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.
@xianc78 Interesting, I always remember the stereotype being the other way around - as in, Japanese games are hard, Western games are baby easy.
@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.