Probably one of the most esoteric games you can get into if your primary or sole language is English. You won't see too many people taking you up for a game, at least, unless they really are into it. There is no inbetween.

I'm a few months in and I get everything about why they say that it's a "terrible" and "great" game at the same time. You will lose a lot. When you don't, it's great. The cycle is vicious.

The biggest hurdle, by a longshot, is actually learning how to play. Quite a lot of people will go cross-eyed attempting to get even that far, let along dealing with the fact that losses happen frequently. If you get past that, though, you've got a very broad and open game that will be available to you and perhaps for a very long time, no different than Chess or an equivalent mind game, once learned.

If you're interested in either, both of the above videos are clients that are free-to-play and can be found on Steam or on mobile. The first is Riichi City and the second is Mahjong Soul. I'm partial to the former but am good for just about anything and am aware there's more than a few other clients out there that pretty much accomplish the same thing.

Probably one of the longest matches I'll ever have in 3P. Went all the way to West 1 (read: very long). About a half hour in length. Even a Yakuman from myself wasn't enough to keep them at bay totally. Should've been evaporated several times during the match.

Got my promo to 3rd.

Got my first 4P Yakuman in Ranked.

Posted by Red Soul

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...I'm interested to know how aggressive the gacha elements are, if there are any.

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Both have them. Neither are too aggressive. If I had to choose which feels better in a lot of respects, I would probably err to the side of RC for how much they seem to give you overall and what seems to be better worth your time if the investment is something you actually want to do, depending on if you're a paid or FTP player.

Either are down-to-earth, I think, but RC seems better overall I think. Though, in general, I think MS might be better for newer players for the sake of how much it tends to put the game into English versus what RC does. Even still, there really isn't a client between both of them where it does a lot of hand-holding: You will lose, you will get your ass kicked and you will look at things incorrectly for months at a time or longer trying to figure things out and neither really go too terribly in-depth on explaining themselves, due to the nature of the game.

Posted by Red Soul

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...I suppose in either case, a level of basic knowledge is expected from the player, which is not out of the ordinary when it comes to Riichi, I feel.

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If I'm being real honest, it feels like about a half-step or so above chess in terms of being able to teach someone how to play. It's easy enough to tell someone 'make triplets and a pair to win' but their eyes cross when they see what they're dealt and how to make that work with the strategy over each turn and how not to screw yourself when discarding a tile.

Posted by Zoinkity

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As the proud dumper of two arcade mahjong titles, commendations on your good taste ;*)

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