It turns out that the localization of Ys Book I & II is probably the first example of Japanese game developers taking direct feedback from westerners as Falcom actually had access to CompuServe and listened to the opinions and tastes of western gamers.
And this was all back in the late 80s, no less.
@pettanko If you were a PC gamer at the time you'd preferred even harder games.
@pettanko Also, I think there were some bias here as only hardcore nerds had access to the Internet (or at least Internet analogues) back in the late 80s. They probably didn't even consider that those without access to computer networks were mainly casual gamers.
@xianc78 that's pretty funny. a boss that recently appeared in pso2 had double the health in the global version in relation to the japanese version.