Language struggles with Pokémon games

[Diamond & Pearl]

To those of you who spent months to finish one Pokémon game due to your English not being sufficient enough back then, what stages were you stuck in? Below, you'll find my struggles due to language:

- Gen I (Red): Leaving Cerulean City. / Serving the police guard beverages. / Reaching Cinnabar Island.

- Gen II (Crystal): Leaving Violet City (Togepi you twat…). / Receiving the Squirtbottle that FINALLY enabled me to get that useless tree out of the way (the way it shaked never got old, though). / Receiving HM03. / Healing The Lighthouse's Ampharos. / Reaching route 44 (LET ME PASS BY AND STOP SELLING ME YOUR COUNTERFEIT RANGECANDYBARS YOU STUPID OLD BIN!!!). / Disturbing Snorlax's sleep (Curse you last remaining Rocket member whose English wasn't much better than mine back then).

- Gen III (Emerald): The disappearance of those Wailmers in Lilycove City. / Discovering Team Magma's hideout in Jagged Pass. / Finding Team Aqua's hideout. / Asking Rayquaza to solve Hoenn's weather problem.

By the time Gen IV was released, my English was sufficient enough.

 

[Patrick Haines]

Was Pokemon one of the ways you practiced your English?

I am actually the opposite. I speak English, but I buy all the new games in Spanish and Japanese to practice my language skills. I usually play through in Japanese first, Spanish second, and English third (if at all).

Example: I bought Sun and Moon when they came out. Played Sun in Japanese, Moon in Spanish, then re-started Sun in English. With the accessibility of the internet now, if I get stuck, I can just look it up, but I try not to.

 

[Diamond & Pearl]

Was Pokemon one of the ways you practiced your English?

As I am from a European country where English isn't the native tongue, I solely played Pokémon for fun (I started playing Red when I was 4, year 2001). However, I that doesn't mean I didn't implicitly practice my English by playing it.

 

[Nicolas721]

As a child I had issues in Emerald with the disappearance of those Wailmers in Lilycove City too, also something related with Route 113, I can't remember what exactly but I actually picked up a dictionary. Then I learn English and everything went fine.

 

[KrisiChiki]

Gold was my first Pokemon game. I didn't know English at the time, but I was used to playing games I don't understand because they don't get Greek localization.

I was definitely stuck at the parts with the Squirt Bottle and the lighthouse's Ampharos. I recall that I had a friend show me what to do with the Ampharos, likely something she knew from her older brother. Other things I didn't understand is what moves do so I only ever taught my Pokemon whatever moves seemed to deal damage. I didn't know I could use healing items for my Pokemon which lead me to grinding until my Pokemon out-leveled everyone else's. The one day another friend told me about Potions and I felt like an idiot.

It's quite surprising how I never gave up playing Gold despite the language difficulties and being stuck every so often, but that might be attributed to the fact that I absolutely loved Pokemon (introduced through the anime series) and, at the time, I didn't have a lot of video games to begin with.

Later on I received Sapphire as a gift. By then I had started learning English, but I was just a beginner so I still got stuck in a lot of places. I remember taking a month to find Team Aqua's underwater hideout, which I found by accident. The Wailmers in Lilycove was another point I was stuck at for a while. I pretty much just run everywhere, talked to every NPC and interacted with everything I could until something happened, haha. By the time Gen 4 was released, I was able to understand most things so I didn't encounter any major problems.

I didn't think about it until Patrick Haines mentioned it, but playing Pokemon (or video games in general) in English must have been a decent way of practicing the language.

 

[Patrick Haines]

As a native English-speaker, I would like to note that, as a kid, I got stuck in several of these places as well. Yes, I could talk to/understand the NPCs, but it didn't always help. The Wailmer (RSE) and Squirt Bottle (GSC) gave me trouble as well. In addition, with LGFR, they changed how to get into Saffron and that stumped me forever.

 

[Lightning Flame Blast]

I didn’t understand much English when I started playing Pokémon games, so I would usually just go right or up and arrive where I was supposed to.

I didn’t understand in Diamond when Team Galactic said they were going to Mt. Coronet and I couldn’t find NPCs that gave me clues, so I spent years without finishing the game

 

[Isaac the Investigator]

I played Y in Spanish once, a couple years after I had beat it in English. The only part I really struggled with was getting to the power plant in Route 13. A couple years later I played Moon in Spanish, and by that point I had no issues beating the game.