First Time JP PSO Question, What To Expect In Beta?

[Mankool]

I played a good amount of PSO back in the day, but never the JP version. The announcement of PSO2 rekindled the Booma within me and thus I signed up for the beta and feel honored to have received the acceptance e-mail. I was just wondering what it's going to be like playing the closed beta since it will be the JP version, all Japanese text, etc. A couple main questions come to mind if anyone and everyone could reply with some insight:

1) Players will be able to type using English characters as well as Japanese correct?

2) Assuming there will be no translation patch of any sort (I read in another thread that it seems like this won't be happening for beta or prod release?)... How much of a deterrence/pest is it for people who can't read Japanese to play the game?

3) I'm assuming there will be a decent amount of helpful English documentation around the forums etc. like some of the various things that I have already come across like helpful phrases and menu/character-creation guides (also if anyone had a set of a couple core links to threads/pages that they think are the best guides for stuff currently and could reply with those that would be quite wonderful)?

4) It sounds like the ship everyone speaking English (at least on these forums) is headed to, is ship 2... is the idea that there will be enough English-speaking people that it won't be hard to party up with English-speaking people? If the player wants to play with people who are speaking Japanese, is it one of those things where if you don't speak Japanese there's a good chance you'll get booted from the party (hopefully not booted from the beta)?

5) What are some other helpful things to know going into my first JP version experience or more specifically my first PSO2 Beta JP experience?

[r00tabaga]

1-yes
2-in portable 2 it was hard but very playable
3-???
4-Ship 2
5-keep up on forum trans guides

[shiink]

1) Yes and Yes

2)/3) If you can't read any japanese. I am sure that someone will have pictures with translations in the coming time. Just keep a look out around the forums. As far as the very early hours of the beta. Most things can simply be figured out via "trial & error". I mean its just a test so its not like you will accidentally ruin 100s of hours of hard work. Just click around and see what happens. After a while it just becomes muscle memory and being able to recognize what certain things look like in japanese even though you may not be able to read/understand it

4) I'm sure that it won't be that hard to meet up with any of the players from the forums here. There is a PSO2 Community Chat thread (that will hopefully get a bump soon) that has links to access the IRC channel as well as the Mumble server (voice chat) that will be hosted for the test. You probably won't get booted from the beta, but just as a discretionary thing its usually a good idea to use the party chat option so its not screaming Engrish in the lobby. Very rarely will you get booted from a party unless you are being a nuisance of some sort. Just be polite.

5) Just be patient and have fun. Don't get discouraged by all the moon runes. There are a lot of us on the forums that will be on the test so don't feel free to ask questions if you are stuck

[Mag-X]

Memorize Katakan. It'll make the game a lot easier to understand. 99% of the item names will be written in Katakana and will match the names in the english version. The rest is just reading guides on the forums and memorizing which things to select on the menus to join parties and such.

[February]

I'm planning on just Muddling my way through the menus until someone makes a translation guide.

[Wayu]

Memorize Katakan. It'll make the game a lot easier to understand. 99% of the item names will be written in Katakana and will match the names in the english version. The rest is just reading guides on the forums and memorizing which things to select on the menus to join parties and such.

Katakana, you mean.

Although most of the weapon names and whatnot are katakana, there is a great deal of hiragana and kanji in the game as well. If you want to understand the story, you'll have to take years of Japanese classes to full comprehend what's going on (and fully understand which buttons do what and which stats are what).

-Wayu

[BIG OLAF]

Hooray for wanting to understand items, locations, and the story in real-time (without reading a translation days or weeks later), but being unable to do so. Fucking fan-tastic.

[LaMBtRon]

Ugh, looks like I'ma have to learn Katakana, and everything else japanese in like 48 hours..Looks Like I'll be snorting redbull, and munching on encyclopedia pages for nutrition..

[Mag-X]

Katakana, you mean.

Lol. Yes.

[Priest]

Ugh, looks like I'ma have to learn Katakana, and everything else japanese in like 48 hours..Looks Like I'll be snorting redbull, and munching on encyclopedia pages for nutrition..

What I did personally:

Go to www.realkana.com then click the hiragana tab and uncheck the first box, then go to the katakana tab and you'll see the first box is checked also, thats the 5 to pracctice. Look at them for a few minutes memorizing the 5 then go practice. Keep on it for 5 or so minutes until you never miss any. Then go back to the katakana and unclick the first box and click the second one. Repeat. Then try doing the first+second boxes, or any combination until you can do all boxes together. I learned katakana in only hours this way.