I highly recommend all RPG fans to play this game!  It is definitely playable in Japanese with the great story translations on gamefaqs.  The game is just incredible!  Please play it to the end if you get a chance.  I think I like it better than Earthbound.

I honestly don't understand how can someone can play a game they don't understand?!  Do you keep a long translation like a script to a play and look things up as necessary?  There's simply NO way I would enjoy that!!  Still, to each their own I say...

cheers,

-avatar!

It depends on the game. I played all the way through FFIX in Japanese. It wasn't easy and I didn't understand the story but the play mechanics weren't difficult. FFXII on the other hand is very difficult to play through in its native language, even with an english translation to the script.

Right now, I'm playing Tales of Rebirth in Japanese because the chances of it being localized are very slim. It's a shame because it's probably the best Tales game.

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I'd be in even better shape if I knew katakana. I know hiragana but I never got around to the more useful of the Japanese scripts when it comes to RPGs. Figures. But yeah, after about six hours in, I've decided I'm going to save the game until I can fully understand it.

Really? Katakana was way easier to learn than Hiragana, I thought...I haven't looked at a Japanese book in ages, but I can remember about 95% of the katakana symbols and maybe 50% of hiragana ones (in a lot of cases, I just read from context, if I don't know a symbol).

I don't like playing RPG's with Japanese text. I can make do with Tokimeki Memorial (which actually was a handy way to maintain vocabulary, given the amount of basic things in the game and speech patterns...plus the best choices normally ended with 'Ne' and the worst ones always ended with 'Yo'...Heh, I just told you how to beat the entire game!) but Sakura Wars (1 and 2) and Legend of Heroes 3 on Saturn...dunno if I'll ever pick them up again, despite my interest in their respective series'. I'll stick with imported fighters and shooters.

For Mother 3 though, there is both an upcoming European release and some group is dedicated to releasing an English patch for the ROM. So I'll hold off until one of those options becomes available. I loved the original Earthbound too.

I learned Hiragana first. I actually haven't gotten around to really studying Katakana. I think I'm going to make it a top priority in the next week.

It depends on the game for me. FFIX wasn't so bad because it was linear. FFXII was hell because it gives you a LOT more options in the beginning. If I wanted to play a game in Japanese, I'd play FF1-FF4. They at least give you the luxury of not having to deal with Kanji.

Earthbound was an... odd game. I played it when it first came out and it baffled me. It was like nothing I had ever played before and it's still like nothing I've ever played before. The music, the graphics, the characters... very odd. I'm not sure I really enjoyed it. I think at that time, I was burnt out on DQ-like battle systems.

Ah okay, I learned katakana first...We definitely should have learned hiragana first, since it's far more useful. Katakana, you normally just need to know enough to make out a choice word or two, in the midst of kanji/hiragana. Would have been nice to have been told this BEFORE our teacher wrapped our heads around katakana for two months, before casually scooting onto hiragana and basic kanji...

I was doing well in the games I had mentioned, but then it just dawned on me how much of the story/conversations I was missing out on (I got to the second disc of Sakura Wars 2) and I just...didn't feel like playing them anymore. Still don't. Tokimeki was good because it was repetative and I restarted everytime I played, but a story-based RPG in Japanese...I don't think I'd ever stick one out for the long-haul, even with a better understanding. Thankfully, more and better localizations are coming out.

Shit, son. Are you serious? I'm an Earthbound cat, myself, so it's awesome to hear some positive things about the game.

I played all the way through Seiken Desnsetsu 3 in Japanese (about 52 hours I think) with a super helpful spell/item translation guide, a walkthrough, and a rather thorough English story summary (no full script was available when I was playing it).  I really enjoyed the experience, but I don't think I'd want to do that again.  I don't have time to play RPGs in English anymore, let alone Japanese.  I really want to play Mother 3, but I'm not going to get it unless an English version comes out.

IMO, kanji make it easier, since they provide mnemonic hints for the meaning of kango, which all sound the same to me.

Agreed.  I see a piece of Japanese text with no kanji and it sortoflookslikewhenyouseeenglishwrittenlikethisandyourenotabletotellanythingapartorwherewordsendandbegin.  Itoi specifically designed the Mother games to have hiragana-only text because he wanted to force Japanese people to have to read it aloud to understand it, ya know.

I thought I read somewhere that the use of only Hiragana in the Mother games was because the games were targeted at a younger audience.

Also my two cents: I learned Katakana first (as prep for my class), but my actual Japanese class taught Hiragana first.

Most Nintendo games have Hiragana only, because they are indeed aimed at kids.
Often they even have spaces between the words as well.

It is most common to start learning Hiragana before katakana, because that's what the Japanese do as well. I've seen children's books that use hiragana to explain the pronounciation of katakana.

I know hiragana (learnt this first) and katakana but as far as games are concerned, I would probably say the latter is more useful. With some imagination, you should be able to tell what most katakana words means in English (good for options, item names, names, etc). I'm ashamed to say it but I still find katakana annoying, especially with "so" and "n", "shi" and "tsu".

I played through Rudra no Hihou while it was still in Japanese but without walkthroughs so I didn't didn't know what was goin' on. Didn't matter, game was fun, music was great!

Anyways... apart from GameFAQs, what's a good source for complete English game scripts for both Japanese-only games and direct transcripts of the official English translations?

Yeah, the smiley-face katakana anger me the most. There's three (or so) of them and they look almost identical.

I think you mean 'mnemonic hints for the meaning of kancho' (which feels the same to me).

I actually learned katakana and hiragana solely for the purpose of writing FAQs for the Zelda:Oracle series. Granted, knowing Japanese isn't as necessary for getting through an "Action-RPG," but it did help with some of the finer details of the gameplay. Later on, I managed to get through Shinyaku Seiken Densetsu (another Action-RPG) and somehow understood most of the story, mostly because of what I had learned from Zelda.

I've played through a few simpler, traditional RPGs in Japanese, too. Once you learn the kana for the basic stuff like "attack," "defend," "item," or "magic," it's not too hard to get through them.

For some reason, though, I find trying to translate katakana into English insanely fun, especially when the pronunciation doesn't seem intuitive. I still don't get why "kya" gets used for "character" or "captain," but then again, I don't have a very good grasp of Japanese pronunciation.

Anyway, I'm happy to hear that people are finding Mother 3 to be good. I loved the style and humor of Earthbound, so I do hope Mother 3 gets a release in the US eventually. I'm also hoping that it gets released with a strategy guide. The one that came with Earthbound was one of the best US guides I've ever scene (smelly cards notwithstanding).