As someone who also likes older games, and actually did not complete some of them like Chrono Trigger but want to try it (and maybe to play FF6 again), those could be some awesome ideas! And when it comes to Tales, a PS2 copy of Rebirth is behind me as I’m typing this.
I did try Pokemon Ultra Sun for a little today only to see a level 17, 19, and 20 kanji almost right away, on top of the realization that more katakana practice would be beneficial. Since there wasn’t any voices there as well it might be helpful to chart out how many strokes the very common radicals (like scooter) use to locate them in Jisho faster. I’m not sure if that would help anyone else or not - hopefully it does!
Also, yes even Bulbapedia mentions each move in one or both types of kana, and only kana. That’s different and unique but understandable (especially with older games).
It would probably look weird to have mix now since all the moves from Gen I-IV were already in kana, so it was probably a good decision to standardize all moves like that.
Pokemon is okay for starters, but if you do, play a pokemon game that has kanji.
I finished about 20 games in japanese by now and if i remember, those were somewhat easier to understand:
Dragon quest 1 + 2 ( 2 is harder to understand ) Lufia 1 + 2 ( 1 easier, lots hiragana some kanji ), Sugoro Quest ( i think a bit tougher and random dice rolls but short dialogues ), エルテイル モンスターズ for N64, Shining force 2.
They will all require effort on your side, lots of checking vocab and grammar, but the games i listed are much easier than the other games i played ( or could think of ). Also if you play lots of rpgs, the words will often repeat itself in other games.
Then again it doesnt matter if you play a game in japanese, read a manga or articles. The most important thing is, that the medium you are gonna use is fun for you. If you dont like a certain game or are not interested in the topic of an article, you will just quit.
For games, it does help if you played a game before in your native tongue, and then play it again in japanese. The translation should mostly resemble the original japanese text, which makes it easier to guess whats going on.
Thank you for mentioning Lufia 2 Keeneahnung2, and again thank everyone for their suggestions so far (again including Chrono Trigger, FF6, Pokemon games, you name it)!
If I may ask, how easy is it to read the kanji on some of the games mentioned so far? Seeing some screenshots of Zelda NES and Mega Man X for SNES gives an impression of text limitations (of course with an NES game that completely makes sense).
A game like Ultra Sun didn’t have that, but even playing it just a bit so far…I’m not sure if it would be the best fit over an SNES game or Pokemon ORAS (and I liked and played Gen 3 before) or something in the Wizardry/DQ line. Sure, level 15-16 isn’t ideal for kanji but it doesn’t feel that far off either.
I find that a good CRT shader helps with readability. There is one called CRT Royale or something like that that ships with most emulators I believe, it is quite demanding in computation power though.
From the SNES games I have tried I found Lufia 2 to have one of the easier to read Japanese fonts.