Through a whole series of events last night I ended up staring at Idolm@ster 2 on Play-Asia and considering buying it since the PS3 version isn't region locked. Wondering though anyone here have experience with this game how easy or hard would it be to navigate and would I actually be able to take away anything of value without being able to read the text?

It's a story and dialogue heavy game no matter the route you take. Had it been Project Diva F-like even I would have gone ahead.

You really need a guide to play through the game if you don't know Japanese.

I got by with a mixture of this one and this one.

A lot of the game's focus is on the story of the idol you pick to produce, so you'll miss out on big sections of story and characterisation. There's a lot of text. That said the actual rhythm and producing part of the game is really fun. You don't need to understand what your team is saying to know you messed up and got the worst ending, or that everyone loves you and you're the best producer ever. You'll still need to follow the guides though since some sections require you to answer questions.

If you have an Ipad/phone I'd suggest trying the ios games first as they are translated

@petiew: Awesome thanks. Had no Idea it was so story heavy but seeing as the only way Ill ever get to play Yakuza 5 is most likely via import It might be a good exercise to get used to playing with a translation guide.

I don't know about this one but I was told that some of the PSP games were fan translated if you want to try out the series that would probaly be a better way to go and from there you can move on to others once you have the gameplay down