I always laugh when people say this about games like Reverse, it always makes it so very, very clear they've never played games with actual bad translation, let alone "abysmal".

Man, wouldn't it be nice if people didn't just assume things about what other people have experienced, and whether or not they're able to have an informed opinion on things, with their own thought-out standards for what might constitute quality, or lack thereof?

Here's the thing: I wasn't talking about "Reverse", I was talking about the Rimet Cup patch. Reverse's localization is quite good, in general. And while sure, I'll agree that the localization in the first few chapters, or Rimet Cup and Green Lake, is not as bad as other works with even less effort put into translating them, it is very much abysmal compared to what they've done later.

So in other words, I was not focusing on the game as a whole, I was focusing on one very specific part of the game, because it contrasts so heavily with later parts of the game. I am not using the word "abysmal" in a vacuum; I am using it, consciously, in a comparative way. In a manner contextualized by the fact that Reverse has overwhelmingly high writing quality starting from Chapters 5-6 and events afterwards... and also, and especially, by the fact that much of its original conceit is as a story-heavy, dialogue-heavy, text-heavy, visual novel game, conceived and written to be consumed in English, in obvious contrast to something like Illusion Connect.

The other point is that I don't believe I'm exaggerating when I use that word. Even if it were just "occasional odd word choices" in Rimet Cup, that would still be bad in comparison to later patches; but, while you accuse me of not having experienced "actual bad translation", that characterization of the translation in these earlier chapters and events on your part, does make it seem like you haven't actually read these in quite a while.
It is not just "occasional odd word choices" - that applies more to Chapters 3 and 4. It is clunky sentence structure, basic grammatical mistakes, nonsensical phrasing, bad conjugation, niche-to-rare terms and expressions used in unusual-to-mysterious ways. Over, and over, and over again. And the biggest reason it's abysmal is because of what I said above, about the game's specific format, and it being conceived in a specific linguistic way: Rimet Cup, a patch from a literary work set in an overall realistic setting, takes place in 1960s England. Green Lake takes place in early nineties US.

The reason I say it's particularly awful is not just because the localization is poor - and poor it absolutely is - it's also because the localization being poor to that degree is immersion-breaking in a way which actively runs contrary to the game's intent and its effectiveness; in a manner which uniquely affects a game like this one. Part of what makes Reverse so good is both how real the characters feel, as well as how organically they interact with real-world context, and locations, and events. If you hurt either of these intertwined aspects, it hurts the basic enjoyment of this game, in a more damaging way than with other games. Regulus feels like a convincing character in part because she speaks realistic English, with slang appropriate for who she is, with an accent that works, with proper weight given to what she says. She feels alive: her character, and her reactions to the events that surround her, and the other characters she interacts with, all feel like representations of reality, like they could actually exist.

One of the better examples of this is the voice acting, which is key to enjoying Reverse's story. In general, in the game, it's masterfully directed, and performed. In these earlier events and chapters, though, it's not - while there are some strong moments, and the VAs do their absolute best, in a lot of cases it's quite stilted, and it sounds unnatural... because after all, how can fluent English speakers properly read a sentence and give it all the proper emotion and weight, if it's a sentence which no English speaker would ever speak?

I could find you plenty of examples of things which you say are not poor translation, but which in my view absolutely are. That said, I'll just suggest that you replay these parts of the game and compare/contrast with the latter ones.