RIP in N5 listening part 
I knew it will be the hardest for me but damn. I have a lot of catching up to do
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As for the exam itself it was carried out in a professional manner. Audio quality could have been better though .
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I thought that everything was organised quite professionally this year and the audio quality was good too.
Just one odd thing, the London venue was hosting two events simultaneously, the JLPT and the Festival of Marxism. This didn’t cause any issues but gave a very surreal air to the usually sombre pre-exam wait.
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I was worried at first that the audio would be too low because my seat was in the very back of the room. Well, there were speakers in the ceiling and it was LOUD 
Thankfully they turned it down after the sound check. So I don’t have an excuse for failing the listening part. My biggest weakness tbh. Now the wait begins…
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Part of exam I love most is when you have to choose the most suitable answer for some input on listening. It’s 3 choices and mostly 2 of them are not just out of clue, but rather joke or hard irony, like
部長：この報告を来週まで提出してください。
答え１：来週ですね。分かりました。
答え２：しなくてもいいってこと？
答え３：部長、頑張ってくださいね！
So most of the audience just can’t help but laugh.
I wonder if they made it intentionally to cheer up us a bit?
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Ironically I think I blew N1 on the grammar portion but at the same time I feel like I possibly chose the closest answer to the correct one so maybe I got a few extra points. They seem to be testing the nuance of the sentence more than just choosing the obvious grammar point for a sentence. I think no matter how much Bunpro or textbook study you do, the style of grammar questions has changed a lot so just memorising grammar points and their function isn’t going to cut it anymore for at least 50% of the questions. Textbooks and apps just aren’t up to standard anymore.
The building the sentence questions are also always far more than difficult than any textbook sample questions I have ever tried including ones in Shin Kanzen Master.
Also this might be my imagination but I also feel that as more people with Chinese backgrounds are taking the test, there is a bit of difficulty creep coming into the kanji section to combat how easy that section probably was for them. I remember being thrown out in December with 如実 and this year also had some fairly tricky readings.
In that sense, while the reading section is notoriously the most challenging portion, answering the question just relies on your comprehension and speed. On the other hand, with language section you really either know the answer or your don’t know the answer. So I actually think that section is the most difficult.
I’m sure people will scoff but I genuinely feel the test is getting more difficult each year. Not sure I’ll take to again as it just feels like it is moving even further away from being a test of language than it already was.
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There’s a belief that an actual JLPT exam tends to be slightly easier than mocks for preparations.
As for N2, not in the slightest. The Vocabulary/Grammar section had kinda same level of difficulty + some tricky kanji questions as @Beghaus said. Looks like those kanji are not even in JLPT N2 lists, so all these lists could be called outdated now I guess.
Nevertheless, I think I’ve passed this section, 文プロや鰐蟹のお陰で. As for N2, there weren’t any grammar questions testing nuances, all answers except one were obviously inappropriate, IIRC. So studying Bunpro is definitely worth it!
And the most important advice I was given, don’t waste too much time trying to find a correct answer for difficult questions, just leave them unanswered and then fill some random blobs for them. Save some time for reading section. The last reading question understanding some kind of leaflet always slightly easier than the previous two with long texts, so answer it first.
The listening section completely threw me off. All mocks were much more easier with funny answers for 問題３ included as @username2 said. But the actual exam didn’t have those (or my comprehension totally sucks). Even when I believe I understood the first sentence and all possible replies, there were more than one appropriate to me. So probably N2 listening section tests for nuances too from now on, or/and my listening ability sucks.
And it’s because I only did Bunpro and Wanikani preparing the exam, and no immersion at all because I had no time for watching anime. Looks like I should start watching one episode per day
Also the audio speech speed was quite fast, almost natural I’d say.
So probably I’ve failed this time unless I randomly guessed enough correct answers in the listening section.
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Not too sure how well I did on the reading part. It was my first time taking the JLPT, so I treated it more as a learning experience and to see where my gaps are in my learning. I really need to build up my reading stamina…
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I think mock exams might be more difficult than the actual exam at N2 level due to the lack of knowing the scaling algorithm. Personally, I remember walking out of N2 and being 100% certain I failed but I got above 90 points. Blew my mind, but I think the scaled score along with only needing 90 points saved me. I actually got A for vocab the test prior but failed, and ended up passing with a B.
On the other hand, with N1 I think you will have a tough time passing if you don’t answer 75% of the answers correct.
I respect anyone who passes N1 but I think as far as usefulness goes, there are only so many passages about the behaviour of ants and the like that you can read before it’s apparent the usefulness of the test is pretty apparent To me it just feels like something of a cashcow for the organisers as they seem to be able to attract thousands of people yearly whose actually level of Japanese is nowhere near N1 especially for output.
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I can’t understand why for N2 you need 90 points to pass, but for N3 it’s 95, for N1 it’s 100, etc.
If they’re already scaling the scores, why can’t they scale them to a fixed passing threshold for every level.
Just contributes to the whole process looking a bit suspect
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Yeah the N2 was quite difficult (for me lol). Well there is always December 
Thankfully I answered all the questions! Last time I took the N2 (some years ago), I ran out of time and had like 4/5 empty
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I arrived while running a fever, with a headache, and a painful cough, but I got through that N2 dammit. Then I went back to the hotel and slept for 12 hours instead of exploring the city as I had planned. Couldn’t I have gotten sick on literally any other week of the year!?
Now I just have to wait until october whether I’ve actually passed or not. I did have to yolo those last 6 answers in the reading section because I ran out of time…
I was pleased with the audio quality this time around though. Good volume, they checked that everyone is fine with the sound quality, and it ran as audio files on some laptop.
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Not sure if it depends on where you took it in the world, but I think usually they say the results are available from early September, but they’re usually actually available from late August.
I took it in Hamburg, Germany.
The guy in front said that the results will be available on the 31st of october, and that we could look at the results online as well, though he didn’t specify whether the october date is for the letter or also the digital version.
I’m gonna learn of when things are published soon enough through other channels anyway, so I’m not too concerned. Not much I can do to change it now anyway.
I also took it in Hamburg and the people in charge told us, that the results will be online end of august/start of september (with the login data from the voucher). Letters are send out in october.
While we are at that topic: they want everything so miniscule precise (like they had a whiteboard with the alphabet and numbers on how we have to write) and the test is scanned automatically - why does it take 2 months to get our results? Not the letters ofc, I get that that may take a while for all students.
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They scale score depending on overall participants results, so there’s some hidden math taking very long time.
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Even if they are so busy fudging numbers, it seems a ridiculously long time.
In contrast, the Kanken tests involve examiners checking hand-written responses, but the results are processed in a much shorter time.
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I took the JLPT twice before, always at different locations and this time in Hamburg was the first time I was told to write the letters exactly as written on the whiteboard. I got positive results every time despite not using serifs for the I or letting the middle of my M go all the way down. Either the computer isn’t as bad at identifying the letters after all or there’s a human checking the answers by hand anyway.
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Thank you for your answers 
Yeah I thought that maybe, if something is not processed correctly/the computer threw an error, a human may check the answer manually (though they told us multiple times that the input would just be “invalid” if something cannot be read - maybe just to minimize manual labor 
).
The pressure I felt from failing simple letters and filling the blobs with the correct shade of black/grey was actually more than the test itself for me ._.
We were also asked to write the letters and especially numbers as 1 and 9 as shown in the example they handed out to everyone. Also they asked us make blobs more darkish after collecting test sheets for the first part. But nothing about being the sheets marked as invalid.