Hello everyone,
Let me introduce myself: I'm MP83 and I'm a Xak-holic.
I've played and beaten pretty much all versions of Xak games ever released, with the exception of the X68000 and FM-Towns ports of Xak II (since they're pretty much just direct ports, the latter just having CD-audio music and voice-acting during the opening), as well as any Japan-exclusive mobile versions. Beside just playing and finishing all these games, I have also made portrait comparisons images for all of them, if anyone is interested seeing differences between different versions of the games (there's many interesting changes here and there).
I was really excited yesterday when I heard from a friend that the SFC version received an English fan-translation (already finished it with this translation too, hahah), because it's one of my most favorite version of the first game. It has some unique features not found from any other version, but still managing to stay true to the original, including all the nice little details. Here's what it has but other versions doesn't:
* Attack button / sword swinging system (the original had bumping, similar to Ys I-II)
* Mayor of Fearless gives you 700g instead of the usual 600g (so you can get one magic enhancement in the beginning, for instance)
* The overworld map has roads, so you can more easily navigate.
* Tower of Zeglard has unique tileset graphics (other versions just re-uses the underground cave tiles)
* Latok's armor changes looks visually right before the final battle
Anyway, I'm not here just to brag. I actually wanted to give my thanks to the people making this English translation possible, so... thank you very much.
You made this version of the game even more enjoyable to experience. I also want to give my feedback on things to improve upon even more, because there's some issues, one which is pretty big:
* Inconsistency: Badou is once referenced as Badu in the intro.
* Whenever Latok gets an item, the "You've obtained..." message is broken up in two parts, with a button press required to see the second part, which then disappear quickly on its own (unlike in the original ROM)
* Typo: Pixie after you've defeated Zwoon, says: "That monster appeared suddenly and STARTING to attacking the village."
* When fighting with the elemental bosses, one of text boxes closes suddenly automatically, giving the player very time to react and most likely gets them killed (unlike in the original ROM).
* Typo(?): Rune when first meeting with Latok, says: "I know, Lakok!" (unless Rune is saying his name wrong on purpose, in which case I'd prefer Lacock or Ladork personally, as it would make it more clear)
* The item "gasmask" is written as one word for some reason.
And here's the big one I mentioned earlier:
* Glitch in the patched ROM: Whenever you pause the game, some blocks loses their collisions, letting you walk through them (the collisions return between screen transitions). I have made some animated GIFs to showcase this in action:
http://imgur.com/a/dkqyaAs far as I can tell, this glitch can't be used to sequence-break the game. I tried.