Playing CS4 now, and I'm glad it has a lot has Japanese audio, because it lets me glimpse into how extreme the localization is. Some of it is whatever, a lot of making up entire conversations out of simple routine Japanese responses, but I guess they don't like the redundancy of conversational Japanese. Sounds like you know Japanese, so I'm not telling you anything new.

I wish I could read Japanese better, as I can only imagine what is going on with most of the text, but I just don't have the drive to learn to read Japanese beyond my basic level. Even if I knew all the Kanji, I don't think I'd ever be fast, which would make a JRPG miserable to play.

Sounds like they all suck then. I'm still way back at the beginning of the Trails series in games that were translated a decade ago. Will see what I do when I catch up to Zero. Played about half the Ys games, but totally scattered anywhere from Ys I to IX. I think IX being the only NIS one, but I'm only a few hours in it. Funny though you mention NIS and memes, they've probably been doing too much Disgaea, which I think is at least intended to have bad humor. In the end though, I guess it's a rock and a hard place because the choices are learn Japanese or quit all new games entirely, because when it comes down to it I think my interest in Western games hovers around 0.001% of new releases now.