In essence, you are agreeing with me. "Fist of the North Star" is more a direct translation than a localization and most people, even fans, don't really care ab

In essence, you are agreeing with me. "Fist of the North Star" is more a direct translation than a localization and most people, even fans, don't really care about that. When people say localization they mean something close to your first example, changing names, introducing local memes, etc. More to the point, people who dislike localizations tend to have objections to changing the games' content (particularly when it's controversial) like changing blood to green or people to robots, removing Nazi or Communist symbols, or in the case of Japanese games like some recent Fire Emblems or other, more risque titles, removing or changing "questionable" content. I don't really have a horse in this race either way, but I do have friends who are quite invested and I can see their point when they prefer fan translations to first party localizations in some cases.