Being born as a french canadien, I grew up playing my games in a foreign language, english. Playing Super Mario World and wondering "Mario destroyed a castle, what does it say?" or playing through Pilotwings and not have a clue what to do ....... at first. I always found my way around just by STFUAJPG. Never ask what or why, just play, I'd eventually get it. Granted, SNES games weren't complicated to understand.

But I grew up. I learned english explicitly to understand my games. I now understand everything a RPG can throw at me. That's why the Quebec law on "french games or GTFO" pisses me off. We all played our game in english throughout the years, we never had a problem with that.

We play games because they're fun first. I thought about this while playing Tales of Rebirth on my psp. Before buying this title, I told myself: I played 2 weeks of "My Japenese Coach", I am ready for a full japanese JRPG, right? RIGHT? I was kind of right. I didn't need to understand the writings to enjoy the game. It is just plain fun. Just respect the usual JRPG formula: Stuck? Talk to every NPC and one of them will trigger an event, move on, lots of random battles, grind, and repeat. I feel like a kid again, playing this. The more I play, the more I understand. I'm a Tales games whore anyway. I LOVE IT.

The dialogs, I try my best to get one ounce of what's going on, I mostly understand the characters name, the city's name, and that's about it. The rest, I try to figure out what they say to each other. I mostly think random stuff though, like this:




Would I appreciate the game more if I understood everything about it? Surely, but it's not vital to me. I'm enjoying the hell out of that game. I just beat Geyorkias, it was intense, and awesome.