Do you think it's worth a beginner putting it all in Japanese? I thought I read somewhere that you couldn't change it later on.

MelonBerry wrote:

Do you think it's worth a beginner putting it all in Japanese? I thought I read somewhere that you couldn't change it later on.

Well, if you've played any pokemon game before, the story is gunna be pretty much the same as always. And if you get stuck because you cant read something, you can always check out a walkthrough or "lets play" on youtube.
Though, I would really say it all depends on how much of a beginner you are... pokemon language doesn't get too complicated though, most of the time. And you will see a lot of terms repeated over and over.

I just am starting up my game and yes, you can choose to use kanji, even in the English (American at least) version HOORAY!

Edit: And you can change it between kana and kanji at any time, through the menu.

Edit 2: So far I can't see any way to change it back to English, so pretty sure it is a permanent language selection.

Last edited by zurisu (2013 October 12, 1:05 pm)

zurisu wrote:

I just am starting up my game and yes, you can choose to use kanji, even in the English (American at least) version HOORAY!

Edit: And you can change it between kana and kanji at any time, through the menu.

How tough is the vocabulary and grammar would you say (for example, in comparision to something like NHK easy)
I'm about 2/3 done with core 6k and if it's not too hard I would love to try this game out in Japanese.

Not usually

blueshift wrote:

How tough is the vocabulary and grammar would you say (for example, in comparision to something like NHK easy)
I'm about 2/3 done with core 6k and if it's not too hard I would love to try this game out in Japanese.

I would say it's significantly easier than NHK Easy just because it uses simple language targeted at a children's demographic, unlike news which targets adults and speaks about a wide variety of subjects and events (so the vocab in general is easier). It also has spaces between words which makes it easier to figure out what's going on in the grammar.

And you have plenty of context and prior Pokemon knowledge in general to rely on, so I doubt somebody's going to get too confused if they've played a Pokemon game before.

On the downside, sometimes text goes by without stopping to let you press A to continue, so in those cases you're just going to miss the text completely unless you can read very fast (I can't, even after turning the text speed on the slowest setting). This happens at certain times in cutscenes and during battles. Luckily, battle grammar is extremely repetitive, so you can condition yourself to the speed.

But gameplay-wise, if you enjoy Pokemon games in general, then you are really going to enjoy this The 3D polygonal pokemon battles are awesome, and the overworld looks great. Really happy with everything so far.

Edit Oct 13:

After playing the game further and getting a little more into the meat of the story, I feel like maybe this post is a bit misleading in underestimating the difficulty of the game, because it IS difficult for a lower intermediate learner like myself, and I'm having trouble understanding the majority of dialogue. That said, I feel like I'm in the middle of a 'low point' in my studies, and I'm not really sure if I am having as much trouble as I think I am or if I'm just getting frustrated as I'm creeping into the intermediate level blues. So I'm probably not the best person to be evaluating the difficulty anyway.

But... I mean it's a Pokemon game, so I'm still having fun =P

Last edited by zurisu (2013 October 13, 1:56 pm)

I made a quick anki deck containing names of all the moves.
http://www.mediafire.com/?3w5ezcb9h759xdo

Actual credit goes to bulbagarden.net, I just copied their data.
This doesn't appear to contain any of the new moves yet, so I'll make a new deck once the info is all available.