Hi,
I’m around early N2 level, having studied around 1000 Joyo kanji of varying degrees of familiarity. The only game I’ve played to completion in Japanese is Yokai Watch Gakuen Y, a fantastic game.
I’m playing some video games in Japanese and recently discovered Persona 5. Ive never played it in English, I have only a slight understanding of the plot. Definitely a lot of compound words that I’m not super familiar with.
I’ve clocked 11 hours already and it’s April 19th, I don’t know if this means I’m going slower than normal play, but it takes me thirty seconds to read every two lines of dialogue.
The game is so alluring though. I can’t put it down. But I constantly float in and out of understanding. Every few conversations I don’t understand what’s being said. Particularly conversations that deal with emotions and people’s motivations. Conversations relating to past events are easier to get through.
I was wondering if anyone knew the consequences of saying things incorrectly or doing incorrect things in the game. Does the storyline change if you respond this or that way in a text message?
Any recommendations for having a positive experience in Japanese? I don’t want to miss anything important.
Also, if you have also played a complex video game with lots of dialogue, did you find it more worthwhile to understand everything that was happening? Or felt if it is important, it would come up again so I shouldn’t open the dictionary every five minutes?
3 comments
> Ive never played it in English, I have only a slight understanding of the plot. Definitely a lot of compound words that I’m not super familiar with.
It’s nice to know what’s going on already by replaying a familiar game, but isn’t a requirement.
> I’ve clocked 11 hours already and it’s April 19th, I don’t know if this means I’m going slower than normal play, but it takes me thirty seconds to read every two lines of dialogue.
> The game is so alluring though. I can’t put it down.
It’s slow, but if you’re having fun and want to keep playing, that’s more important. Being engaged with what you’re doing is good motivation.
> I was wondering if anyone knew the consequences of saying things incorrectly or doing incorrect things in the game. Does the storyline change if you respond this or that way in a text message?
It will take you longer to rank up the social links if you pick the wrong choices during the social link conversations, but it won’t negatively affect the main plot. The text messages I’m pretty sure are all flavour text. The main plot is pretty on rails.
There might be a some choices near the end that unlocks a true ending like in P4G but I haven’t played P5R yet. You could ask someone who has played it if something like that exists, and if it does, look at a spoiler-free guide for the right choices. A section like that in P4G had a very obvious BIG SHIT IS ABOUT TO GO DOWN. YOU SHOULD PROBABLY SAVE NOW warning.
> Any recommendations for having a positive experience in Japanese? I don’t want to miss anything important.
Play however you have fun with it, but probably don’t try to go for a 100% or every social link complete. It’s very hard, if it’s even possible, to do with a guide on a first playthrough. Don’t sweat only picking the most optimal answers for your social links.
> did you find it more worthwhile to understand everything that was happening? Or felt if it is important, it would come up again so I shouldn’t open the dictionary every five minutes?
This is really down to personal preference. I personally didn’t mind having my head in a dictionary for the dialogue heavy parts. I looked up most stuff happening that I didn’t understand and couldn’t guess from context. If I still didn’t get it after looking up the unknowns, I moved on.
For the more fluff parts, I was not nearly as bothered to look up everything unless a word looked especially interesting.
For specific P5R advice, there is a substantial “true ending” that adds a fair amount of content. To access it, you need to >!max out your social links with the the school psychologist, Maruki.!< I didn’t know that the first time I played through it and lost almost 100 hours of progress 🙃 Still haven’t seen the Royal exclusive content
I love this question. I started learning japanese when Persona 5 was announced and I’ve completed it and many other long jrpgs since. This game is very text heavy but it’s great for your input. I started playing around when I was just N4 and it took me about 100 hours with significant breaks in the middle but you shouldn’t have nearly as much trouble. (I already played the vanilla version in english but I don’t think that matters.)
My honest advice is to play blind. Don’t waste your time following guides and look up words all the time. The dialogues voices don’t matter much and the story unfolds with slow enough pacing that you won’t miss anything if you don’t understand a few scenes. You could min/max all the relationships but in my experience it’s just not fun or worth it. You should be able to get the true ending if you just follow your instincts.
Just let yourself chill out, be absorbed, listen and read.