Hey!
Could you give some examples?
Btw, we have a professional proofreader rn, but 3.2.1 is not fully edited (but S2, Steam version is almost fully edited). Just give us some time!
But, any examples of bad English always welcome
I'm sorry but you're either giving far too much credit to this proofreader or you're lying to get people to buy the Steam version. In your position, I wouldn't try to claim any editing has been done in this game at all because it only makes you look bad when you do.
Here's an easy example of something that proves how little attention was paid during the editing process:
These two lines come a whole
18 pages before Olivia comes to talk to the MC, and this is almost at the start of the game. I'd find it more excusable if this was a random couple of lines of text in the middle of the game that somehow got missed, but for this to happen so early in the game, and still exist well over a year after an update was posted on Steam where you claimed "I would say almost all game proofread" only tells of a complete lack of care.
Now, onto the subject of bad English and why your proofreader isn't good enough with written English to be considered professional. Here are some screenshots of the scene with the owner of the dog the player encounters in the park when you return him. I will provide corrections instead of blindly criticising with "this English is bad":
We are outside so the MC hearing footsteps outside doesn't make sense. A better line would be "I think I can already hear footsteps approaching the door." It's still a little wooden, but it already makes a lot more sense.
Despite being a native English speaker, I really don't know what "I couldn't find my place." is supposed to mean. With the given context, my best guess would be the expression "I was beside myself with worry" which in itself is pretty outdated, but serviceable. Even better would be the comparatively boring but much more natural "I was so worried."
These are back-to-back panels. The first isn't the worst in regards to being understandable but the tense is wrong for a proposition like this, and there's the awkwardness of this proposition having come out of nowhere. That said, the bigger offender is the second panel. No-one says "Moreover" in an informal setting. The only places I've ever heard it used were in a court of law or by someone trying to sound much smarter than they really were, and only succeeded in sounding pretentious. Unfortunately, we aren't done with this screenshot just yet. "he seemed to treat me well" is a sentence I can only describe as word soup. The use of past tense isn't appropriate for the situation, and no-one organically talks about the way a dog has treated them. For these, I'd say the correct lines would be "If you wanted, we could take Rudy for a walk together sometime." and "Besides, he seems to have taken a liking to me." but I'd much sooner rewrite them both so the MC's attempt at fishing for a date was less of a blindside. Given the owner's previous line, something like "Yeah, he seems to have taken a liking to me." followed by "...If you wanted, we could take him for a walk together sometime." Starting with the flimsy reasoning flows into the offer much smoother than the other way around, although I'm sure it could be argued that no-one claimed MC wasn't socially awkward to begin with.
This line simply doesn't fit. It comes after the dog owner talks to the dog, instead of right after the dog barks and is taken as a confirmation by the owner. Beyond that, with modern technology, the assumptive phrasing would be that someone is going to save a phone number, not write it down. Also, the tense is wrong in the last sentence, and 'just' implies some immediacy despite the scene with Don at the dealership breaking up the scenes of finding the dog and returning him, which gives the impression of time having passed between the two. "In that case, you should save my number. It's the one I called you from."
"That's right!" What's right? And why is she exclaiming about it? A neutral confirmation is more than good enough here, not to mention much more natural. Now for the second sentence... With this question, this women has no idea how to use a phone and is asking for tech support. With Mr Protag's response, we can at least piece together she's supposed to asking for his name in a slightly roundabout, playful way. "Alright. What name should I save that number under?"
I realise I'm quite late to the party but I've only just discovered this game and to find a forum complaining about the level of English in it. I played through, and finished, S1 this week and found the English was generally manageable. There were frequent errors but as someone who is bilingual, I can understand where things like when a gendered word or unnecessary words get inserted in a sentence, or when words get pluralised or conjugated to the wrong subject. These are natural oddities of writing from a non-native speaker and add a certain charm to a work, even if they detract from the experience by shattering the immersion. I can't say I encountered a line in S1 that left me unable to understand what was being said, although I could hold CTRL and randomly release it with a high probability of finding a line of dialogue with some sort of error through the entire game. This isn't a good endorsement for a paid product.
S2 doesn't even get the positive I've just given the first season. The scene with the dog and the owner is 10, maybe 15 minutes into the game at a slow pace and I've encountered lines that caused me to check the next/previous panel to piece together what is being said, and even ones where I simply have to guess what is trying to be said. This wasn't cherry-picking to pick fault, this was almost the entire scene and I could have continued just with this scene, or an earlier one. To claim this has been proofread is embarrassing.
Frankly, I don't know if you're being scammed by your proofreader or if you're trying to scam people into paying for the "good version" but S2 doesn't meet any level of quality control in regards to the writing, which is a pretty substantial component of a visual novel.
Oh and in case your argument will be to talk down to me about playing the pirated version from a pirate site like you did to MrBenny only a bit further down from the comment I'm replying to, I'm afraid I've got bad news for you...
That's right, I bought the game on Steam. I did this since you implied updates would give a better experience on the English version - the post on the update history section on Steam states as much too. The playtime is 4 minutes because I knew exactly what I was jumping to to check for the out-of-order lines from Olivia so I could check if the paid version had been fixed where the pirated version might not have been. It wasn't. All of the screenshots provided above were taken in the Steam version.
Like I said, Season 1 was serviceable, but if S2 is a mark of the quality of the game going forward then, despite the interesting concept of the story, I have to say I'm sorry but your game isn't worth paying for. I'd spend much longer deciphering the poor English than actually playing the game.
Needless to say, I got a refund. 6 minutes of play time on the clock.
I sincerely hope the later seasons will be better but I'm anticipating this one being like taking a jackhammer to my own temple and might not make it through. In case you find yourself searching for a different proofreader in the future, feel free to hit me up. I certainly couldn't do a worse job than this one.
Edit: I'm sad to confirm that I've now dropped the game. The following scenes were just as bad as the mess I went over above, and the recurring exposition dump scenes that are Victoria's lessons were unbearably bad. I had a migraine by the time I'd finished the third lesson. I can't be expected to pay for this game as well as the painkillers necessary to endure it too.
From what I've seen, someone in the forum is working on a fan fix like I mentioned considering doing in the next couple of comments but wasn't comfortable doing myself. I can only say godspeed to that person and maybe one day this game will be playable, but that's not today.
