomimi "tame" a human. She even says いい子いい子 to people she Tames, which translates to "Good boy, good boy" (or "Good girl, good girl", depending on gender). I feel that this fits very well with Ochette's personality.

... Unless the localisers thought a kemonomimi Taming humans was too offensive for some reason?

TemenosPath Action: Coerce Expose

Here are some example sentences for 暴く.[jisho.org] Consider for yourself if "Coerce" is a good translation for it.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this saves some of you the frustration of trying to figure out which skills were mistranslated.

Of the 84 combat skills, 12 Divine Skills, 16 EX Skills, and 48 Support Skills, these are the ones that stood out most to me. If you feel there are any other skills among the aforementioned that should be added to the list—or if there are items, equipment, monster skills, or learned skills you believe are mistranslated—leave a comment. I'll check it out and add it to the list if it's mistranslated or overly ambiguous.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2949942178

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