Recommendations for easy to play (read) games

Hi again!

After my last post asking for recommendations for Manga or reading resources in general, I am now asking again for your help but for game recommendations instead, my grammar is past genki 1, and I’m level 3 still here, just a beginner! But I’ve been enjoying the reading recommendations and I thought I could complement them with some gaming as well, can be any console or PC game (or any genre as well), that should be easy and children could understand!

Thank you!! :heart:

4 Likes

I highly recommend Eastward

Another great game, (and the one that I actually managed to finish) is Unreal Life (has nothing to do with Unreal)

Both trailers are for Switch, but these games are also on Steam.

9 Likes

Dragon Quest, Animal Crossing and Pokemon are all my go to games for learning Japanese.

6 Likes

I second @WaniTsunami’s recs (DQ, AC e Pokémon are all pretty fun and easy to read – for me Pokémon was the easiest)

Another one that I found pretty fun and easy is Pikmin for 3DS: not text heavy but the dialogues are fun and meaningful, building the game’s plot little by little. :slight_smile:
(There are other pikmin games, more recent ones!, and while I believe that they are also as fun, I haven’t had the chance to play them yet so can’t directly vouch for them)

4 Likes

Yokai Watch for the Switch is pretty nice! Unfortunately, it’s only available in Japan either via the Japanese e-shop or buying a physical copy in Japan. There’s also the 3ds version which is available in other regions, but this one hurt my eyes when trying to read Furigana on the low resolution display :smiley:

I haven’t played it myself yet, but the new Super Mario RPG for the switch is probably another good bet? :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Will second the recommendation for Yokai on Switch. You can get a Japanese e-shop account in the west, but payment methods are mostly region locked, so you’ll need to buy japanese gift cards to top it up which are sold at a premium online. It doesn’t bother me so mucb as the gift card markup is less than my local eshop’s markup.

Also worth checking out the game gengo channel, he has reviews and tier lists for different platforms:

5 Likes

Japanese eshop cards on playasia are relatively cheap, at least if you’re in the UK haha. I actually bought yo-kai watch on switch last night for the same purpose of learning with a 5000 yen gift card. was £32 which is only about £4 above it’s actual value, not bad at all IMO.

1 Like

I’ll stand by Super Mario Odyssey, plus it’ll make you VERY good VERY fast at katakana

Ace attorney. Has a lot of words I use in real life.

Haven’t tried it myself but this just came out today:

1 Like

I say this as a beginner.

Most of the recommendations here will be too difficult. Games such as Dragon Quest XI do not have furigana and auto-scroll much of the text, so you can’t read at your own pace.

Let’s Go Pokemon is decent, but it has no furigana. Otherwise, it fully allows you to go at your own pace.

Yokai Watch is probably the best suggestion. It has furigana and fully allows you to go at your own pace. It is also set in contemporary Japan, so you don’t get as many odd words as you would in other fantasy games.

You absolutely want a game that allows you to progress the text at your own pace, or provides a full chat log. Voice acting is optional, but could help with unfamiliar words. Furigana will be a requirement at your level, unless you want to spend a LOT of time manually searching kanji via radicals (a guaranteed way to quit a game). I am ten levels above you (in wanikani) and something like Pokemon has just become doable without furigana.

1 Like