Mahjong Soul - Riichi Mahjong made easy to play

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Ruldra
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Mahjong Soul - Riichi Mahjong made easy to play

Post by Ruldra »

Sup guys. Long time no see.

Anyone here familiar with this? It was recently translated to english and it's very accessible to newcomers. Never played Riichi Mahjong before and I was able to learn and enjoy the game.

Some nice features about Majsoul:

- Free to play
- Fully translated to english
- Includes a tutorial and list of yakus (winning hands)
- Playing with bots to learn the game
- Ranked lobbies
- Game keeps a log of your previous matches to review
- Stuff like highlighting discarded tiles, which tiles you need to win, if you hand isn't winnable and other things to help newcomers

There's a bunch of gacha shit but it's completely optional. There are zero restrictions if you just want to play Mahjong.

So what the hell is Riichi Mahjong? Oversimplifying things a bit, it's not unlike a regular card game. You draw a tile and discard one every turn until you have a winning hand.

Get in there and if you enjoy it, add me or ask questions here.

https://mahjongsoul.yo-star.com/
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__SKYe
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Re: Mahjong Soul - Riichi Mahjong made easy to play

Post by __SKYe »

Looks pretty neat; good English sites like these are few and far between.
The one I use, whenever I'm in the mood for it, is Tenhou, which I believe is one of the bigger sites for playing Mahjong online. It is in Japanese, but there is a plugin for Firefox that translates it into english. It doesn't have any of the tutorial/yaku stuff (it does tell you when you're in furiten and things like that), though, so you probably want to learn them somewhere else before going there.
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BareKnuckleRoo
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Re: Mahjong Soul - Riichi Mahjong made easy to play

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

For learning to play there's also http://www.kemonomahjong.com/ which has a full tutorial and multilingual support for about 8 different languages at the moment. It also has no pay to play elements either, you download it once and it's the full game.
Last edited by BareKnuckleRoo on Tue May 14, 2019 11:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Ruldra
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Re: Mahjong Soul - Riichi Mahjong made easy to play

Post by Ruldra »

Just managed to rank up and now have access to the silver room. The bad news is, I now have to pay a small copper fee to play. The game does give you a daily allowance if you ever run out of them though, so nothing to worry about.
__SKYe wrote:Tenhou
I imagine the people there are super hardcore players...no place for a newcomer like me. Even with some chess experience under my belt I got absolutely destroyed when I tried playing online, can't imagine how bad it'd be if I went there. Maybe when I feel much more confident in my skills I'll check it out.

I heard MajSoul doesn't allow japanese players to play against chinese/western ones until you reach the gold room. More opportunity to play against people of your level.
BareKnuckleRoo wrote:For learning to play there's also http://www.kemonomahjong.com/ which has a full tutorial and multilingual support for about 8 different languages at the moment.
That actually looks really good. Will add it to my wishlist :)
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xorthen wrote:You guys are some hardcore MOFOs and masochists.
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Blinge
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Re: Mahjong Soul - Riichi Mahjong made easy to play

Post by Blinge »

What's the appeal of Mahjong? I've often seen it as a mini game over the years.
Recently in the Yakuza series. I usually run a mile..
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BareKnuckleRoo
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Re: Mahjong Soul - Riichi Mahjong made easy to play

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

It's a gambling game with depth. There's a lot of options you have in the game that simply don't exist in other bluffing oriented gambling games like Poker.
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__SKYe
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Re: Mahjong Soul - Riichi Mahjong made easy to play

Post by __SKYe »

Ruldra wrote:I imagine the people there are super hardcore players...no place for a newcomer like me. Even with some chess experience under my belt I got absolutely destroyed when I tried playing online, can't imagine how bad it'd be if I went there. Maybe when I feel much more confident in my skills I'll check it out.
It's not that bad, I think. I'm an average player at best, and I ranked up (Tenhou used a Karate-like ranking system) fairly quickly. Although you do end up playing against people of higher rank, you normally also play with ones with a rank similar or lower than yours.
Chess is a very different type of game, though; a good player will nearly always destroy you if you are not very good, whereas Mahjong is still a luck-based game in the end, so even though you may lose a good portion of the time, you still end up winning occasionally.

But yeah, give it a try when you feel confortable; Tenhou makes this very easy, since you don't even have to register an account -- you can just login with a random name (or anonymously, if I recall correctly) and get playing. If you don't like it, or think it is too soon to play there, then just don't login with the same name (actually, Tenhou gives you a code to login, after you've chosen a name) and it will be automatically deleted in some months (somewhere between 3~6, I believe).
Blinge wrote:What's the appeal of Mahjong? I've often seen it as a mini game over the years.
Recently in the Yakuza series. I usually run a mile..
What BareKnuckleRoo said. Give it a go sometime and see if you enjoy it; it's pretty fun when you finally figure out what you're (supposed to be) doing. :)
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Frenetic
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Re: Mahjong Soul - Riichi Mahjong made easy to play

Post by Frenetic »

Great to see interest in riichi mahjong! Here are some resources that might help you as you play. I second the rec for Kemono Mahjong.

Riichi Book 1. This is currently one of the best texts in English. It's free.
https://dainachiba.github.io/RiichiBooks/

Here's a series of videos to help you play if you are a more visual/aural learner:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2E_Gf ... YtbDzonZew

Hope to see you all on Mahjong Soul or Tenhou, etc. Or maybe playing with mahjong tiles in person!

Cheers,
F
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__SKYe
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Re: Mahjong Soul - Riichi Mahjong made easy to play

Post by __SKYe »

Frenetic, big thanks for that book. I had previously been learning from disparate blogs/articles and never knew there was such a good resource out there. It has been a while since I last played Mahjong, but reading it made me all excited to pick it up again.

Also, I knew Tenhou was one of the big names of online Mahjong, but not that it was the best place around.

Ruldra, apparently Tenhou also uses separate rooms depending on player skill, so higher level players cannot play against lower level ones. There's no geographical separation, though -- who you play against probably depends more on timezones than anything. :)
RiMaDe
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Re: Mahjong Soul - Riichi Mahjong made easy to play

Post by RiMaDe »

I think fans of riichi mahjong will be interested in riichi mahjong app - R Mahjong with strong mahjong AI

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... h.rmahjong

It has a training mode. You can also play mahjong over a local network.
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