I seriously think they should drop those German, French, Spanish and Italian subtitles from the game. Why would we waste our money on those small language translations if we could actually spend it on things which actually make the game better. No racism accusations please, I'm German myself but I don't see the point wasting 400,000 $ on translations while we could put it into other more useful stretch goals.
There should be the Japanese original and English for the rest of the world and that's that. S1 and 2 didn't have smaller language subtitles (except for the notebook in S2 which would be in the language you set your DC in) and no one complained.
To any non-English or -Japanese speaking person in the world wanting to play S3 I say: Shenmue is giving you the best reason in the world to learn English, so start learning. Don't be lazy and ask for subtitles in your language.
It just pisses me off every time I read the stretch goals on Kickstarter knowing we wasted 400,000 $ on translations which we could have actually spent on something cool.
If there was a big demand for smaller language subtitles they could put that out as patches via the internet once the game is out. Hell, they could even think about giving out the translation and proofreading to native speakers in the Dojo. I really don't think development money should be wasted on that. What do you guys think?
Guess I'll write that to them on Kickstarter. If enough people say so, they might actually drop those languages. What do you think?