And in manga, like Death Note as well 
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Massive thanks for the review! I was debating whether to get a Pokemon game on the Switch, but this looks like an instant buy. I will see whether I can get a physical copy, since I pretty much ran out of disk space on my Switch.
I have this game and like it but i’m stuck at a boss who keeps kicking my ass ~sigh~
OH YOU’RE RIGHT THAT’S WHERE I SAW IT THE LAST TIME
Funny enough, Kanji and Vocab from level 35 are present in the early game of Pokemon and now I’m breezing through it
I swear immersion is one hell of a drug after you see learned words everywhere
That is correct.
Yeah, I read it here first and saw it in death note later.
I didn’t mention it in the review, but there’s some delays in transitioning to battle screens. And the camera can go off center.
Pokémon games, while of course not overly complicated aren’t light on Kanji especially in the 図鑑. So I second the opinion, that all kinds of learners can in some way benefit from the game.
The Pokédex entry for Sobble with the power of 1000 onions confused the hell out of me 
Thanks for the help everyone. Grabbed the Switch and downloading some demos now. High hopes for Aegis Rim, will probably make one of those game posts after I test it out a bit.
If I knew it was this easy to access the JP eShop I would have bought one sooner
Does anybody know if you can combine/add items to be shipped with a preorder from Amazon?
Edit: You can.
GAME: Big Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain
PLATFORM: Switch
PRICE: ￥3200/$29.99 eShop (Has Demo)
GENRE: Educational
LEVEL: N5/N4
REVIEW: Fun educational activities separated into 5 categories: Identify, Analyze, Memorize, Visualize, and Compute. Suitable for all ages and I believe all you have to do is change the language to Japanese is to change your system language. Most of the activities are quite intuitive and you can always learn how to play them in English first if you wanted to. Where the game really shines for Japanese practice are the few activities that have Japanese prompts. It really gives you a sense of the difference between knowing what a word means and it being part of your fluent vocabulary when every second matters.
Trailer:
Damn, both Persona 5 Strikers and Persona 4 Golden got the best rank - very deserved if I may say so 
Dragon Quest 11, too! That game was one of the reasons I started learning Japanese in the first place lol
GAME: 神田 アリスも 推理スル。
PLATFORM: Switch
PRICE: 1,500円
GENRE: Visual Novel
LEVEL: Difficult. Large vocab, a lot of alternative kanji, literary style. It has a furigana option but it seemed limited to names and rare words.
REVIEW: This is the first game / visual novel I read. It took me about 100 hours to completely finish it (including all alternative endings). There aren’t that many choices, it’s mostly reading. But I enjoyed every minute of it and want to read it again.
GAME: Shujinkou
PLATFORM: Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, and PC
GENRE: JRPG, Educational
LEVEL: N5-N3
This game isn’t out yet, but I figured WK beginners might be interested in this. It’s a JRPG focused on teaching you Japanese with a persona/dungeon crawler style to it. Supposedly as the game progresses the text will transition from English to Japanese as you learn new words and grammar points.
I wonder how this will turn out 
Yeah I have that on my wishlist. The developer said the game has an SRS system too so that should really help in learning too!
The Japanese language learning video games that I have on my wishlist that interest me on Steam is Shujinkou, Nihongo Quest N5, and Koe (声).
Shujinkou
Level: N5-N3
Platform: Steam, PS4, PS5, Switch
Shujinkou is N5-N3 and they claim it’s perfect for those planning to take N4. They don’t plan on covering all of N3 nor do they have a plan of making a sequel as I was hoping they would do a sequel N3-N1 game. Has an SRS system. You won’t be able to skip over Hiragana and Katakana sadly. Will have a dictionary in game so words can be looked up in game so you don’t have to go to a Japanese dictionary app or website. Whether you see romaji or not depends on the setting. I believe setting to Amateur or higher you won’t see any romaji. Game can be set to gamer, learner, or mix (it’s a mixture of both.) English text turns into Japanese overtime.
Nihongo Quest N5
Level: N5
Platform: Steam, Mobile
Price: $15
Nihongo Quest N5 is N5 only. The developer plans on making a total of 5 games so the next game would be N4. Also has an SRS system. Developer plans on making Hiragana, Katakana, and Radicals section skipable so you can go straight into kanji, vocabulary, and grammar. If sales do really well he said he might get it on the Switch.
Koe (声)
Level: N5-N3
Platform: Steam
I don’t believe they will be teaching all of N3 either. Unsure whether there will be an SRS system or not.
Japanese Battle
Level: Supposedly N5-N1
Platform: Assuming mobile and PC
It’s a visual novel game that is suppose to take someone from beginner to advance. Don’t know too much else about this game.
Lingo Legend
Yorthwood
Level: Beginner-Intermediate
Platform: mobile (currently only on iOS, they said they plan on releasing Android version later this year).
Lingo Legend said they plan on making multiple language learning games and that Yorthwood, a language learning RPG card game, is just the first. They teach Japanese and a few other languages as well.
On the Switch for anyone who likes 乙女ゲーム there is a game called Taisho x Alice which has the option of toggling between English and Japanese on the Switch.
Has anyone played the Learn Japanese to Survive series?
I know they’re on steam for about $10 each, not sure about other platforms, but I was wondering if they are any good?
GAME: Pokémon Legends: Arceus
PLATFORM: Nintendo Switch
PRICE: €59,99 (eshop)
GENRE: RPG
LEVEL: Intermediate
REVIEW: I’ve been playing this game after finishing Brilliant Diamond (see previous review). If you’re not familiar with those games, then I’d recommend checking that out as I do make comparisons between the two. Arceus or アルセウス was my first game I started in Japanese without any prior playthrough before. Was pretty excited to see what changes they made to the main games, what they kept and how that reflects in the writing.
The first change is that there is no distinct kana or kanji mode when you select Japanese as your language, you’ll still be locked to that language when you decide on one, additionally all kanji gets furigana in dialogue. That does make the dialogue look a bit more involved when more complicated vocabulary is used, although it is a bit easier to look up stuff in a dictionary. So it’s not a large step from previous games, but there is a noticeable difference. I would put the grammar used between N3 and N2, so it’s a little more complex. Additionally you’re juggling a larger amount of lines per character, I’d probably recommend it to intermediate learners. That said everyone can hop right in and see how far they can get and still get something out of it.
Which brings me to the second change and that’s the main gameplay and setting. The game starts with the main character being transported to another time, before pokémon and humans lived together in harmony. You land right in the middle of the Hisui region, a large unexplored area where wild pokémon still roam freely. An expedition team named Team Galaxy recently came to this region in order to survey the land, bringing with them people across different regions that wish to live here. The village of Jubilife (コトブキムラ) is where their HQ is located. This is the main hub of the game where you keep returning to, it has shops and NPC’s to give you quests, you can do some minigames, trading, learn your pokémon techniques and do crafting. As they’ve just developed tools to capture pokémon, you’ll be able to join team galaxy pretty fast by showing off your skills. You’re then tasked to capture and study pokémon in order to complete the first pokédex (図鑑). Sounds familiar, but it is a bit closer to the original meaning as it looks like a field guide of pictures of wild animals. You complete each page by completing certain tasks related to the pokémon’s behavior and habits, which differs per pokémon. I do like this aspect of the game as you’re closer to a researcher. To act out these surveys (調査), all you gotta do is leave town select an area and a base camp to start from. You have limited amount of inventory and you’ll have to make do with the materials you find in the wild. I definitely enjoy the exploration the most in this game, it’s just so easy to kill time and get completely lost in the surroundings. There’s a variety of creatures from different regions, there’s new forms and also some pokémon you ride. It’s a lot of fun.
The last change I want to adress is about the story and the battle system. These are my least favorite elements of the game, but I do think it’s good to mention them seperately like this. So while exploring the different areas it’s possible to capture pokémon without battling them, although you can’t always avoid that plus the story has you fight as well. You still are in the field and you have again 4 attacks to choose from the command menu, although the trainer can also get hit, so there’s a bit more action to it. Additionally you can use two different styles, quick and strong style to gain an advantage in battle. Quick style will allow you to deal less damage but your next turn will come up sooner, so you could attack twice in a row. With strong style you’ll deal more damage, but you gotta wait for your next turn if you didn’t finish off your opponent and then you may risk getting attacked twice. Another difference is that you can assign moves from the list of learned techniques you want in battle in the field. So you don’t have to delete moves to make room for new ones, you just gotta assign them at the right time for you. My problem with the battle system is that it feels less engaging and less rewarding. You either get nearly wiped out or you wipe out your opponent in a single move. This is to an extent also true in main games with super effective moves, but here normal effective moves can also do way too much damage, plus you factor in the styles you might not get a turn. There’s also some funky thing with switching pokémon where they either lose or gain a turn. It somehow feels more unfair and more unbalanced than regular pokémon, which is a pretty impressive feat on its own. I’ll also say something about the story. Strange lightning makes a special class of pokémon rampage and you have to calm them down by hitting them with satchets. Makes for a bit of clunky gameplay and each area works its way up to one of these. Each new character feeling more at home in a high school comedy anime rather than in the wilderness. It kinda felt like they wanted to chase the isekai crowd. While pokémon has always been kinda goofy, I never felt such a disconnect between the gameplay, story and characters. I guess I wanted them to do something more interesting with a historical setting, but it’s a bit of hodgepodge that doesn’t come together well. So my interest in it kept decreasing the more I played of it, which is a bit of a shame because there’s definitely something in there. I added in some of my screenshots below of dialogue in the game.
I didn’t get into all the details, because there’s quite a lot of it to explain and I think the game does a great job on itself. Each element is introduced nicely and as exploration is key there is plenty of freedom. There is also a manual and the map is very helpful. All the objectives are very clear, barring some sidequests. The music I think is great and there’s definitely some classical Japanese with the brushstrokes. Game doesn’t look half bad and some of the character designs are pretty great. I enjoyed my time with the game and beat the story in about 30 hours. There was plenty more to do as well with post-game content, but I had my fill with it and moved on to something else. Arceus is still a fine game and does do some new (welcome) things in this large franchise. Ultimately I like the main games more and there is more of that coming this year, which I’m grateful for and looking forward to.
I bought the trilogy series, but by the time I got around to it I only played Learn Japanese to Survive! Kanji Combat. I thought it was fun, but it wasn’t perfect. I actually bought the study guide in addition to the game, but ended up making my own study guide because their study guide showed the On and Kun reading in romaji. As for playing the game I recommend putting it in hard mode. Normal mode will teach you in romaji which is something you definitely don’t want. Also they show both On and Kun readings in hiragana.
