Mahjong Riichi Multiplayer is a Japanese Mahjong game with single-player and online multiplayer capabilities. Please note that the game is NOT the matching-tile game, but an altogether different game.
The Good:
As a self-described weeb, I can tell you this game is sorely needed. It's in English, has multiplayer, and on Steam. The closest we had until this is Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle. Mahjong Riichi Multiplayer has online capabilities, but it looks like they decided to abandon the "lewd cute anime girls" approach that Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle had. So, I guess that's a plus, depending on your opinion on cartoon titties.
For people who don't know what Riichi Mahjong is, it's a game a bit like rummy. Unfortunately, there's more rules than the Magic Realm board game, and trying to describe it to someone who has never played it is like trying to describe baseball with no frame of reference. Like, you ever play a really great board game with some friends, but you have to spend like 2 hours explaining the rules, and do a bunch of practice runs, and the entire time they're like, "Why are we doing this again? Why don't we play Scrabble instead," the entire time you're trying to teach them, but eventually it clicks, and they really get into it, and it was completely worth all the aggravation for six hours because you now have a new player? That's what being a mahjong player in North America is like.
Well, luckily, Mahjong Riichi Multiplayer has a really good tutorial mode. That's really impressive considering how complex the game can be. The new player will still have to memorie the yaku table (ugh) and there's nothing really explaining the scoring system (even I don't remember all the fu and han ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥), but it can teach anyone the less finer points in about 20 minutes.
For the experienced weeb, there are other features that are appealing. Besides the mutiplayer (which I have yet to use; more on that in a minute), you can customize pretty much all the rules, which include pre-defined rulesets for WMC, Chinese, and Japanese variants, or, you can set your own home rules. You can also change the tile backs and the table colors, or upload a picture and use it as the table background. Which, you know... neat.
The Bad:
It's buggy. REALLY buggy. I know the dev recently released the patch fixing some of the game crashes and the winning-hand logic as of this review, but I played for about two hours, and lost three hands because the AI didn't count it as a win.
Speaking about the AI, in the two hours I played, only once was an AI player in tenpai. The entire two hours. For those that don't know the lingo, it's like playing a poker sim for two hours, and every AI player folded on every single hand except one time. You can't see their cards, but either they were incredibly unlucky, or something is off on the AI.
The Ugly:
Not to keep ragging on the AI, but in addition to it just not working, I think not having a skill level on the AI, for at least single player, is a missed opportunity.
Design-wise, it's basic. VERY basic. Flat polygonal shapes, no background music, no background art, the sound effects sound like they're generic stock sound files, the tile indicators look terrible and take up 1/4 of the tile without a way to change them other than turning them off completely, the notifications and options (like Tsumo, Ron, Pon, etc.) are just text with some gradient added... it's clear the dev focused on function rather than form. That's not necessarily a BAD thing, but if you want to hook in new players who've never played Mahjong (which will comprise like %99.99 of Steam users), it's kinda hard to sell them without at least a little bit of pizzaz.
Even the Steam Acheivements seem like an afterthought. Instead of having something like, an acheivement for each yaku, or games played, or score or something, there's 9 total, one for each score group plus one for 100 hands won. I don't care about Acheivements per se. The point is that it's indicitive of some of the ugliness that lies on the surface: it seems like it was another really good idea that just wasn't fully fleshed out.
AFAIK, this is the first english Riichi Mahjong game with online mutiplayer. But Mahjong Riichi Multiplayer's online feature is a Catch-22. This is a niche market, so there's nobody online. Since there's nobody online, nobody bothers with multiplayer. If nobody bothers with mulitplayer, there's nobody online. Since there's nobody online, this becomes a niche market.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm glad this has online capabilities. The potential is there, and this has been out for less than a week, so it's hard to come down on it too hard. In order to break the cycle, you have to inject fresh blood and expand the market. But considering the problems this game has at the moment, I don't see it happening.
I hope I'm wrong, though. Time will tell.
Bottom line:
Can I recommend this game? Eeeeeeehhhhhhh...
For seasoned veterans and hardcore Mahjong fans, this is the exact thing we've been waiting for.
Buuuuuuuuuuut... the game has flaws, and you can probably find a match on tenhou easier than on here.
For those who don't know what Mahjong is and are eager to learn, this has the best tutorial I've seen so far, and when you're ready to graduate, you still have the most feature-rich English-speaking version of the game you can buy.
Buuuuuuuuuuut... it's not very flashy, and there are free websites or apps on your phone that are less than $12.
As the game stands today, I can't recommend this game. It hurts me to say it. I really, REALLY, wanted this to be more than it is. If the dev fixes EVERYTHING, and adds a bit of paint and polish, it would be a winner. It's SO CLOSE to what the Mahjong community needs, but it falls juuuuust THIS close to being perfect. I can tell a lot of love and effort went into this by two guys on the weekends in their bedroom, but I can also tell that, yeah... it was programmed by two guys on the weekends in their bedroom.
*sigh*
Until the dev pushes out a couple more patches over the next few weeks, I'll have no choice but to keep beating my meat to mahjong pantsu.
