Along with the main party, Shujinkou boasts a relatively large cast of side characters, six of whom have dedicated side quests, called kouryuu. By strengthening your bonds with Kiyo, Sugi, Tsunako, Otogawa, Hina, and Tatiana, you can unlock an assortment of bonuses, including uncovering enemy names, selling items immediately after battle, and getting discounts at various stores. You can even change their outfits if your affection rises high enough. To their credit, the side stories all feed into the overarching plot and help build out the world further while providing insight into your support cast, and I found them all pretty engaging. Side quests that feel impactful to the main narrative or the characters’ story arcs will always be a plus in my book, and the kouryuu fit the bill nicely. They all follow a pretty strict formula, though: You’ll be asked to help with an errand or take them somewhere, eventually get into a fight, then chat back in town. Rinse, repeat for all six of them and for each leg of their storyline. It wasn’t bad, and the stories themselves are varied enough, but it still ended up feeling a bit repetitive.
Each of the above six also have a dedicated minigame you can access at the Fuu Lobby, which is the other major way to engage with language learning in the game. Each minigame focuses on a different aspect of Japanese: grammar, counting terms, verb conjugation, sentence structure, kanji radicals, and vocabulary. I admittedly did not engage with these minigames all that often, but I did play a decent amount of Tatiana’s and Kiyo’s games. Tatiana will play you in a game of pool, where the objective is to pocket balls with kana written on them in order to create words. It was very finicky and I struggled to make any words at all. Kiyo’s is a card game that pits you against an opponent, and your goal is to write out a complete phrase. You or the competition can choose incorrect words or articles, and you either need to recognize they’re incorrect and bet against them, create a bad sentence and hope your opponent doesn’t notice, or play it straight. It was fine, but not particularly engaging to me. I do appreciate the level of effort that went into making language learning minigames that actually tested your knowledge of core tenants of Japanese, but you don’t actually unlock them until the back half of the game, and by that point I just wanted to get the story over with.
Speaking of getting it over with, this is probably my biggest complaint about Shujinkou: the game is very, very long. Between the main story, side character stories, regular old sidequests posted on sign boards called youkyuu, and optional dungeon crawling, I spent over 70 hours with this game — and on the Switch, it’s only the first half. The Steam and PlayStation versions of Shujinkou include the entire story, which can stretch into the 200-plus hour range, but the Switch version is cut in half: the Genya arc and the Sabaku arc. This leads to a pacing problem on the Switch version, where it took me almost 60 hours to get to the final Genya arc area and actually meet Kou, the third hero of the story. She’s a cool character who I spent very little time with compared to everyone else, and I spent a good chunk of my playtime wondering when she’d show up considering she’s on the title screen and in the name of the game (in case you didn’t catch the pun, Shujinkou means “hero” and is also the three protagonists’ names). This also means you don’t get all the answers to the mysteries started at the beginning of the game unless you buy the second half. This in and of itself isn’t a bad thing — plenty of great games leave unanswered questions for sequels — but it did make for uneven progression.
And I don’t know if this is just me not seeing it or what, but the Switch version does not tell you there’s a second half you need to buy. You’re told you can’t advance the story for reasons and to wait, but that’s it. This is one of the few times I would have appreciated a popup directing me to the eShop or letting me know I could purchase the next arc, rather than leaving me scratching my head as to why I couldn’t advance the story.
There are also some technical issues with the Switch version that cropped up pretty frequently during my playthrough. Since the day/night cycle informs both random encounters and Jin’s writing exercises, I ended up triggering both at the same time to somewhat hilarious results. The developers did at least address this in a patch to keep them from overlapping, but that patch did not help with the constant game crashes. These were infrequent toward the beginning of the game and then happened multiple times per play session by the end. Even with the game’s generous save system, I routinely lost progress because the game would kill itself randomly. It was most prone to do so on transition screens, so either entering or leaving a town, or getting into or out of a battle, but sometimes it would just shut down mid-conversation or while I was exploring an area. Taking damage from environmental hazards would also soft lock my game and I’d be forced to restart, but at least I could save first, so those were more annoying than aggravating. The game also had abysmal load times, even with turning off the optional logo intro and Mother’s Dedication, which only made the restarts that much worse.
On the plus side, the game’s soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal. There are a ton of tracks, all of them varied and several of them certified bops. Once you’ve met Otogawa, you can buy individual tracks in the menu to listen to at your leisure, and they’re great. The songs are categorized by type and composer, which was a feature I really appreciated. The sound team did a fantastic job and deserve the recognition. The standout track for me is Miniboss 1, composed by Robert Mullis, which never failed to get my blood pumping whenever it played. My only complaint is you can’t preview the songs before buying them, but that’s a small quibble.
I also want to praise the way the game incorporates Japanese into every facet of its systems. Not only can you choose the level of learning you want to engage with (including none at all), but you can customize the UI to English, Romaji, Furigana, and Japanese. I played through the majority of the game with all menus, character names, enemy names, item names, commands, and skill tree in Japanese, but you can toggle between English and Japanese by pressing the left stick. The main story text itself is always in English, but having the option to engage with subsystems and menus in Japanese is a fun and immersive way to learn and I really love how seamlessly it was done.
Shujinkou is clearly a love letter to Japanese language and culture, created by a team with passion for both games and language. Despite the technical issues and uneven pacing, I really loved my time with this game. As someone relearning Japanese, immersing myself in the language learning aspects was both a great refresher and a genuine learning tool at times without ever losing focus on also being a fun game experience. The combat is engaging with just the right amount of difficulty, and the characters are charming and memorable. I still listen to the music every chance I get. It’s a long game, so if you get it be prepared for the commitment, but I think it’s well worth your time.
If you want to check it out before buying, there’s a demo on Steam and PlayStation.
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Review copy was provided by the publisher. The Steam and PlayStation versions are $60 and the Switch version is $30 for the Genya arc and $24 for the Sabaku arc.
