Can you help me rank these japanese games in terms of difficulty?

Hi,

this is my first post here and I just reset my level to 1 from 12 (since I dropped japanese for the last 2 years).

I’m motivated right now and my endgame is to read japanese. I bought some DS games several years ago when I was in japan for vacation the first time. I know that I have a long way to go, but I wanted to ask what lvl of wanikani and what kind of JLPT grammar is needed to play the following games:

  • Inazuma Eleven
  • Dragonball Kai: Attack of the Saiyans
  • Gyakuten Kenji 2
  • Tales of Innocence
  • Tales of Tempest
  • Tales of Hearts

My goal is to understand roughly 70-80% so I can start learning a bit from context by playing the game without too much additional work of looking things up constantly. I hope that at least one of these games is simple enough that I can set a realistic goal of being able to play it in one or two years (so I can motivate myself more to stick to wanikani this time).

1 Like

This is the only one that I’ve played out of that list.

If you have a high pain tolerance: low-to-mid N3 grammar and WK level 20-25. That’s when I played through it over the course of many months. I had played the unofficial fan translation patch before that, and I doubt I would have gotten through the game if I didn’t actually know the story.

For a more comfortable reading experience? Probably more like mid-end N3, and WK level 35-40(+).

2 Likes

Don’t know any of those games myself, but that makes me think that learnnatively.com - games edition would be pretty cool.

Wild guess, but I’d say to be able to understand 70-80% of most native material N3 grammar and vocab is probably required. But a lot of people also say being able to understand less can be enjoyable and as you progress it becomes easier as you learn the words frequently used in that story.

3 Likes

This is a great idea. @sweetbeems

1 Like

I’d love to do games! It is in the roadmap, but movies / tv shows / anime is the next media type :slight_smile:

7 Likes

ohhh, movies/tv shows/anime is also awesome :smiley:

1 Like

No amount of WK or JLPT grammar is gonna help avoiding that. There’s going to be tons of unknown words, especially Tales being a fantasy setting and having a lot of different items and older words. But it will be worth it and get better if you enjoy it and keep doing it. Overall I’d say Tales would be the most challenging of these, having played some Vesperia and Zestiria.

2 Likes

I’m playing Japanese video games now and I have mid N3 grammar and lvl 28 in WK. I’m playing Eastward in Japanese currently and it’s been really fun. I’m still having to look things up but I can play for several hours without my brain hurting too much.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.