Hello, little knights!

JLPT: Journey Through Hell, a new DLC for Lexicon Odyssey, is here!

This is a dedicated trial for N2 and N1 learners. It's very challenging—N2 and N1 challenging, to be precise.

Elle and Izayoi will be with you throughout the journey. This time, they'll fight alongside you in boss battles, too.


N2 features “焦熱の代書屋” and N1 features “万言録”, each a complete story of its own.

Each of the 37 buildings hides 12 investigation points, with over 400 in all. Every point offers a passage of Japanese legend, accompanied by a translation and a study card. Elle and Izayoi share their thoughts as you read your way through the journey.

At the end awaits the King of Hell: Enma.


The DLC contains over 2,850 N2 and N1 questions (the in-game announcement is out of date!) across 20 question types, from kanji readings through integrated comprehension and listening. Each building focuses on one question type, giving you a chance to put the Japanese you've learned to use.

Combat centers on Attack, Defend and Heal. Reading and listening become Chant challenges: read, listen, understand, then turn your answers into attacks.

Monsters learn new skills as your Purification rises, becoming tougher the further you go. When you face a boss, Elle and Izayoi join the fight.


There are 50 Purification levels, with different rewards to claim as you progress.

The Pure Soul earned through purification strengthens your attack, defense and health. Save up enough to unlock additional effects and gradually get a better handle on this grueling journey through Hell.

30 pieces of exclusive Hell gear await: 5 weapons and 25 accessories, including 1 Mythic accessory!

Purification rewards also include thousands of gold, Elite Gear Tickets, and small amounts of materials such as Star Marrow and Tamahagane.


The Hell Scrolls and exclusive accessories hold stories drawn from Japanese mythology and Buddhist texts. They range from the Heavenly Rock Cave in the Kojiki to the Black Rope Hell in Ōjōyōshū, and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke's “The Spider's Thread”.

Besides gear, this journey has a few more rewards.

• 4 exclusive titles: Reader of the Hell Scrolls, Scorched Revenant, Avici Revenant and Spotless Before the Mirror.
  
• Hell-exclusive emblem parts: 12 symbols, 6 main colors and 4 backgrounds.
  
• A new “JLPT Hell” category in the Word Codex.
  
• 2 new tracks, composed once again by my favorite, EigHt.

Once you own the DLC, enter the game. After Izayoi moves into camp (usually after a few expeditions), some story events will unfold there…

The Gates of Hell lie ahead.

Brave Hell alongside Elle and Izayoi!

Hello, little knights!

Welcome to the huge 2.0 update for Lexicon Odyssey.

Beyond 300 km, your expedition leads into the Reverse World. Back at camp, a karaoke room and a TV await. The Burger Shop now takes phone orders, there is more to learn, and many existing questions and voice lines have been revised.

There is a lot in this update, so this announcement covers the highlights.


2.0 introduces JLPT: Journey Through Hell, a DLC for N2 and N1 learners. Expect an extremely tough challenge, with its own story and scenes.

Brave hell alongside Elle and Izayoi!

This is a separate DLC. Please see the DLC announcement for details. The Reverse World, karaoke room, TV and other features described below are part of the base-game update.


Defeat the gatekeeper boss at 300 km for the first time, and the path to the Reverse World opens.

It adds 71 monsters: Reverse World versions of 30 Abyss monsters, 16 native monsters and 25 bosses. They grow stronger as you travel, and the difficulty gets pretty wild.

Knights who have made it this far are close to the journey's end.


In 3D duels, some enemy charged attacks become chants. Once an enemy starts reciting a Japanese spell, you have 5 seconds to pick the word you heard from four choices.

Answer correctly and quickly enough to interrupt the attack. A correct but slower answer halves the damage. A wrong answer or a timeout means taking the normal hit.

Chants only test cards you have already studied, and the same enemy will not chant twice in a row.

• The new Bounty Codex tracks encounters and defeats for 63 monsters, each with its own backstory.
  
• Added 11 Abyss bounty monsters. Bounties and their rewards scale with expedition progress, with further increases in the Abyss and Reverse World.
  
• Mythic bounties now have three tiers, growing stronger and offering better rewards as the expedition progresses.
  
• After you defeat the 175 km boss, the Bounty Board only draws from the Abyss monster pool.
  
• Each hit of a multi-hit attack that sweeps the whole party now lands on everyone at once, reducing the wait for the full attack to finish.
  
• Redesigned the expedition screen. After defeating Yamata no Orochi at 25 km, you continue straight into the expedition without the credits playing.

The title-screen background has been completely rebuilt as a real-time 3D camp.


A little radio has been added to the header. Open it to hear a forecast that matches the current weather.

It's a small feature just for fun.


During the N5 transition period, a little Elle's Classroom ticket appears on the expedition screen.

These are ten optional, fully voiced grammar lessons, covering basic sentence patterns and parts of speech through verb conjugation and adjectives. There are no scores; choose whether to take them based on your Japanese level.

• After the results of a ten-pull are revealed, you can select cards and melt them down directly.
  
• The Daily screen now has a shortcut to the Burger Shop.
  
• The Pomodoro timer button in the camp header is now an icon only.
  
• You can display your emblem beside your name on the leaderboards.

The karaoke room and TV are here!

Buy a TV for camp and watch Japanese anime with your companions. Japanese subtitles come with translations and furigana. You can also read your companions' explanations, take personal notes and try review quizzes. Learn Japanese through the dialogue in the stories.

The karaoke room features Japanese songs. Listen to the original performances, read line-by-line lyric explanations, or try singing along.

Take a look at the camp's Sundries shop!


Once the shop reaches level 4, you may receive phone orders during business hours. You'll need to understand the customer's request by listening alone.

On Normal, you can listen once more after the order, or choose “Ask everyone at camp” to see a translation. Using the translation reduces that order's revenue and tips to 70%, and it will not count as a premium order. On Hard, the customer speaks only once and no translation is available.

Added 185 sets of customer small-talk questions, covering N5 through N1. Each customer also has two new ordering scripts, including a difficult business-listening line.

• N1 vocabulary: 35 cards.
  
• N2 vocabulary: 24 cards.
  
• N1 grammar: 18 cards.

• 278 vocabulary questions covering readings, context, paraphrasing, usage and writing.
  
• 18 grammar questions, plus 36 extended grammar questions covering word combinations, error identification and comparisons.
  
• 312 listening questions: 201 for N1 and 111 for N2.

Around 950 existing questions were revised following individual review, addressing ambiguous choices, hints that gave away the answer and overly broad explanations. Removed 9 questions that tested people's names and withdrew 6 dialogue questions.

There are also 580 listening questions where the target word is the same in all four choices; the differences lie elsewhere in the sentence. After an incorrect answer, a new “Add to Mistakes” button appears below the explanation, showing which word will be recorded as a mistake. It is only added to your mistake notebook, with proficiency deducted, if you press the button. Otherwise, it does not count as getting that word wrong.

• Checked the included example-sentence and vocabulary audio line by line, correcting hundreds of lines whose readings differed from the lessons, such as the particle “は” being pronounced “ha”.
  
• Added “Play slowly”, using separately produced slow audio for tens of thousands of lines, from kana through N1.
  
• The reader now supports word-by-word highlighting as you follow along, plus Shadowing: one line plays, then pauses for you to repeat it. Available across 42 books.

• Expedition question cards now use a fixed two-column layout that scales down in steps as the window gets smaller. Study cards are paginated by content block, and “Previous question” no longer makes the progress bar shrink.
  
• The layout stays stable when switching between touch and controller on Steam Deck. Added a “Button hints at the bottom of the screen” toggle to the Features tab in Settings.
  
• Playback controls such as play and pause now use line icons that match the game's visual style.
  
• Fixed low-level players' HP being reduced to extremely low values in boss battles. Forging upgrades no longer amplify negative stats.
  
• If display problems occur at startup, the game automatically tries a more reliable display mode. If it exits unexpectedly before startup finishes, it automatically restarts.
  
• The Korean translation is complete and has graduated from beta to full support.

There are many more small adjustments and fixes than we can list here.

Thank you to every little knight for your continued support and feedback.

We hope you'll keep enjoying Lexicon Odyssey!