Learning characters has enabled me to watch movies, because subtitles are often easier to follow (and look up) than mumbled, fast, dialect-tinged dialogue. And the ability to watch movies is a game changer for language learning.
Note that recognizing characters is much easier than being able to write them correctly from memory (and you really don't need the latter – even Chinese can't write anymore; look up "character amnesia").
Note that recognizing characters is much easier than being able to write them correctly from memory (and you really don't need the latter – even Chinese can't write anymore; look up "character amnesia").