Playing import RPG's blindly

[Lord Contaminous]

Last night I actually attempted to play my copy of Lagrange Point and sucessfully translated some text, including 80% of the menus and battle commands. For people that beat Japanese RPG's with minimal knowledge (and never had a ROM translation patch) how do y'all get by?

what I did was I got a notebook, talk to each person, list them by their description and write down any katakana words they say. Hiragana is a different story, except for when I did battle commands. I get the sounds together, look in a Japanese dictionary and it may not be in the book at all. So that leaves me in the dark.

[Querjek]

Wel, I play a Japanese version of Animal Crossing, and, let me tell you, it's just a tad hard to understand ;)

[Aussie2B]

I get by easily. It's not even a challenge for me anymore. I'm so familiar with the structure of the typical Japanese RPG ('cause really, they almost all follow the same stereotypes and style of design), and I've gotten very good at reading katakana. That's about all I need.

[Gapporin]

Since I know not a lick of Japanese, there will usually be translation guides for the more popular games over at GameFAQs. That's how I was able to play through Final Fantasy V for the SFC.

[Lord Contaminous]

Yeah I played through Famicom FF3 and SFC FF5 like that.

But I mean like playing through Japanese RPG's that have never gotten a translation nor a FAQ period.

[Aussie2B]

For me, I started with games that had walkthroughs (my first Japanese RPG was Star Ocean [at the time, the ROM wasn't playable and there was no patch, so that wasn't even an option]). However, after awhile, I didn't want to limit myself to just RPGs that had been covered by someone. It was a bit daunting, but it turned out to be easier than I expected. And before I knew it, *I* was writing guides on those games that had no coverage. :P

So yeah, I recommend starting with games that have FAQs and slowly branching out as you feel ready.

[drwily008]

On over complicated games (like Sakura Wars pre-FAQ) it is a little tough. But for traditional RPG's, I like to make up what they are saying Mystery Science Theater 3000 style. "Do you know where I can buy bread?" "No bread is not for sale here but you can purchase this duck bill for 300 to smack your enemies with." "Sounds great!"

My wife cracks up and just plays her american stuff contently. I can keep going on that stuff all day!