A new complete translation has just been released for the PS1 RPG Popolocrois Monogatari 2.
Popolocrois Monogatari II is a game that was originally developed by G-Artists, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCEI), exclusively in Japan, back in the year 2000. It follows the story of a young prince who must travel around a fantasy world to save his Kingdom from an evil goddess threatening the land.
Popolocrois Monogatari II was the third game in the Popolocrois series that officially started with the 1984 manga series and followed the release of Popolocrois Monogatari in 1996 and Poporogue in 1998 — both of which were exclusive to PlayStation 1 at the time.
In the past, a translation of the second game was included in the PSP title Popolocrois, which combined the events of Popolocrois Monogatari 1 + 2, but unfortunately, that game cut a lot of cutscenes and locations in order to combine the two plots — to the annoyance of those who wanted a more faithful experience.
As a result, a group of individuals named LostOkina and Wyrdwad released a partially completed patch back in 2022, which allowed players to experience the original game, with the one major caveat at the time being the use of machine translation for random NPCs that are not tied to story progression. Now, though, according to the Popolocrois expert @keke_094, it seems that a more complete translation has just dropped online, which builds on this previous release.
The new patch is the work of Zenksren, and also features staff credits for LostOkina, Wyrdwad, Aquagon, ERT, and ???. It is available to download now from ROM Hack Plaza and has been tested by its developers to work on real hardware, Retroarch (SwanStation core), standalone DuckStation, and no$psx.
You can download it here. A translation of the first PS1 game is also available online.