Shujinkou is a dungeon crawler that boasts giving players a unique opportunity to learn Japanese as they play. Although it specifies on the Steam page that Shujinkou is not purely a learning tool, it’s a video game first with the intent of informing second. That’s what I’d consider a noble cause—focusing on making a great game first and assisting players in learning a new language second. Of course, that’s not how I’d go about it. I would consider learning a second language a daunting task, especially a language that doesn’t use the Roman alphabet. So when I started a new game and told it that I was a beginner with an interest in learning, I wasn’t expecting such a frustrating experience.
Shujinkou
Developer: Rice Games Inc
Price: $60
Platform: PS4, PS5 (reviewed), and PC
MonsterVine was supplied with a PS5 code for review.
The first BIG red flag was when I opened the Options menu. Good lord were there a lot of options. I set my Japanese Level to Rookie and Mode Emphasis to Learner. I was ready to learn! Then I started to scroll down in this massive list of options. Don’t Wait in Loading Screens? Sure. Measurement system – Metric or Imperial? Do you want a save reminder if you haven’t saved your game in a while? Rotating Battle Rooms, Reset Kanakae Recommendations, Hold to Mash, I was overwhelmed before I even started the game. I backed out and just started, I’ll change options if I come across something that bothers me.
Tutorial Overload – A Major Pacing Issue
The game starts with Momo waking up Shu, a seasoned samurai who, despite being a bit of a stickler, has slept in yet again. He wakes up, heads outside, and hears a scream. It would appear an Oni has wandered into the village and killed some unsuspecting woman. Shu readies his sword, and the battle begins. Or at least, that’s what I was hoping would happen. Instead, I was treated to a four-page tutorial on how battles work. “Select strike and select an enemy to attack.” Tutorialization is a major complaint around games and as any game dev will tell you, you must account for the lowest common denominator.
And I agree but four pages of tutorial notes for the intro battle? That seems wholly unnecessary. It was riddled with things like how to bring up the enemy’s status and use items to heal Shu, things that I wouldn’t need to use for this battle. And I didn’t. I just selected strike until the enemy died, I could have auto-battled. This is a recurring theme in Shujinkou, a game that has long-winded tutorials for everything and they are constant. There’s even a tutorial when you go into the options menu, it’s three pages long.
Playing through Shujinkou I felt like I wasn’t picking up any Japanese at all. Occasionally someone would say something with blue highlighted text and the game would ask me if I needed an explanation for the word. I’d say yes and be met with an abbreviated explanation followed by the character that said the word explaining how they used it. Honestly, brilliant. It didn’t quiz me, explain how to pronounce it, or anything helpful but it was brief and to the point. I appreciated that. Especially because once I entered the dungeons, it was a different story.
When first entering a dungeon you will come across these things called Kanakae balls. These are multi-colored balls that have a hiragana symbol on them, the color represents the element associated with the attack. Because you can equip these Kanakae balls and they do damage to enemies. That’s it. That’s all I know. I have no idea which balls do what or how to tell whether or not they’ll be useful in the dungeon. Shujinkou must realize this because the game offers to set up the Kanakae ball sets for you when you enter a dungeon.
Shujinkou taught me very early that I must be willing to engage with its systems on its terms to progress through the game. So I did. I fought, I did my best to understand, and I failed. I found myself annoyed at every turn. First, it was conversations. If I enter a room in a dungeon and the characters in my party want to talk about how spooky it is and it doesn’t lead to a battle, let that happen while I’m walking around. The game doesn’t need to stop to serve me up a fresh cup of nothing. I eventually found myself skipping every conversation because they did little to serve the plot or make me interested in the characters.
The Battle System’s Missed Potential
Next to go were the battles. I thought the Kanakae balls were going to provide a much more important role in battle. When you first face an enemy you don’t know what its name is, you’re just met with the number of letters in its name represented as question marks. The hiragana on the Kanakae balls is supposed to represent the letters necessary to reveal the name of the enemy. The balls it’s most vulnerable to are the ones that spell its name. But for the most part, just using the strike command usually did the most damage. I don’t think the Kanakae balls make much sense for non-learners but I think it had the seeds of a good idea, it just didn’t grow into anything worthwhile.
In the first battle I tried to escape, but I didn’t see an escape option. By this point, I had foregone any hope of learning Japanese and just switched it over to baby gamer, not interested in learning mode. But there was no run or escape option. There was an option that just said, ‘Nigeru’ with some kanji next to the word. So I hit that and lo’ and behold, that’s the escape word. Shujinkou is littered with that. For all the bluster about this not being an educational game, it sure leaves in a lot of non-English words for important things. You hit square to expand the chizu, which means map in Japanese. Even in non-learning mode, that word remains Chizu. Run Away remains Nigeru.
I began just using auto-battle and not paying attention to fights. I won almost all of them. I realized I wasn’t fighting with Shujinkou’s systems any longer, I was just simply not engaging with them. I wasn’t enjoying the story or the characters, I found the battle system frustrating and boring. As I navigated around the dungeon, I saw signs bouncing up and down and spinning, areas with a circle and a dozen or so mining picks flying upwards from the circle. There’s something wrong with the design of this game. A lot of the 2D/UI art is incredibly bland and reminds me of a lot of programmer art. Good enough art to act as a placeholder but not something you’d want to put into a finished product.
The UI art is especially jarring when you look at the character drawings. I was put off by the art style completely at first but I really warmed up to the character portraits. They look very simple at first glance but I’m a little impressed by how well they stand up to scrutiny. What I thought was a boring portrait for a bland looking samurai is actually an intricately designed character. As an indie title, I’m confident money played a huge role in determining what got an actual artist’s attention but some of the UI elements outside of combat are so jarringly different from character portraits and battle UI, that the stark contrast makes it look worse.
The Yajuu designs are the most impressive. Yajuu are Shujinkou’s FOEs (Field On Enemy) if you’re familiar with Etrian Odyssey. Just a big enemy that roams the map in a certain way, either on a fixed path or following the player character if the player is in their area. The designs are very cool looking and some are downright spooky. I don’t often say, “I don’t wanna mess with that guy,” when playing a JRPG. Unfortunately, when you’re near the Yajuu, Shujinkou seizes control from the player to focus on the Yajuu to let you know they notice you.
A Death by a Thousand Cuts – Small Issues Add Up
When a Yajuu notices the player, they’ll begin to go after them. If you get into a random battle while the Yajuu is following you, end the battle quickly because each round brings the Yajuu closer. The sentiment behind the notification that the Yajuu notices the player is nice but in practice, it is absolute misery. Every single time you do something near a Yajuu, control is seized from the player to let you know you’re being noticed. Inspect a shortcut to see if you can use it or if it’s a one-way? Yajuu notices you. Finish a battle in a single round and be ready to keep running from the Yajuu? Yajuu notices you. Go in and out of the menu? Yajuu notices you.
Shujinkou just kept wearing me down. I got a reminder to save when I was in a tough spot in a dungeon and accidentally hit X when the menu popped up and it saved me in that tight spot because there’s only one save slot. Even though it’s a grid-based dungeon crawler, the D-pad is functionally useless because you can’t chain movements. If you use the D-pad, it literally moves you one square in the given direction and stops before it accepts another input, so your best bet is to use the joystick. Sometimes though, because the joystick is accepting chained inputs, you can accidentally strafe while using it. Functionally, right or left on the joystick simply turns the camera, but sometimes you strafe into a bad situation. Yajuu notices you.
It just felt like death by a thousand cuts. I appreciate all the work put into the game but the half-assed attempt at teaching as a secondary goal is a giant task. Perhaps too giant for Rice Games. Because Shujinkou is trying to teach you Japanese, you end up fighting creatures simply titled ‘dog’ and ‘fish.’ It’s just a rough experience that has very little payoff.
I’d bet someone already in the middle of learning Japanese would find this experience perfect but for the rest of us monolinguists, Shujinkou offers a frustrating experience with bizarre UI art and enough tutorials to fill a book.
