I’m considering playing Pokémon in Japanese and would love your advice on timing and game choice.
My current level:
WK level 3
Using LingoDeer and Pimsleur daily
Some immersion background from multiple Japan trips
Watch anime regularly with subtitles
Planning another 6-week Japan stay in 10 weeks
I prefer older, main title games (which I know better!)
According to some AI research (which we know can be inaccurate), these games could be suitable for beginners:
HeartGold/SoulSilver:
Has Kanji with Furigana support
Classic, straightforward story
Strong Japanese cultural elements
Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire:
More modern UI for easier reading
Classic gameplay style
More accessible features
According to the AI these games use about 200-300 basic kanji (mostly JLPT N5/N4 level), with core gameplay requiring:
50 battle terms (攻撃する, まひ, どく, etc.)
30-40 navigation words (みなみ, きた, 道路, etc.)
50 item-related terms (キズぐすり, モンスターボール, etc.)
100 basic conversation words
But I’m not sure if this is correct information. Do you have any experience and can give me advice? Should I start playing now already? What game to YOU think makes most sense?
I don’t have stats/charts for other Pokemon titles, but this should be fairly representative of other Pokemon games, including Switch titles.
That said, with furigana, kanji knowledge won’t matter. Grammar will matter greatly, as well as breadth of known vocabulary (to avoid constant lookups).
@Thud@ChristopherFritz Thank you for the insights, very useful! I‘ll be able to make further research based on your inputs, greatly appreciated.
@Jintor@Belthazar I actually also used ChatGPT with the same prompts and feeded the outputs of each to the other. But because I‘m paying Claude for work already, I had to finalize the discussion there due to the free limits kicking in on ChatGPT. I just wanted to be transparent.
And yes, I let it summarize the discussion in order to focus on the main points so you don’t have to read the full thread. What‘s wrong about that? I still added my own changes to make it mine. And I wrote all the prompts in the first place.
Thanks to anyone who actually tried to give me the actual inputs I couldn’t get from the AI. Happy about any further tips!
perhaps if you had been transparent about it being a chatgpt-generated OP i would find it less distasteful. i understand some people use LLMs to help augment their own communicatation, but on a messageboard like this my current expectation is that I am communicating with actual humans and can have a human connection with people. posting in a topic that turns out to be a marketing vehicle is distasteful enough; posting in a topic that is less and less representative of actual human thought and more and more of a carefully calibrated word matrix, well, I quite dislike that sensation.
But you ARE interacting with a real human person. I am real. This is not marketing at all. AI is just a tool, I don’t let it create the initial thread, just the summary parts were summarized by it for better brevity purposes, the entire chat was quite long. How am I advertising anything here? I really don’t understand your point. I didn’t mean to strike a nerve and I am sorry if I did.
We can’t tell that from the OP and this is a community regularly plagued by spambots and other grifter people trying to sell their perfect Japanese language learning service or whatever. So a newbie jumping in here and posting two clearly ChatGPT generated posts looking to stir up organic discussion steers very close to, say, a ‘grassroots marketing’ operative looking to come in here, build community trust and then say ‘Actually I’ve been developing this AI-powered tool that will SUPERCHARGE YOUR LEARNING for just US$20 a month, FREE TRIAL AVAILABLE, no money down’.*
I don’t think you should worry about a chat being very long. This is a community of readers.
I get where you’re coming from, but I think it’s worth considering why asking others to interact with AI-generated content, even when labeled as such, might rub people the wrong way or fail to spark meaningful discussions.
For one, it can feel a bit impersonal. Forums are places where people come to connect with other people—to share ideas, perspectives, and experiences. When someone posts AI-generated content, it can come across as if they’re outsourcing their thoughts or contributions, which might make others feel like their time and engagement aren’t being respected. It’s like showing up to a book club with an essay you didn’t write and expecting a lively debate about it. Sure, it’s labeled, but it’s still not you.
Another issue is that AI-generated content often lacks the nuance, context, and emotional depth that make human conversations engaging. A good discussion thrives on unpredictability, personal anecdotes, and real human stakes—qualities that AI struggles to replicate meaningfully. Engaging with AI output might feel more like a chore than a genuine conversation, especially if it’s overly polished or generic.
Finally, there’s the question of effort. When someone posts their own thoughts, even if they’re messy or incomplete, it shows they’ve put in the effort to contribute to the community. Sharing AI content, on the other hand, can seem low-effort or even lazy, which might make others less inclined to respond thoughtfully.
That said, AI tools can still be useful—like brainstorming partners or research assistants—but relying on them to generate entire posts might not be the best way to foster meaningful interactions here. People come to forums for connection, not just content, and that human element is what keeps discussions interesting and worthwhile.
The above text has been generated with ChatGPT. I haven’t really proofread it but I’m sure it’s probably good enough maybe.
Ah, I see, now I understand where you’re coming from. But I promise, I‘m only here to learn Japanese myself. And I genuinely just wanted to get inputs & feedback for my plan to immerse myself with Japanese even more and if it’s the right time and approach to play a Pokemon game. And I‘m just used to discussing stuff with AI tools when I have no clue myself. It has helped me save time and get a head start when entering new areas more quickly. I will try not to post any AI chat summaries in the future. If this is something the community doesn’t want here, I‘ll happily adapt.
I have not generated the OP with AI. Only the quotes in it which summarize our discussion.
It’s only AI summaries, really.
The post is still mine. Summarizing a long back-and-forth of a chat I had with AI should really not be a big deal. But I‘m giving up. This thread is really going off-topic and I really don’t have the energy of defending myself. You’re all only making me feel bad for, well, I don’t really know what. For using AI to save me and you time, I guess.
I personally haven’t played many Pokemon games in Japanese, but I know people in a discord who talk about it and generally I would say the AI matches what I’ve heard.
Older games tend to be kana-only, which makes them approachable but yet means they bring their own difficulty as kana-only content can be difficult to look up and figure out from Japanese’s many homonyms.
And the newer games with furigana are also approachable because if you have furigana and a dictionary you can look up anything. The kanji will make it easier to figure out homonyms.
If you’re worried about not knowing the vocab, that’s something to get used to. You’ll always have to look up stuff, no matter how friendly it is, because no course (WK or otherwise) can cover everything you’ll ever encounter.
As others have said, the AI underestimates the amount of Kanji in modern Pokemon games by quite a large amount. If you don’t have a decent base of Kanji (maybe 600ish was about when I could start playing SWSH without furigana and not be constantly struggling), probably Scarlet and Violet would be good given they have furigana. There’s plenty of vocab which is definitely more pokemon-specific, which otherwise probably wouldn’t be in the first 1000 or 2000 words you’d learn, like 鍛える, 野生 or 防御 (many of these are often in kana) etc, and plenty of these words come up frequently enough that after the 5th or 6th time seeing them you look them up and then they stick pretty well. You also need some kind of grammar base to work from (maybe again I was at about N4ish in this case). But I think the best time to start is as early as you are able to enjoy it. After all, you learn while you’re playing, and it’s a great way to sink a huge amount of time into immersing in Japanese.
AI
On another note, plenty of people have strong opinions about AI (both ways), and I think people don’t like being essentially given an AI summary with mistakes in and being asked to double check it. Most people are more than happy to provide links, give feedback, answer questions and share experiences. There’s nothing inherently wrong with you using AI to answer these questions for yourself (although it is often inaccurate about specifics). But I think this kind of post will always be controversial, so maybe it’s better to approach it a different way. One that doesn’t involve the majority of your post being a response from an AI chatbot. I can see from your perspective that you see it as giving you a quick summary and it saving both you and other people time, but try to see it from the perspective of other people who push back against it.
