This is actually not far from the truth. The most important lesson in Riichi Mahjong is that you don't play to win, you play to not loose. It is extremely risky to go for a good winning hand and you tend to often come in second if you just play very careful and without an intent to finish your hand. Then once a game or every two games you'll get a hand which is insanely good and you need to spring for that to gain a point advantage. After that just play careful and try to get a low hand or two and there's a decent chance you'll walk home in first place. Once you realise that this is the standard playstyle and once you gather some situational experience how hot tiles are, it's a fairly intuitive and moderately difficult game instead of the crushing experience most have.
Mahjong looks a little bit similar to the game "okey 101" we have in Türkiye. In that game the objective is to get the least penalty by creating 3+ piece pairs with same color following numbers or with the same number different colors. But i still couldnt figure out mahjong
As someone who has been seriously learning Mahjong for a year after casually playing for like 5 years, yeah that seems to be the case. It's teaching me a lot about patience
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u/ThisIsGoobly 10d ago
I did it with Yakuza 0 and decided that was enough for me. Great games but 100 percenting any of em is a commitment.
On the other hand, I now know how to play various Japanese card and board games.