Bravely Second's localization is a real hatchet job that has been leaking to us piecemeal. First they altered the Tomahawk job class, they started covering more skin in the character costumes, and finally they are censoring art in the art book. No, I'm not arguing that we should see sexy costumes as art and complain they're covering the girls up: They are literally removing art from art books. This is actual art censorship we're talking about. Will these stereotypical censorship villains try to put pants on Michelangelo's David next?
Just when you thought it couldn't get anymore ridiculous, the latest localization failure falls upon us with the grace of a cow dropped from an airplane. Unfortunately, this time it isn't a joke, entire story lines have been removed from the game so that players can only receive one outcome:
"They removed all the non-neutral sidequest/Asterisk quest outcomes; any choices that would cause characters to die have been removed. Whatever choice you make now, you'll receive the neutral outcome where both sides make it out ok. Compare this to the Japanese versions where you had 4 different outcomes, with VOICED cutscenes!" [Source]
Wonderful, now there are no sad or bittersweet storylines, and your choices don't matter. Just what people want in all their RPGs. What a brilliant decision on the part of the localization team.
As some of you may be wondering, Nintendo is the company publishing Bravely Second in the West.
