This is geared mostly towards non-native English speakers.

The question is, do you play your games localized to your native language when possible or, especially in the case of Western-made games, choose the original language? Since you're reading this topic, I presume you could follow the English translation just as well.

Last week I got my copy of MySims Kingdom and I was first surprised how it had a Finnish translation as well -- the first for me in Wii games (although I believe MySims was also translated). Then I was surprised by how good the translation was. Until now, I've played games only in English since I know it way better than German. I have some friends who try to read books primarly in the original language (usually English) and some who want a Finnish translation even if they're definitely capable of reading the English translation as well. I'm a bit on the fence myself -- had I not just read some translations of Terry Pratchett's books and played MySims Kingdom, I would've most likely vouched for using the English versions. But now I'm not so certain.

I'm German and I normally prefer the English versions of EVERYTHING not just games
But if we talk about games: I normally prefer the English version (what is no problem for me since about 90% of the games that are released here have 5 lanugages available: English, German, French, Spain, Italian. So I can just switch to English in the game or by setting my console language to English.
The exception are games that have medieval or fantasy words. If that is the case I normally play the German version since I want to know what's going on and not visit dict.leo.org (best german-english/english-german online dictionary) every two minutes
Actually the German versions of games are always translated really good but I prefer the original version since... you know....it's original
And I just love the English language that's a reason, too.

Medieval/fantasy worlds... in those cases I really don't want to play any other but English version, since I have no clue what are the typical Finnish translations of many usual opponents (bugbears, hobgoblins, goblins, liches etc.)... unless I go reading some fan-made webpages. Of course, bugbear is to me a brown "h", so that doesn't help me a lot in visualizing what it is even in English

Maybe we are of different competence in English, but I think I might often miss the subtle differences between different words in English. That might be the reason I might want to prefer Finnish translations of games and books. Perhaps it helps that English and German are related languages.

I am Japanese American, and i do play more English games than Japanese Unfortunetly.

In your case, if your system is NTSC (or whatever you use in the US), then I'd expect the games not to usually have the Japanese translation available It would be interesting, though, to learn how much the text changes in the translation in games, considering how very different English and Japanese are as languages. I don't know how big an issue space constraints are in dialogue, for instance... how much is lost when trying to squeeze the information and how many unintentional meanings are given in the process.

Well the creatures are not the problem since like you said in your comment German and English are related, in fact they are even both West Germanic Languages. They were even more similar hundreds of years in the past and that was the time when all those creature names were made.
So many creature names are similar or the same in both languages (lich = Lich, goblin = Goblin, elf = Elfe). And words like bigfoot, unicorn, fairy etc. are well known anyways especially because of Disney movies I learned them (back in the time where Disney was good and stood for quality unlike nowadays )
I rather meant imaginary words that the autor or in games developer invented but words that are based of real English words if you know what I mean...it's hard to describe..especially because I can't give you an exa,plle because I don't understand the English ones and that's exact ly my point why I play them in German But these words often appear in fantasy languages in books/games.

And to the medieval thing: I don't even understand german medieval language. In fact even about 50 years ago people used words that nobody nowadays understands. So if I don't even understand old German language then of course I don't understand old English language

One of the things I noticed in MySims Kingdom was how they created quite new words or phrases... "kanjonikaapo" from "kanjoni" (a canyon) and "Kaapo" (an old-fashioned first name); this term was used by an old miner in Cowboy Junction. This was just one thing that made me glad that I chose to play the game in Finnish. I don't know what the original phrase would've been, but I doubt it would've struck me as well as this did.

Well, I recall that Neuromancer had ICE (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics)... and it was translated into Finnish as "jää" (ice), thus apparently leaving the wordplay with "icebreaker" intact but breaking the connection between the acronym and the old meaning. So I think I understand your point. Or in general how words starting with "Mor" are often seen to be rather negative (or that's the impression I get; Mordor, Moria, Moriarty, mortality, morte (maybe because of this word in particular)), which I don't think carries over to Finnish.

Maybe I should be glad that I have Die Gilde Gold in German instead of English, even if the game is written in modern German ("Ich faulenz' rum den ganzen Tag, es ist Arbeit die ich nimmer mag " or something along those lines); the game is set in the 1400s

That's exactly what I meant by made up words that are based on real words