Choosing our character's Star of Fate

Words/kanji covered: 宿星: Star of fate; zodiac 星: star 狩人: hunter 学者: scholar 王者: monarch 武人: soldier/warrior 商人: merchant/trader

We have two more steps before the game officially begins, and this is the first one:

A screen presenting five kanji-intensive choices

We have a prompt in the upper-left corner, and five rows to choose from. Each row has two different words on it.

The prompt is very similar to one we've seen previously. Instead of choosing a 主人公, though, we'll be choosing a 宿星(しゅくせい) – a star of fate, or a zodiac!

From top to bottom, we have: (use this for English: https://www.neoseeker.com/romancing-saga-3/Starting )

歳星(さいせい): Jisho gives me “Jupiter” for this. The official English translation uses “Artemis”, so I'm suspicious. 狩人(かりゅうど)の星(ほし): 狩人 means “hunter” and 星 means “star”. Each one of these rows ends in の星.

螢惑: this one isn't turning up in online resources for me. English version uses “Athena”. 学者(がくしゃ): scholar.

鎮星: Wiktionary tells me that this is a historical form of Saturn. English version uses “Zeus”. 王者(おうじゃ): king/monarch.

太白(たいはく): this is the first clear win in the star name column! It means Venus. English version uses “Ares”. 武人(ぶじん): soldier/warrior.

辰星(しんせい): Mercury (in ancient Chinese astronomy)​, according to Jisho. So I'm guessing that the ones I couldn't find are also ancient Chinese terms for planets. RS3 isn't going easy on me here! English version uses “Hermes”. 商人(しょうにん): merchant/trader.

According to a random Quora answer, the five planet words here are all ancient Chinese names for planets. So I'm not going to commit them to memory today.

I'm choosing to put Katrina under 辰星、商人の星. Next time, we'll choose our character's primary weapon, and learn more 漢字 for all of the weapon choices!


Author: @WolfeReader@freeradical.zone

Feel free to follow this blog! On Mastodon or other fediverse services, follow @a-new-japanese-learner-takes-on-jrpgs@qua.name , for RSS use https://qua.name/a-new-japanese-learner-takes-on-jrpgs/feed/ , and for the plain web view just use https://qua.name/a-new-japanese-learner-takes-on-jrpgs/