Life Bottle Productions, the volunteer fan group responsible for translating and remastering numerous games in the Tales series, has just announced the 1.0 release of its Tales of Rebirth PS2 translation.
Tales of Rebirth, in case you're unaware, is the sixth entry in the long-running series that originally began way back in 1995 with Wolf Team's 1995 Super Famicom title Tales of Phantasia. It was released for the PS2 exclusively in Japan in 2004, and later also received an expanded port for the PlayStation Portable in 2008, with extra story scenes and option battle arena (though again, this version also sadly never saw an English localization).
The game focused on the adventure of a young orphan named Veigue Lungberg, who, alongside a bunch of other humans, inherits magical powers following the death of the King Ladras, in an event that comes to be referred to as the "Dusk of Ladras".
Initially struggling to control his newfound abilities, the young boy accidentally freezes his best friend Claire, causing word of his powers to travel to a pair of runaway knights who undo his spell, only for Claire to then be kidnapped by members of the Four Stars — a group of generals acting on behalf of the royal advisor and central antagonist Zilva Madigan. Throughout, the game notably deals with themes of coexistence and conflict between different ethnic groups, which was a theme that was reportedly inspired by Masaki Hiramatu's (the scenario writer) past experiences travelling to the former country of Yugoslavia.
Life Bottle Productions first announced its intentions to finally provide English-speaking fans of the series with a translation back in December 2021, on the 17th anniversary of the PS2 game. This then led to a 0.9 BETA release in December 2024, which has since been polished up and finished this year for this more recent 1.0 release.
Among those responsible for the patch include the project creator and lead translator SymphoniaLauren, as well as the project lead and UI translator Pegi. In addition to them, there were also various other volunteers who helped translate the full game into English (the full list of which can be viewed here).
Here's what you can expect from this latest version:
-Fixed bug that would cause sidequest flags to become unset.
-Fixed bug where subtitles in the "Speech" FMV would cause a game crash on hardware.
-Fixed first memory card message appearing as black screen.
-Fixed font palette issues.
-In-battle subs code has been rewritten to display code in chat log style; no more disappearing subtitles.
-Geyorkias's subtitles now correctly map to the correct voice lines.
-Various typo and consistency fixes.
-Anikamal save bug (present in the original game) has been fixed.
-Menu background during pause display bug (present in the original game) has been fixed.
If you fancy giving the patch a try, you can download it now from the ROM Hack website Romhack.ing or the project's GitHub page.