I felt like retro gaming which is why I wanted to buy a PS2 to play the old Silent Hill or Resident Evil Games, for example. However, it is extremely important to me to play the games in their original language.
Back then I had a PS2 and if I remember correctly the games that I buy in English should logically also be in English.
My question now is more like what it looks like if I don't buy the English version. Could you just switch the language to English on the PS2 as with more recent consoles or can I forget that?
If I remember correctly, you could do it back then. If you buy a game in English, the first language is in English before you can change it.
In the Playstation you have to set the language to English. If the game supports it, it will run in English (if ingame does not have options for it) and if it still does not work, there's no English content on the disc.
American PS2 games will not run on a European PS2. That's because the Europeans run in PAL (50hz) and in the rest of the world in NTSC (60hz).
You would have to chip the console (solder the mod chip to the mainboard) or buy a NTSC version of the PS2.
And if I buy the NTSC console can I play German games on it?
No. These are always PAL games that do not run on an NTSC console.