Chances are you can’t change the text to Japanese in the Western version. The Japanese version of Doraemon Story of Seasons doesn’t switch to English, not even after the game came out in the West (it’s the same with Dragon Quest Builders 2). On the uphand, there are furigana in the text if you need it. You could download the Japanese demo off the Japanese eshop (creating an account is easy if you haven’t done so already), and see whether you like it or not.
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I tried playing Earth Defense Force 5 in japanese but it’s a chore. All the weird weapon names are in katakana, which I’m definitely still much less good at reading fast than hiragana, and the voices are not subtitled.
I have no idea what’s being said 90% of the time, I think I’ll just give up ;_;
Demo for Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Dx just came out. Japanese supported (text only) and all kanji has furigana. The dialog is simple and easy enough to understand for upper beginner lower intermediate, but its not exactly ‘textbook’, since its a kids game, (along the lines of yotsuba&! grammar). Still, I think it seems to be a great start if your not that advanced in Japanese yet. Plus its a demo so its free to try at least ッ
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Not sure if mentioned above but I highly rate Pokemon Shield/Sword in Japanese.
But depends on your level and what you like to play.
For example I tried Judgement (Judge Eyes) and although also helpful, had many blocking points because my level just wasn’t there yet for me to start solving mysteries much like how playing Phoenix Wright would have the opposite effect of a fun immersive experience.
So this is why Pokemon was good as progression is not entirely dependent on how well you can read EVERYTHING and several words get repeated a LOT, i.e. during battle or in Pokécentres.
I’ve bookmarked this thread as will definitely be returning to it when the time comes to play the next game 
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I’m planning to pick up a 3DS and Harvest Moon on my next trip to Japan (I’m not a big gamer, so buying a Switch seems a bit expensive for what is basically the same game).
play pokemon on 3ds or switch, and you can set the language to Japanese with just kana at the start of a new game. If you can get access to a copy original dragon quest games in Japanese are also good
I had such a hard time trying to play Dragon Quest Builders 2 in Japanese because of all the fantasy words I didn’t know and some weirder speaking styles.
I switched to Pokemon Let’s Go and I’m finding it much easier. Going to play Shield when I finish Let’s Go!
I started playing Sekiro… and it’s… very advanced.
Lots of archaic readings… Learning あなた being written as 貴方. It’s quite tough but I like the voice acting cause it reinforces my knowledge pretty fast. I might import Persona 5 Royal even though I just beat it in English. It seems like a great game to learn modern Japanese since you press X to proceed whenever you want. It’s real stupid the US version doesn’t have Japanese text.
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The kanji in the iOS RPG app, Kirara Fantasia, are fairly easy. Just started playing it again today. It’s super adorable. Don’t play if you don’t want a sugar overload. It’s based on characters from Manga Time Kirara and the one manga I read from there がっこうぐらし was pretty easy so I’m guessing they just tend to use easier language in their franchise.
It looks like there is no Japanese subtitle option available in the English language version - is that correct?
Japanese version is a lot more expensive but I’ll buy it if I have to! 
@Liam - notice me senpai
Steins Gate in Japanese? Holy crap. I now imagine the Time Travel speech in the beginning in Japanese 
Yes, I had to buy the JP version! You should try P4G on Steam though. It has the Japanese language option entirely.
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If anyone plays League of Legends and is familiar with the champions and items I find it a great game to help someone on katakana. You can change the language to Japanese by tweaking some settings, and all the champion names will be similar to the English version. So even if you can’t read ナミ you still know the champion’s name is Nami! This helped me a lot when I still played the game.
Also even if you don’t know advanced Japanese the search bar will still respond to English for buying items, etc.
I’m totally using this “practice” reasoning to buy Ghost of Tsushima this Friday. Can’t wait.
I’m just kidding with the quotes, it is legit reasoning, I play any game possible with the Japanese audio track and it helps your listening skills a lot.
Thank you, senpai 
omg, this is an ancient thread from 2014!! however, I wanted to make a suggestion for beginners maybe (I had no time to look into it, yet). it’s name is Tatami Road for PC or Mac. it has not been finished yet and you have to pay a low fee of 2 bucks (or 15, if you like to have a NPC with your name in the final version) to get the demo and the final copy, as soon as it will be finished. you might want to look into this, or even support that project: Tatami Road - Japanese immersive language learning RPG game by Go
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Totally off-topic but I could not resist since I always get tripped up by this as well It’s not from 2014 but from July 14th…
(2014 would be written as Jul '14 - very subtle but meaningful difference)
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oh right, dankeschön für den Hinweis!! <3
this is kinda embarassing though, haha
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A bit late, but I do have to agree on pokémon (not biased at all).
I learned quite a chunk of my english from constantly playing pokémon games. The clunky and outdated battle system (it’s the same since gen 3 lol) actually makes for a great way to learn words. You’ll be seeing the same phrases, expressions and words the entire playthrough (“it’s super effective/not very effective” “[pokémon] used [move]!” “hit [number] times!” “[pokémon] fainted!”). The dialogue of the games is often pretty simple too.
I recommend catching as many pokémon as you can, to learn their katakana and being able to differenciate the pokémon’s names and actual text. Also, as your japanese progress, you should try and guess what’s the pun on pokémon names! It’s what I did and it’s very nice to finally understand that “Mudkip” is “mudskipper + mud”, the same way that bakugames (turtonator) is 爆発 + 亀
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I picked up the new Shiren the Wanderer on Switch, and the nice thing is you get multiple saves per account and can pick the language for each of those saves. So I might start doing a second save set to Japanese to give me something to do more immersion with.