Simple JRPGs for reading immersion?

I’ve recently been playing pokemon mystery dungeon (sky) in Japanese and it’s been really fun. There’s no kanji and the vocab is mostly easy but there’s a good amount of more difficult words spread throughout that have made it a fun learning experience. It might be tricky if you aren’t familiar with the Japanese names for pokemon and moves, but thankfully the item names in this game were translated more literally than in the main series so if you’ve played them in English before it’s not too hard to figure out what’s what.

Paper Mario on the N64 and TTYD on the GC are pretty nice too, featuring “easy kanji” (for Japanese kids obviously) with furigana on everything and harder kanji words in katakana.

I love Ni no Kuni, will try it in Japanese, never thought of that!

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Creating the account and/or getting access to the Japanese stores is easy.

Actually being about to BUY anything? Yeah… enjoy that.

If you don’t have a Japanese issues credit card for the Xbox Store, you are absolutely out of luck when buying Japanese content.

I actually recommend buying physical releases for most systems. Amazon Japan and CD Japan offer game sales, as does PlayAsia.

You can try to get digital gift cards but it seems for the Xbox, that’s all but dried up. PSN is easier to obtain but most of the places I’ve tried lately even had PSN digital funds out of stock. Sad because it would be so easy to just buy it digitally and not pay shipping, etc.

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I gotta be honest, that surprises me since I was able to just change my PC region to Japan and download the Japanese version of Dragon Quest 11 which is included in the GamePass subscription. So I would have thought it would be easier ^^"

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I mean, there are many console games that let you switch the game language, too… but sometimes the Western version doesn’t contain Japanese (and that’s something that also happens on the PC occasionally), and if you want to buy games that haven’t been localized, you’re SOL.

(Also, if you’re on Steam, you can just a) switch the default language for all games in the Steam settings, or b) select a different language for individual games in the game’s properties. No need to switch your system language.)

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Yeah, as I’ve said, Dragon Quest only includes the Japanese language in the Japanese version of the game but (at least on PC) it wasn’t that difficult to connect to the Japanese store and download it from there

So that is interesting.

You definitely can’t BUY content from Japan without using Yen. The PS Store is the same. At least on Xbox. I wonder if the Windows Store follows some other rule… This is the same problem when trying to buy Japanese music via Amazon Japan. Just having a Japanese address isn’t enough for them, it has to be a credit card provided by a Japanese company. I just go and use a VPN and E-Onkyo when I want to buy digital music though… :smiley:

I have Game Pass. I had no problem downloading the Japanese version of the game but It gives an error and won’t play.

So possibly it’s an issue with my account? Don’t know. Definitely won’t start though.

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Yeah, I checked my usual site and all the Xbox gift cards in ¥ are out of stock. I think Microsoft might be changing something in that regard. Hopefully it’s making the Xbox Game Pass global.

There are still Nintendo Switch gift cards available though. That’s how I usually get games on my Japanese account.

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I’m playing Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore right now and I think it could be a good fit for a first long JRPG in Japanese. I don’t think there’s furigana, but there’s full voice acting which is… arguably sort of the same thing with added listening practice! There’s a lot of systems with strange terminology but they boil down to be pretty simple and it’s got a very approachable air in general I think (especially if you’re familiar with Persona).
Also I can confirm that switching your Nintendo Switch’s system language to Japanese sets even an English copy of the game to Japanese (which seems to work for lots of things on that system).

It’s also worth noting that emulators can expand your options astronomically, depending on your willingness to… dump your own famicom carts…
Depending on how far back in time you go, it can be very intimidating because there might not even be kanji (which sounds fine until you remember there’s no line breaks either…), but that can also really sharpen your vocabulary recognition and kana reading skills! And the plots are simple enough to follow easily.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Early last year I played Yakuza 7 in Japanese, after only playing… I think just Final Fantasy 1? in Japanese… I gave it a shot because I love the series and there was no English release date at the time, and I thought for sure I wouldn’t be able to make it through and would have to play it again in English later even if I recorded my gameplay and watched over it to catch stuff I missed… but in the end I had a blast, “turned off my targeting computer” so to speak, got the platinum, and it felt like a huge accomplishment and huge growth!
Which is just to say that sometimes I think wanting to play something can be a lot more powerful than being able to, if that makes sense. So I’d err on the side of something you’re enthusiastic about vs. something you think you could manage but aren’t really that into.

Last tip is searching youtube for the Japanese title of a game brings up as many LPs and longplays as the English title would, so that might be a way to watch a little before you commit.

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I can confirm I tried Pokemon FireRed & HeartGold and struggled due to my currently small vocabulary.

I do also find that Kanji is much easier to read (obviously when I know the Kanji), I understand now why it helps the reading as it helps indicate the words and sentence structure so much better than a constant line of hiragana. When I don’t know the words I don’t know what I need to look up as I can’t tell where it starts and ends!

I think the general recommendation appears to be to just stick with WK until around level 10 then get on with BunPro and at WK level 20 and BunPro level J5/J4 it’s time to start JRPGs as a potentially source of practise/learning and any earlier is a real struggle.

Was the text easy to read in FireRed/Heart Gold? I’ve been playing Crystal in Japanese and whilst I love it (and my favourite Pokemon game) the text/pixel font is not very easy on the eyes. :joy:

I am a big fan of classic JRPGs, I love FF6-9, Chrono Trigger and other similar games and I would love to play through FF7 specifically in Japanese.

I actually download an anki deck with the vocab that I am reviewing daily just to make a start. It is way above my level and JLPT wise doesn’t make sense but I agree that my passion to play and understand the story would increase my interest in the vocab.

I also seen Game Genko on YouTube has a series where you can learn the phrases of FF7 remake as a Japanese play through which is quite cool and I might look into following along.

One thing I have wondered which you might be able to give me your opinion on… is it worth playing a game such as Pokemon where the story isn’t the essential pet but the battle system and collecting (even FF7 as I know the story through multiple play through) would it be more beneficial to pick the most reoccurring words out to look up, ignore most vocab, try and recall ones I know in the script but not get bogged down with learning and understanding every word/line? I was thinking of doing this over multiple play throughs hoping each time I will be progressing in WK and eventually BunPro and Anki enough to keep understanding more instead of slowly working through sections and sapping the enjoyment out of it.

I haven’t heard this approach mentioned but feel it may be more fun and encourage me to learn it more from games I already know in English such as DQ11, Persona 5, FF series 1-10.

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Not at all haha especially trying to tell the difference between ほ/ぼ/ぽ for example. The lack of pixels a really does make it hard. I mean I know little vocab currently without the added struggle of not being able to distinguish which kana I am looking at!

I am thinking of saving up for a Switch Lite to get better resolution as it appears to be a system that would be perfect for learning t he language as a lot of the games are aimed and kids and adults a like so the words and sentences are simple yet not necessarily childish as elementary level reading books tend to be.

Just popping in to say that if you do end up getting a switch then I’ve found Pokémon sword to be very playable at my level (which is only lvl12 WK and about N5 grammar) there are some things where I will screenshot and take a detailed look later and I definitely don’t get all nuance but enough to understand what’s going on and for it to feel enjoyable!

I’ve also played a bit of Mario oddessy in Japanese and while it’s also very playable the text quite often whizzes by at speed so I’m not sure it does much for my Japanese haha

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Figuring out how to balance immersion vs. not understanding everything is definitely a challenge!

What works well for me personally, is I have a free JP-ENG app called “Takoboto” on my phone, that has a good capacity for making word lists. So as I play or read something difficult I’ll be looking things up constantly, and putting them into word lists, so I can see like, “oh I came across this before and it was in a game.” And then once I look it up a second time I put it in a special list, and every so often I export that list to anki and use that to review.
I like that method because I don’t have to worry about long-term study in the moment, I can just mechanically put stuff into a word list and get on with the game (or book or manga or whatever). And then when I eventually review the words it’s got some personal weight since I know I came across them before.
It does involve a ton of looking stuff up though, and come to think of it I think I only started doing that after I got through Wanikani so I could look up most kanji just fine, and was hungry for more SRS instead of exhausted from it.

Half the fun is figuring out what system personally works best for you though!

I think everything you mention (casually playing less story heavy games, playing games where you already know the story, finding fan resources for classic games) are all really good ideas for any level! I bet Pokemon would really drill in the move names for you, for example.

Worst-case, a game isn’t going to like, make you unlearn anything, so as long as you’re having fun you’ll be learning something too along the way.

(P.S. I mentioned this before, but if you do get a switch - change the language in system settings, and lots of (all?) games will change their language too.
I… needlessly imported some games before I figured that part out…)

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Well, for games with an older target audience level 20 is not enough.

I’ve posted recently, that I tried the Bravely Default 2 demo and it has a TON OF KANJI that I haven’t seen.

Pokémon is pretty much ok by now, most of the Kanji I look up are ones that I’m supposed to know, ooops :smiley:

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I actually tried to do an LP of the demo a while back:

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I started P4G at around level 10 and I could sort of understand it. That’s mostly due to my playing P4 so many times in English though.

Maybe do an English playthrough first while you expand your vocab knowledge?

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These are two different kinds of learning I’d say.

I think if you know the text very well, you THINK you understand the Japanese, because you KNOW what it is supposed to say. Still of course good for vocab expansion, as you said.

For me it’s important to also try out brand new stuff in Japanese, to see how much I REALLY understand.

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Yeah I agree. I’m still at a low level so I’m reading some children’s manga for brand new content. For video games intended for teens I still need that base of English knowledge.

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