Shujinkou

Great for foundational learning, Get's lost in the mechanics of being an RPG and that can get in the way of learning. All it needs is a learning focused mode where it doesn't cost a turn to select different letters or where you can pick any letter in the whole list to attack rather than selecting just 5. as it is now, solid 7-8/10.

Honest thought on this game as I’ve now: incredible. For those who intend to learn Japanese using this game, it’s a good tool to use for studying both inside the game and outside. What keeps it interesting is that it’s a game at heart. What I’ve come to know about the game is that the community is its soul. The team at Rice Games Inc has put their heart into it!

Lots of story, both the main quest and with town NPCs which get new dialog as you progress. It does tend to break up the action a bit during labyrinth runs, but wasn't too bad. I quite enjoyed the music. Very memorable, with each town having day/night themes and each labyrinth having unique area and battle themes. Enemies having an additional weakness of the characters that make up their name was an interesting twist. I feel the game is a decent supplemental during a Japanese language journey, but won't replace other learning methods. The ability to go back and forth between Japanese and English on the fly for things like menus and battle text is very helpful, but unfortunately the story itself is still only in English.

Having fun playing at my own pace using this as a language learning tool. I've wanted to learn Japanese for a long time but struggle to stick with routines, this gives me a great way to get some studying in for as little as 10 minutes before bed or playing for a little longer if I want to just treat it like a game. It plays like a standard RPG so if you're not interested in learning the language you can set it up to simply play normally so you're not forced to play it in any specific way you don't want. The music in this game is absolutely fantastic, I highly recommend keeping it turned up especially when you're on bosses. The art is good and has unique enemies in each section with a pretty interesting story thus far. It definitely holds its weight as a standalone game. The creator Julian and his indie team over at Rice Games have been really great with the community they've built, they're communicative and take feedback very well so I hope to see this game have success. Hopefully the price tag doesn't scare people off and they're willing to give it a chance but bear in mind if you buy this game that the beginning is the slowest part of the game and it does pick up and unlock a lot more. I can definitely see myself playing this game for a very long time so that I don't go too long without studying Japanese and will definitely have triple digits hours of played time.

I own this on PC and on Switch. I'm a beginner Japanese learner and a JRPG fanatic who enjoys DRPG's, but I'm rather particular about them. I've played A LOT of Japanese learning games. I've truly enjoyed only a few. As a product to learn Japanese I find Shujinkou to be a very unique case. Most of these games feel very centric to a learning tool and less centric to being an enjoyable game. Shujinkou feels much more like a game, to the point that on easier difficulties I didn't even really feel like I was learning a lot. The way the mechanics work though you learn through repetition whether you want to acknowledge that or not. It wasn't until just very recently I realized how many Hiragana I had learned and how many words and grammar points I've learned as I get to the next set of things to learn in the game. There's a lot grammar points on signs in the dungeons and some history about creatures which is really well done and includes voiced examples. You definitely get what you put into the game. Another thing I learned over time is that the farther you get into the game the deeper the mechanics get and the more options you have, which makes it hard to talk about the overall product before completing it. I have about 23 hours and I've just started so all I know is that I don't know it all. There's fun stuff too like powerful enemies you can't beat initially which gives you good reasons to come back later to tackle them, or if you're a tough guy/gal you can probably use god tier strategy to take them down. I prefer grinding though and it's really fun to use the side missions to level up, get items and money, and to learn more about the monster mechanics. Ex: some enemies only show up at certain times of the day and/or day of the week. There's also crafting items to find in specific spots and fun crafting that expands the more you play. The towns are fun to explore, there's loads of side missions which develops out minor people in town's lives, and each town I've seen so far has a unique style and interesting landmarks. Audio wise, I love the sound design and especially the music. There's a huge number of very interesting tracks so much so that I bought the soundtrack to listen to outside of the game. I'm not super big on listening to game music outside of games, but this one is great. Overall I find the game really enjoyable so far and I'm excited to continue with it. The characters develop well and I'm very curious to see where the story goes. It starts off a little simple, but things start to unravel and expand as you play. I will need to update this later on as I play more as I really am just touching on some basics in a first impression after 20 hours. I know a few people say that the game is so centric to learning Japanese, and yeah it's baked into the game deeply, but as someone who's played so many "learning games" I feel like this one goes above and beyond to make it as much of a game experience as a learning experience. I'm just as invested, if not more invested in the world and the gameplay mechanics as I am to learn Japanese.

Good resource to supplement your learning of the Japanese language.

[h2]Shujinkou Review[/h2] Amazing game, but it really gets most interesting after the main heroes get unlocked, around maybe 15-20 hours in. Amazing music, a story and world that is better than 80% of the jrpgs out there, and challenging gameplay. Will finish the second half next year!

Shujinkou a game you'll love or hate and locking at how many hours I put in it I say I love it. At surface is a simple 2D JRPG with visual novel portraits and first person dungeon exploration. A simple and decent story with some memorable characters. The puzzles are ok and a little challenging latter but doable. Fighting can be tuff and challenging especially some optional bosses if you're underlevel gut you can grind verry easy buy doing sidequests since they give a lot of exp and you can do the main quests verry easy. Fighting is you're typical JRPG turn base attacks in first person, every character and enemy has a turn and it depends on each character speed if you want to attack first. Besides normal physical attacks you can use elemental magic (fire, water, earth, light, etc.), buffs, debuffs, special attacks and ultimates, verry standard JRPG. The difference is and is linked to the other main attraction of the game and that is learning japanese. When exploring the main dungeons you came across special elemental orbs that represents a letter from the 3 japanese alphabets. You can equip this orbs to your weapons and when attacking an enemy you have to form its name using this orbs to weaken its defenses and do more damage. After collecting this orbs you can check the menu for explanations, pronunciations and writing. Besides doing the story and sidequests, you cand do bond quest with certain characters (similar to the confidants from Persona) and play minigames with the purpose of learning japanese grammar, sentences, radicals, counting and verb conjugation. It can be verry hard at the beginning since you have to memorize a lot of things but after learning even on the highest difficulty this minigames can be verry easy, can earn a lot of money and good for language practice. In short this game can be the push to make you learn japanese or not, for me it was since I can understand to a certain extend japanese and couldn't read the letters. If not you can disable this learning functions and play it like a normal game but I thing you lose on its charm. And a heads up, when you think you've reach the ending, you've finished only half so there still more to do.

After finishing the demo I like the game so far. The games fun, there's a lot of content to go through, and the language learning feature helps it stand out. Plus the devs are consistently updating the game with fixes, QOL, and more content. Here's hopping the game gets even better as time goes on.

I’ve known about this game since 2021. When I got to play the demo in 2024 and it released last year, I was excited to finally play it on the Steam Deck. An RPG that teaches Japanese was an interesting premise. As time went by, I decided to keep up with my studies with other material (textbooks, workbooks, videos, courses, etc.). Started learning Japanese when I was in college and picked it back up some time after graduating. Started learning Japanese again from the basics and worked my way up to reading books, playing video games, watching dramas. While waiting for this game to release, I feel as though my Japanese has improved and think of this as good review and supplementary learning. They also have a lot of animals that I did not know the names of in the game. Plus, there are some culture points here and there that I found interesting. (Tip: If you want to skip the guessing game of throwing out random kana orbs at an enemy, I suggest playing on easy.) MAIN STORY As of this initial review, I have completed the Genya Arc (aka Part 1) of the game. The story is good so far. I like the character interactions and how the characters in the party have personality. Even the minor characters have some mysterious backstories that I want to venture in knowing more about. AS AN RPG I’ve played a little bit of Persona Q, but dungeon crawlers are still new to me. Luckily, unlike Persona Q, Shujinkou already has logos for chests, mini-bosses, etc. You just have to move around the map and discover what is out there. Plus, there was a lot of QOL implementations after the game came out which helped navigate the dungeon and keep up with which boards you have read. I enjoy the combat more than I thought I would. It does take time to use skills and open the skill tree. However, after a few dungeons and getting all the hiragana kana orbs, it becomes available. I guess this is done to show how far you have come in your Japanese studies and open you up to more possibilities not only in the game but what you can understand. The side quests can be quite the chore once they pile up. There are deadlines for quite a few so I did those and ignored almost the rest of them so I can jump into the next part of the game (Sabaku Arc). MINI-GAMES When entering the underground room, the characters there will give you hints and tips on the game you selected or just talk about the game in general. You can bet money and based on the rank you choose you can get a higher reward if you get that rank in the minigame. It would be nice if they don’t give you the same text after selecting the mini-game. It’s fine if you play it for the first time but seeing them say the same thing every time you play is kind of repetitive. Fortunately, you can skip that dialogue. The good thing about these mini-games is that you can do a review so you can be prepared for the specific game you are playing. On top of that You can talk with Kiyo in the Lobby to review the kana orbs that you have collected so far. I love that it compiles items, enemies and other things depending on the kana orb you select. Unfortunately, when it comes to the mini-games this kind of stuff (counters, grammar, radicals to be more specific) does not show up often in the main game. 1) Bunpou Kake (Grammar Game with Kiyo) A mix of having a poker face and calling out bluffs in your opponent’s statements. Helps build grammatically correct sentences. 2) Kendama Kombo (Counter Game with Sugi) Found this one a bit difficult to pick up on my first go. There are only 5 counter categories one the easiest mode, so perhaps this grows as the difficulty gets higher or as the story progresses. 3) Radical Hunter (Radical game with Hina) Fun and easy to pick up learning radicals through matching the symbols and the radicals. You are also competing with 3 other characters in the game. 4) Okkake no Osakenori (Sentence Game with Otogawa) An interesting concept of trying to help Otogawa stop slurring his speech at his Izakaya while talking to a customer. Surfing your way to fluency with this one. The game allows you to speed through but there are holes here and there that you can fall into. Recently fell through one but was trapped on the edge of the hole. Was able to get out by moving left or right. The track for this minigame is good, too. 5) Sakana Sensou (Verb Conjugation Game with Tsunako) A minigame where you hit fish that match the conjugation form. Also has boss fights at the end of the round which makes for a challenge. The boss fights also have QTE-esque mechanic that can make quick work of the bosses… if the correct verb conjugation is correctly chosen. 6) Kotoba Kyugi (Vocabulary Game with Tatiana) Playing billiards with Tatiana to pocket kana or kanji to make words. For some reason the trajectory lines came off which makes it harder to know what ball is being hit. Changing turns with the opponent is a bit sluggish. Tied with Tatiana on my first go. The mini-game’s concept is interesting but it might be the hardest one to play for me. VERDICT Overall, this is a good game to get into, even if you don’t plan on learning Japanese. If you do want to learn, I can see this as a good game to review your language skills. This game is ambitious and has tons of content for you to sink your teeth into. On top of that, I like that the developers listen to feedback and are willing to change things to make a better experience for the players. Pros - A lot of content to enjoy and all of it is not mandatory - Good supplementary learning tool for Japanese language and culture - Fun combat system (love going back to previous dungeons and taking out the mini-bosses) - Developers listen to feedback and fixes or implement stuff through updates. - Music is fantastic! Cons - Can become a time-sink if you want to do absolutely everything. - Can be slow in the beginning. - Tons of content = Tons of tutorials.