Never really thought of that to be honest! Just learned that I could swap the language in general today to begin with. The game I bought was Disgaea 5, and that was the only one it did it for.
Fair point there, I just found Jisho, so I may just end up giving yokai watch and DQ8 another go. And you’re right about Senran, I got the pinball spin off and happened to find I could read most of it. Do the english versions have a JP alt language?
At least on Steam they do.
That’s all I needed to know, thanks!
I know there are two settings to change the text and the audio to the other available languages, but I haven’t had the courage to try it yet, so no idea how difficult it is. I was guessing that it wouldn’t be one of the easier ones, since a decent portion of the text in the English version deals with abstract topics and/or uses slang and dialects.
Just double checked the listing on the Japanese eShop, and it does have English enabled. So if your system is English (which I assume it is) it’ll run in English even though you bought it on the Japanese store. No need to fear the JPN shop! 
Looks like the US copy doesn’t have Japanese, though. That’s lame.
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Kinda glad I bought the JP version, now that I know I can swap it around. So looks like it was a boon after all! xD
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I figured out I could swap the text in the launcher a few hours ago. So I swapped it and the audio to JP…and I could only understand about half of a cutscene. But hey! I did better than I thought I would! xD
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I have the song of life, it is real good! It is really engaging at points too, but it is the first one I played all the way through, so I may have been a little confused on the back story. 
Still lots of fun, reminds me of old street fighter games in the arcade where you could grab anything around you and hurl it at the enemy.
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I’ll try it tonight! I play FFXIV daily and never thought about playing in Japanese!! I was watching cutscenes in Japanese at first, but one of the voice characters annoyed the heck out of me, so I switched to English.
More than the English!?!?
Ostensibly the English voice actors they hired for the expansions were better, but for the original? Woof.
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As someone who plays a lot of Japanese games…
SNES games in general are good. Some games use a decent amount of kanji without going overboard. The only downside is the characters are not always clear and are a little more difficult to read, but tbh this was never much of an issue for me and it most likely won’t be for you either.
SNES Final Fantasy Games - Perfect for WaniKani’ers at the 25ish level and above. Has a good balance of gameplay vs text. Uses a fair amount of kanji but a level 25 user should be able to read most of it. Grammar is fairly simple to follow (some exceptions for characters like Cyan in FF6 who speak like a Samurai).
Secret of Mana / Seiken Densetsu 3 - Similar to Final Fantasy. IIRC, text is a bit easier to read and less story heavy / more gameplay. Game is not very linear so if you have trouble reading, you may get lost.
Chrono Trigger - Can be a bit more difficult because it does not use as much kanji as other SNES Final Fantasy games. Thus, if you rely on kanji for word memorization, this will be more difficult but is GREAT practice to get out of the reliance on kanji. Also good for people who are semi-proficient in Japanese but lacking in kanji knowledge.
Gyakuten Saiban / Ace Attorney - The original trilogy is on steam with HD text, which is great. I can’t speak of kanji use in the steam version, but the GBA version has similar usage of kanji as Chrono Trigger. I did find certain parts a little hard to understand and the names (in kanji) as well as technical terms may also throw you off, but if you enjoy the series this could be worth a shot.
FF7 - Similar to SNES Final Fantasies, but with longer cutscenes. Kanji usage is fairly similar and sometimes a blurry mess.
Xenogears - Fuhgettaboutit. Too much text.
Pokemon - I see this recommended a lot but I’m not a fan. Gameplay to text dialogue is too skewered towards gameplay and dialogue runs on the easier side. I really only recommend it if you’re a big fan of the series.
For something a little more advanced…
Trails in the Sky / Sora no Kiseki Evolution - Pretty much the gold standard for INTERMEDIATE+ LEVEL reading and listening practice. If a word can be written in kanji, there’s a good chance that it will be written in kanji - even words that are often written in kana are not exempt. What makes this series so good for listening is that during any time when you have free movement of your characters (meaning not in a cutscene), you can hit the up button to see the last 999 lines of dialogue. You can listen to any of those lines as much as you want. Extremely useful for practicing. Some other PS4 falcom games (like Ys, tokyo xanadu) support this as well, but the Zero/Ao Evolution games do not have the dialogue review.
Tales of Vesperia remastered - Skit dialogue advances on its own so listening comprehension needs to be strong. Kanji usage is high. The main character uses a lot of slang (like a tough guy would talk in anime). Good practice, but toughest game I’ve come across so far.
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I haven’t played from before Realm Reborn…but I think it was during Heavensward I switched and just didn’t think about it since then. Haha, I agree though that some are difficult to listen to in English as well.
Heavensward is apparently when they got a new English cast, so aaa I see.
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You don’t necessarily have to buy from the japanese eshop to get games in Japanese, depending on the game. It actually depends on what language your system is set to. If you set your system to Japanese, any games that support the language will boot up in Japanese. Many US versions of the game actually come with full Japanese language support, like mario odyssey, mario maker, the new fire emblem three houses, and many others. Before buying on the US eshop, check the “Supported languages” section, as it usually has them listed.
If you do a buy a game from the japanese eshop, it will still boot in english if you set your system to english and the game supports it. So make sure you set your switch to japanese first!
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Is that also true if you buy a physical copy? The back just says it supports spanish and french (and English).
Also your advice is true but, to everyone, just be careful. It’s hard to research this stuff and you can end up disappointed and down a lot of cash.
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Unlike other people here I wouldn’t recommend VN games such as Ace Attorney for japanese practice. Since it’s basically only text and completely dependent on your reading skills. I would recommend games where stuff actually happens on the screen. Today a game called Oninaki got released (鬼ノ哭キ邦 in japanese) and though I can by far not read everything, I understand many things just because of the scene I am looking at. From that I look up the words in german (since I am german) and see if it fits the japanese one (which it does pretty often).
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If you want something fairly easy-ish I tried a visual novel called “One night, Hot springs” because it was mentioned in a tofugu article a while ago and it was pretty easy compared to most vns I’ve tried reading and I personally liked it. (It’s very short though, but it’s both on steam and the google play store, and also free, so it’s not a that big deal if you end up not liking it). Other than that other people have already mentioned all the games I know about that could fit.
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Yeah that’s why I suggested to check the supported languages. If it doesn’t list Japanese as a supported language, then that likely means it isn’t there. The physical versions are exactly the same as the digital versions as far as I know.
EDIT: I have the digital version of fire emblem three houses, so unfortunately I can’t confirm that the physical version supports Japanese. The digital version definitely does though.
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I’m currently in the process of developing a game. It’s called Alien Squatter. The English release will be next month sometime and I plan to get working on a Japanese translation for my Japanese audience at a later point (maybe by next year). The game is heavily influenced by my travels around Japan and by the Japanese RPG Mother 2. However this game isn’t a traditional RPG so don’t expect that.
I also highly suggest Mother 3. It’s the most polished game in the Mother series and an easy RPG to play through.
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