Consistent Localization Birth by Sleep Final Mix
Every Kingdom Hearts game has been made in Japan by native Japanese speakers. Each game, therefore, needs to be localized into different languages in order to be played and enjoyed by players around the world. Generally speaking, the teams that have worked to bring this series to the English language have done a very good job.

However, the localization process was not, and probably cannot ever be, perfected. Due to myriad reasons, including different games having their localizations assigned to different teams and later games making decisions that could not possibly have been predicted, the games do not always line up as well as they could. Abilities, items, attacks, etc. that have had the same name throughout the entire series have been given a wide variety of names in the English versions. For example: did you know that Mystery Goo in KH1, Serenity Stones in KH2, and Hungry Stones in KH3 are all the same synthesis item and have always had the same name in Japanese? They are all "Mitasareru Shizuku" (満たされるしずく).

This has had a subtle effect of making the games feel as though they are not quite as united as they were in their original Japanese. This mod seeks to rectify this and adjust each game's localization, with the goal that the series as a whole will feel as though it has more of a throughline running across it than it currently does - even if by just a little bit. The purpose is NOT to re-do the localizations to create new ones that we never got, but merely to provide some subtle changes to better align the ones that we did get.

You may disagree with some of the decisions I made (or didn't make). That is totally fine; I don't intend for this to be a be-all-end-all "this is how it should have been done all along". I changed my mind on certain choices several times throughout the development of the mod series, and I'm still not 100% confident on everything. Deciding what to change and what to change it to was not an exact science - there was no set of hard rules that could be completely relied on for every instance nor was there a single game that could be pointed to as the "#1 source of truth" that all other games needed to bend to. All I could do was find as many terms that were inconsistent between games, list them out, and follow a list of guidelines to make a judgement call on a case-by-case basis. Some (but not all) of those guidelines, in no particular order, are:

• Recency (KH3, the eleventh title in a hugely popular video game series released in 2019, is assumed to have had a more thorough localization process than KH1, a weird and unproven Japanese PS2 game from 2002)
• Frequency (if every game other than one uses the same term for something, then it's probably best to change the one black sheep)
• Accuracy to the Original Japanese (a term that is closer to being a literal translation from the Japanese will generally be preferred over one that is not)
• Fanbase Emotional Attachment (sometimes, people just like certain names over others)
  

Consistent Localization Mod Series
Consistent Localization Final Mix
Consistent Localization Re:Chain of Memories
Consistent Localization II Final Mix
Consistent Localization Dream Drop Distance HD
Consistent Localization 0.2 Birth by Sleep -A fragmentary passage-
Consistent Localization III Re𝄌Mind

Notes specific to Consistent Localization Birth by Sleep Final Mix:
The mod was developed and tested using the OpenKH Mod Manager. It works both with patching the files directly and using Panacea. HOWEVER, older versions of OpenKH will not load this mod using Panacea. You must be using release 727 (released October 7, 2023) of OpenKH or newer in order for Panacea to work with this mod. Additionally, upgrading OpenKH doesn't automatically update Panacea if installed, so if you are upgrading from an old version, you must uninstall and reinstall Panacea (and it's a good idea to do so anyways).

Included is an alternate file meant for compatibility with the Hide Game Settings UI mod by Saro. Install it above that mod to get the effects of both. Use only one of the two versions of this mod, not both.

A GitHub version of this mod is available. To install, you only have to type in "SuperfieldCU/ConsistentLocalizationBBS" (without quotes) into the "Install a new mod or Lua Script..." dialog box in the OpenKH Mod Manager. The GitHub version of the BBS version of this mod works identically to the .bbspcpatch version hosted here, but I would recommend using GitHub due to supporting automatic updates and looking nicer in the Mod Manager. You can also install the "Hide Game Settings UI"-compatible version by instead typing in "SuperfieldCU/ConsistentLocalizationBBSHGSUI" - again, do only one or the other, not both.

The following is a brief overview of every change made by the mod. It is as exhaustive as I could make it without being overly specific or repetitive.