Monster Hunter Rise (Japanese)

Japanese
#1

WIth the new Monster Hunter Rise game being released on switch, I thought I’d check if anyone else is playing it. I believe you are free to choose and switch between languages at any time throughout the game.

I am playing it now and I have gotta say, it is the most unforgiving game I have ever played. There is zero furigana, and while the instructions for moves etc are fairly straightforward, item/weapon names often leave you guessing as to what the reading could be. While I know the kanji for words like 鱗粉 (rinpun - moth scales), trying to guess them in real time accurately is rough.

Anyone else finding the same? Or know of a similar game? I’m not complaining, I actually quite like it as a source of obscure vocab. It just leaves me wondering if natives have the same issues with games like this.

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#2

My Switch is in Japanese , set to Japan region.
I bought Monster Hunter Rise … but have not started it yet. Still too addictited to Disgaea 6…
(That too has zero furigana :smiley: )

I am guessing that it must be quite normal for Japanese people to be a bit lost too. Sometimes on streams people hear electronic dictionaries when the streamer is searching for the kanji / vocab meaning.

Edit: I am lightly guessing that Furigana may take too much time to implement “well” in text heavy games. Also the game is rated for 15years and older… So the game developers assume that most people playing should be OKish :smiley:

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#3

My wife worked on that game for over a year! Her name is only in the credits of the European/American releases however

wow hahah.

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#4

うろこ（鱗）Fish scale (or something else, mostly fish though) Is a surprisingly common kanji in games :rofl:

Also, awesome that your wife worked on the game! I am guessing she worked on translation if she’s only credited on international releases?

#5

I play all my games in Japanese. I think MH Rise is fairly difficult too even compared to other RPGs. I don’t think I’d want to play it in Japanese if it was the first MH game for me, but luckily I’ve been playing this series for a decade or so and wouldn’t read 90% of the text in any language anyway… :smiley:

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#6

Hahah, this pretty much confirms it. It’s a first in the series for me, so I am reading everything. Kinda annoying how much it doubles up on information though. I read like 4 pages of a popup about some important new skill, only to find out I am just about to get an in-game walkthrough anyway.

It’s definitely the toughest RPG I’ve played in terms of kanji.

#7

Yup. She said the language used is exceptionally difficult, all the descriptions of the monsters and equipment are highly poetic. I remember reading a few of them and it was just madness. Even the Japanese translation team as a whole would have long discussions about the meanings haha.

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#8

Every time I think I’ve learned every sakana-hen kanji, another one rears its ugly head. Anyway, thanks. 勉強になったぞ。

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#9

That makes sense. A lot of weapon names use ateji, so something I thought I knew how to read suddenly has a new reading sometimes. The worst by far is the monster names though. When you first get the quest, the stylistic painted kanji of the name is sometimes incredibly difficult to read. Thankfully the name is repeated in the quest log in regular text.

#10

Some of the descriptions of monsters are so poetic that they don’t actually make literal sense. The way the prose is styled implies the meaning which is supposed to be gleaned, apparently. Way over my head

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#11

While I understand this from an artistic perspective, I feel like it would put off a heck of a lot of people from playing the game. The amount of Japanese people I know that can’t read difficult kanji is pretty staggering.

I would say most people would remember the meaning of some of the more obscure kanji vaguely, but definitely not the yomikata. I guess it won’t hurt the bottom line too much though. Fans of the series are probably already familiar with all the obscure vocabulary.

#12

I think furigana would be difficult to implement. I remember trying World with Japanese text on a TV at 1080p and some of the kanji were so tiny I couldn’t even look them up as I couldn’t make out the radicals. There’s just not enough space for furigana on top of that. Plus, Rise is made for handheld so there is even less space.

I’m enjoying it a lot though, even with just the Japanese voices plus English text. It’s a bit clunky and laggy coming from World but then it is running on a handheld device.

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#13

Actually Rise will be available for PC later on.
Implementing furigana is possible… But yeah, it will change how the font system works and the UI. It probably will be a lot of upfront work too.

Plus in English, Spanish , French etc there is no furigana :slight_smile:

Considering that the text of the game will change over time, I am guessing that for most game developers it is not worth it… unless they are making a game for a younger audience (and want to include some kanji) or the game has less text

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#14

I guess that is true. Kinda strange that they don’t have furigana for the non joyou kanji at least.

#15

Assuming I’m not thinking of the wrong Monster Hunter, those monster intro haiku are pretty impossible. The brush stroke kanji, the reading style of the narrator and the old fashioned language are beyond my ability. Kinda similar to dark souls, when I watched someone play a bit to see if I’d enjoy it, they struggled with the kanji in that as well. Maybe the makers just don’t worry about it.

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#16

I doubt game developers making a game consider if the language is suitable for learners of that language, and I’m sure the same goes for English or any other language. I’d be surprised if the same didn’t go for any sort of tv programme, book, movie, etc.

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#17

I meant maybe they don’t worry about native speakers understanding absolutely everything. Because I’m sure they don’t understand those haiku perfectly, and the native speaker whose dark souls video I watched was frequently stumped or had to guess.

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#18

Sorry, yes. Wife and her team frequently didn’t understand a lot of language in Monster Hunter Rise

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#19

Monster hunter world took me a few hours to make it through the opening section in Japanese as, while I could read most of the text, sometimes the sentences were a little too Japanese for my literal translations, and the item names were ridiculously long and in no way readable through normal study channels. With each hour it did become significantly less painful though (I did burn out though, regardless).

I am currently working my way through “bloodstained: ritual of the night”, and the level is a little lower based on what the first few hours have shown me. N3 and bits of N2 grammar should be enough to get most people through. Obviously some of the vocabulary is obscure/not JLPT (埒・触媒・召喚・浸食 spring to mind)/n2+, but we are talking maybe 1 word for 2/3 sections of dialogue, and even then many can be read and the meaning assumed on spec. Nothing too heavy for people slightly above my level that want something in that strike zone.

I have no idea about the levels of those that will read this reply, but if they want something perhaps slightly easier than monster hunter, bloodstained would be my recommendation. Saying that though, monster hunter was about 3 months ago, and I do hit things hard for a few months and then slack in cycles, so perhaps I just find bloodstained easier now due a few hundred hours of “growth” (including the MHW burnout) and they could be quite similar.

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#20

Yo, for anyone here playing MHR in Japanese, here’s a super-useful kanji reference list I found today (just scroll down past the video): https://a-to-monhan.com/2020/12/28/rise-kannji-yomikata/

It’s got all(?) the confirmed 読み方 for the game’s unique kanji compounds. I was pretty excited to find it, since the game very rarely provides its own “intended” readings (I think I only remember seeing 花結, 翔蟲, and 疾翔け being spelled out onscreen).

 

Yeah, Monster Hunter World was very guilty of this, too. Just mountains of explanatory text for every little thing… I’d half expect the PC release to have added steps like “Position your mouse cursor over the red “X” button. Now, single-click the left mouse button.”

I’d highly recommend just skimming through most tutorial popups, especially since they’re all archived in your Hunter’s Notes, available for reference at any time.

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