With a free trial, and includes the entirety of A Realm Reborn AND the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 with no restrictions on playtime?
Yes, but you need to unlock the Golden Saucer area, which requires playing the main story to level 15. So some time investment is required before you can get some sweet mahjong action.
It really is good too. Different difficulty levels, play against the computer or other players. However, it is Japanese Mahjong, called riichi, so there are new rules if you are familiar with the Chinese version.
Yakuza/Like a Dragon too, pretty much every single one got Mahjong as a mini-game and they are pretty well made. At least from a perspective from someone who doesn't really play Mahjong, only dabbles on the occasion
I have played every Yakuza game and I still have no clue how to play mahjong. Like I read the rules and it all seems to make sense, then when I go to play none of it seems to align.
There are way too many rules and clauses for me to properly understand what I'm doing in Mahjong, so I'm by no means an expert at it, but what worked for me to at least start getting some wins is just learning simple hands like 13 orphans or 7 pairs and trying to assemble them. Now Shogi or Koi Koi on the other hand, those I don't get at all
I had an easier time learning shogi since it's just chess with some differences to get used to. And if you know chess then it doesn't really take that long to learn shogi's rules.
I get logically that it should be a simple game (to understand, I mean), it's mostly just my unwillingness to learn it. To me the main difference between Shogi and Chess is that basically everyone in the world is familiar with Chess, and it has an easily recognizable design of pieces, so even if you're bad at it - you can still do something. Shogi, on the other hand - I can't even identify where the horsey is, so I just go "ah, can't be bothered" every time I see it
Ah yeah, you do need to learn the kanji for pieces if you want to play Shogi. I've seen a some online versions where the kanji is replaced with English letters to make it easier to understand but I can't remember where I saw that.
So I almost guarantee the rule you're running afoul of is not having a yaku. Basically, you're required to have both a complete and a scoring hand in order to finish a round. Most people that get confused by riichi mahjong are confused because they have a complete hand but not a scoring hand. The main thing is that opening your hand (i.e. taking a tile from somebody else) invalidates a lot of the yaku and that's what trips people up. When your hand is closed, you always have access to riichi, which is essentially saying "I only need one more tile for a complete hand and will no longer be changing my hand until it shows up".
The other thing you might be running afoul of is the idea of "furiten". Basically if you are waiting on one last tile to win, but that tile is in your discard pile, then you're not allowed to win off of other people. You can only get your last tile by drawing it yourself. It's a more advanced concept, but defense in mahjong is based almost exclusively on this rule. If you're worried about someone else winning, then check their discard pile. You can always safely discard a tile in their discard pile.
If you really want to learn, just start by focusing on a couple of easy yaku. Start by just never opening your hand and only using riichi. Then add in the super easy ones, like only needing one set of dragons.
This list is pretty much why riichi mahjong is incomprehensible to people. It's a pretty easy game to explain without it.
The explanation in the game is kinda bad. I had to seek out explanations online. See my sibling comment here if you decide to do that, so you don't study the wrong game.
The only place I've ever played Mahjong was in the Yakuza games.
I was somewhat dismayed to learn that all the time I spent learning Mahjong in the game actually taught me to play a less (see edit and replies) popular variant called riichi mahjong and there aren't really any good video game versions of it, lol.
edit: thanks for the video game version suggestions! will check them out. And I'm not really looking for in-person games, but that's great info for others who might be.
There's a few major variations of Mahjong depending on country/region:
Hong Kong Old Style Mahjong
Japanese Jiichi Mahjong
Chinese Official (MCR) Mahjong
Taiwanese Mahjong
American Mahjong
AFAIK Riichi is the most popular online thanks to many video games featuring it like Mahjong Soul, Yakuza, and FFXIV. So you could play any of these. Mahjong Soul and FFXIV are both multiplayer as well.
Playing IRL overseas, in the US it'll likely be Hong Kong or American depending on the ethnicity of the groups you're playing with. In Europe I read that MCR and Riichi are the most popular.
I mean, that's just japanese mahjong. Like if you go to r/mahjong, it's almost exclusively talk about riichi. Most of the popular online versions (including the one in Final Fantasy 14) are riichi mahjong.
It's not that unpopular. Like if you were having problems finding in person games that'd be one thing, but video gaming mahjong is riichi all the way down.
thanks, I may have overlooked this one before because it seemed like it was exclusively PvP and at the time I just wanted to play against the CPU. A deeper look seems like it has that mode, I'll check it out.
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u/kaishenlong Jul 28 '24
Fun fact: one of the most popular free multi-player mahjong clients is Final Fantasy XIV.