afaik ps3 is region free
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I’m normally a lurker here, but I love games! Hi!
GAME: Ace Attorney trilogy, aka 逆転裁判123
PLATFORM: windows/steam, ps4, xbox one, switch, 3ds
PRICE: Full price is $30, maybe more if you want a physical copy (Japan only)
GENRE: visual novel, mystery, puzzle
LEVEL: Intermediate - upper intermediate, seems like. The grammar isn’t overly complicated but there’s a lot of kanji with no furigana. The vast majority of text waits for the player, though. @kusuri who’s also had a go at it recommends N2/N3
REVIEW: It’s a bit old by now but I’ve always heard good things about the series and wanted to give it a try. Never played the english version so I expected case solving to be difficult, but so far it hasn’t been a problem-- granted, I’m still only a ways into the first game! So far it’s been quite goofy, despite involving lots of murder. Because it isn’t voiced at all, it’s not for people who specifically want to practice their listening skills. A lot of words are used multiple times, although they are rather specific to crime/investigation/lawyering/etc… I know so many words for murder and death now 
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And then you post a picture of Oldbag of all people, haha!
Good pick, I love the series in English, and replaying in Japanese is a goal of mine eventually, for sure. I just think I need to get my kanji knowledge a little further along for that to not be overly annoying.
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GAME: Breath of Fire
PLATFORM: Nintendo Switch (+ various other Nintendo playforms)
PRICE: Part of online subscription (Switch); 838円 (3DS)
GENRE: RPG
LEVEL: Maybe N4+?
REVIEW:
One of my favorite childhood RPG’s (alongside CT, FF6, EB). I love the characters and storyline, although other RPG’s from the SNES era did much better in those areas. I love the medieval fantasy setting, which the other RPG’s I owned didn’t compare with.
After having played through the game in English many times, I decided to try it in Japanese back in 2019. However, I mostly coasted off of already knowing what’s being said.
Earlier this year I decided to start over and look up all the unknown words as I go. (I had missed a lot!) It’s great seeing all the areas where the translation had to really condense things.
Here are a couple of examples of the official English release (left) and my translation of the Japanese (right), which gives an idea how exciting it is to actually read through the Japanese.
From a Japanese-learning standpoint, the big criticism is that the game is kana-only. But it’s good reading practice for words I already know, and it makes very good use of spaces in dialogue.
SCREENSHOTS:
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LOL I love that you picked Oldbag too.
I tried playing this game around N3/N4 and it was too difficult. I’d probably say it’s N2/N3. I love this series so much! Can’t wait to play the latest release in Japanese (although it’s been released in Japan for awhile now).
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And then you post a picture of Oldbag of all people, haha!
LOL I love that you picked Oldbag too.
Aha yeah, I snagged that picture from the amazon page because it seemed easier than getting a screenshot off my switch 
there’s only two with dialogue on them smh
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GAME: Misao: Definitive Edition
PLATFORM: PC (Steam)
PRICE: $3.49 USD (Currently On-Sale, normally $4.99)
GENRE: Horror / Thriller / Indie / Adventure
LEVEL: N3 ish
REVIEW: Really fun to play, I’m at about level 40 on wanikani and I’m running into a lot of kanji / words I’ve already seen. There is a lot of chatting and interacting with things, which I enjoy because I can click on things and get a response in Japanese. You have to select Japanese from the games preferences in Steam though to change the Locale for language.
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GAME: Sdorica (currently, Sdorica: Sunset)
PLATFORM: Mobile
PRICE: 0円
GENRE: RPG / Adventure / Tactical
LEVEL: N4 grammar, but N3 kanji (+ some less common ones here and there)
REVIEW: Not a major title like Epic7 or Grand Chase, but has a very unique art style, is quite funny and more story-driven than other gatcha games. It feels more like following a fairy tale than playing a game, honestly.
Important thing is the text (combat tips, dialogues, etc.) doesn’t disappear so you can read it at your leisure.
I’m not 100% sure, but I think you need to have your phone set to Japanese to play it in Japanese. At least I didn’t have to select the language explicitly.
EDIT:
Been continuing to play Sdorica and am still very happy with it. The goofy characters, light gameplay and very polished art style make for a pleasant gaming experience.
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GAME: 真･女神転生V
PLATFORM: Switch
PRICE: 10000円
GENRE: RPG
LEVEL: n2
REVIEW: Definitely ramping up to my GOTY. Been waiting many years for this to come out. Latest installment in hands down favorite series.
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It’s pretty annoying that this game, like SMT3 before it, doesn’t have the Japanese option in the western release.
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GAME: 幻想少女大戦コンプリートボックス (Fantasy Maiden Wars Complete Box)
PLATFORM: PC (Physical, DLSite https://www.dlsite.com/home/work/=/product_id/RJ268024.html)
PRICE: 4,950 円
GENRE: Strategy RPG
LEVEL: N2
REVIEW: One of the best SRPG’s (Fire Emblem, Super Robot Wars) I’ve played and one of my main goals for learning to read Japanese! Be wary that this game has a good 100+ hours worth of gameplay and an absolute LOAD of text for you to practice your reading on 
. Also this being an RPG there’s plenty of time to read the text boxes, you control progression of the conversations in the game.
The Game
Pulling characters, musical arranges and lore from the 方東 universe made by a 1 man dev team (Team Shanghai Alice, consisting of just ZUN) which you may know about if you are somewhat familiar with Japanese video game culture or even memes, this is a Strategy RPG consisting of 4 separate games bundled into one, where each game builds on the progress of the last one. Made by dev team Sanbondo.
Gameplay
The gameplay is great with many interesting mechanics, while not being overly complicated. And can be very challenging on the harder difficulties.
You are on a tiled map, tiles affect your attacks/defense, some tiles have special characteristics, you control a team of units that you level and gear up. In some point of the game you have so many different characters that you have to start grouping them together into more powerful units, they get special combo attacks.
MUSIC
The music(arranges of Touhou music) is as you might expect one of the highlights of the game. Each playable character/unit of which there are about ~70!! each with their own personalities and unique movesets, has 1 or more soundtracks of their own that plays during their attacks, one for regular attacks and one for super attacks! The OST is fire.
Story
The story is great, the different chapters are based on the various original Touhou bullet hell games’ stories, which are quite light on story and very subtle in their story telling, so Sanbondo had to improvise their own filling of the story which I might say they did a great job with.
Characters have TONS of flavor text in battle and in the story cutscenes, attacking specific characters with specific characters gives you unique dialogue pertaining to them, I also feel like almost none of the ~70 or so characters are left behind and forgotten during the story.
Notes and Info
You’ll have to run this game in Japanese localization on windows.
If you want an English translation you’ll unfortunately have to follow this EN forum lets play where the player (BlitzBlast) and some helpers translated all the text on the go, the Complete Box came out quite recently and is yet to be translated. Fantasy Maiden Wars E Eternal thanks to BlitzBlast for this amazing lets play of the series.
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Gotta cough up the big yen.
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As far as a beginning Intermediate reference for playing games in Japanese, I may watch some from this You Tube Channel “Japanese Quest”. It will save me some time (in that he tells vocabulary as he plays through) and saves money (in that I can just watch him play instead of buying and playing for myself, yet).
Games played include
Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild
And Stardew Valley
This is Japanese Quest’s list clipped from a Reddit post:
- Super Mario Odyssey
- Dragon Quest 11
- Seiken Densetsu
- BotW
- Celeste
- Stardew Valley
- Xenoblade 2
Bonus: Akira Sensei made Anki decks
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2122307843
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Fantastic thread! I’m starting Stardew Valley, but definitely looking for other RPG/open world/chill games, so I’ll be keeping my eye on here 
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Per my very brief eval, Tales of Erin is probably not worth it as far as gaming in Japanese goes. The publisher is Chinese, the audio is in Japanese, but the game is mostly in English with some bits and pieces of Japanese that somehow sneaked through. Also, the English text very poorly aligns with the audio meaning-wise so it’s more confusing than it’s worth it.
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This regularly goes on sale for $15 on the e-shop and you can run parallel saves in English and Japanese if you want. I definitely had to grab a copy and its quite witty.
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You can get the Japanese audio, but not text.
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I’m still waiting until I am fluent enough to play the original Final Fantasy 7 in Japanese.
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I know.
There’s not enough audio to be really worth it.
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Yeah, that’s true. I don’t know why the Japanese game is so freaking expensive, but Play Asia
has really reasonable shipping rates, if the game price ever comes down:
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