[SCHUMI-4-EVA]

O well I would rather not play a game, than be bummed cuz I have no clue what's going on in the game I am playing even if I can understand all the gameplay elements perfectly and play it well.

I suppose it's not as bad with platformers or arcade style games, but RPG's suck if you can't understand them.

I played Megaman Battle Network 4 in Japanese once and it killed the game for me. Because you can't understand what's being said you continuously have to guess what's going on and what you have to do. So you go to the same places dozens of times thinking it may be here or there and get insanely annoyed and bored with the game. By the time the english version came out I was completely over it and hated the game...I hardly played much further than I got in the jap version and it was such a boring missing to even get that far.
I had also started playing pokemon Ruby in Japanese but luckily remembered my bad playing experience with MMBN4 and therefore stopped before I got too far and I still enjoyed the english version when I got it.

Using a translation guide or FAQ is also not much better, because it spoils puzzles and others stuff beforehand.

I would rather not play a good game which I can't fully understand, than hate it because of the mission it was to play it and all the guesswork that had to be done.