A good post about the various problems in localization. There's a lot of stuff that just has to be adapted because a literal translation either makes no sense or seems really off to to English speakers. Like the way Japanese so often uses verbal tics as character quirks--having all Zora constantly end their sentences with "-zora," all Goron end their sentences with "-goro", all Deku Scrubs end their sentences with "-pi", and so on would be unbelievably annoying after just a few minutes of dialogue (and even less if voice acted!), but it's very common in Japanese RPGs. About the only one I can think of that actually has acceptance is the moogles' "kupo!"

My trajectory was definitely from these games are fun! -> Wait, they come from Japan? -> What's the original like? -> This must be an inferior translation, I want the literal translation...except there I broke the chain because that's about the point where I moved to Japan and started learning Japanese, which I now speak well enough to play games in (as long as it's not native-speed talking in cutscenes with no subtitles), and what it's taught me is that sometimes--and especially in more recent games--the localization is better. Localizers are way better at coming up with grandiose RPG language that sounds good to a native English-speaker than literally-translated Japanese is.