This is sort of a loaded question - first of all, I doubt there are many people here capable of judging between a good or bad localization, because that would require knowledge of the original translation (and knowledge does not include reading a forum post about how the Japanese version was 'sooo much better!').
Second, half of you can't spell the word 'lose' correctly, so I don't know why people are getting bent out of shape over spelling errors all of the sudden.
Third, a company can't be 'bad' about localizing their games, they can only be 'smart' about not wasting money on a product that won't make money overseas (or will require some expensive licensing for something people are just going to pirate anyway). And that really only applies to those companies that handle their own localization. A lot of titles (niche or otherwise) are handled by companies like Atlus USA or XSeed, or in conjunction with a company based in Japan (like 8-4).
Here are a few things I know for sure:
-A lot of anime properties aren't localized because of licensing issues (either rights to voice actors, music, the property itself, or some combination of all three). NamcoBandai and Konami can't really be held responsible for these things, they are just doing business as usual.
-A lot of original scripts suck. It's not just, 'The localization was unfaithful!' or 'The English version doesn't make sense!', it's more likely that the original script was trash, and nobody bothered to pretty it up. Heck, half the time a localization team 'pretties it up', people complain because it doesn't sound natural. So they are damned if they do, damned if they don't...
-I know a lot of people love to pretend they are Japanese experts because they watch a lot of anime, but properly localizing a game like Phoenix Wright is a an act of genius. The number of American consumers that would benefit from having Japanese 'humor' (HAHAHAHA trannys are evil, OMG his name rhymes with goat!!) is so small that it literally doesn't pay to be faithful.
-Sony USA is really, really weird about allowing disc releases of games without English dubbing. The proliferation of digital releases brought about by PSN has mitigated the damage done by this policy, but it's still pretty sad to know that we missed out on some great games because Sony wanted to force small devs to shell out money for crappy voice actors (not to say there aren't great English voice actors, but we all know that English VAs are payed less, especially for video games, and that fact often shows through in the final product).
Given all that, I'd say each major developer is guilty of at least one localization atrocity (that is, not releasing a smash hit, for financial reasons or otherwise)., and sadly it's up to companies like XSeed to make sure we don't miss out on any more.
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The SNES FF2(4) had a pretty bad translation too, but at least that one got retranslated several times. FF7 is as mangled as it's ever been.
For what it's worth, FFVII's half-assed translation* vaults the game from 'above-average JRPG romp', to 'vague and mysterious gaming classic'. What actually went on in the Honeybee Inn can't possibly compare to what went on in the Honeybee Inn in my head.
*There is an good chance that the original script was garbage. The text for the main story was probably fine in Japanese, but I can totally see some dude getting really lazy with the NPC conversations, which only made it worse when some underpaid translator had to finish 1,000 lines of text in two days without any point of reference. You were be sick also.
