Vocabulary will probably be the biggest limiter in most games, but N3 grammar will allow you to understand the grammar of most things you encounter. One of the things of course will be that in order to play games early, you need to be okay with a level of ambiguity in that you aren’t going to understand everything for a while. So its best to be OK with sort of taking what you can understand, and trying to follow along as best you can. Some people have no problem but some people get incredibly frustrated doing that.
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I would echo this, but I’d also go for anything you really want to play. The first two games I really put effort into playing in Japanese were Live A Live and Marvelous for the Super Famicom (did I mention I’m old?). In both cases, I was so interested in the games themselves that I found it easier to push past the frustration.
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About to start the fate/stay night remastered VN because I’ve never read/watched/played any of the fate series and I see it literally everywhere in Japan. Seems like it’ll be kinda hard but doable.
Got back to some Final Fantasy 2 today, started it in Japanese over the winter downtime but have had a pretty busy new year, and the limited gaming time I’ve had was directed at Pokemon Z-A (also in Japanese, also a ton of fun).
Really enjoying playing through FF2 in Japanese. Some cool new vocab to learn, a lot of fascinating themes about Imperialism, and I appreciate that there isn’t Furigana. I’ve absolutely hit the point where Furigana is now my enemy in my Japanese learning journey. I’d rather stop and spend the time looking up the word and then making a flash card of it, it helps me ingrain the knowledge so much better.
I have so many games in Japanese, mainly retro ones, since my hubby and I are collectors. I have Silent Hill 1, 2, and 3 in Japanese, as well as Fatal Frame (or Project 0 as they call it in Japan) 1, 2, and 3. However, I am really scared to play them and not understand anything which will likely impact my self esteem! But I LOVE Japanese horror. They can do it like no-one else.
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For beginner or low level japanese learner, there is wagotabi.
https://www.wagotabi.com](https://www.wagotabi.com/
It’s a game design to learn the language from scratch.
It’s available on steam and mobile phone.
There is a demo available and you can also buy the game.
It is still in development and currently below N5 level. It has a lot of good reviews.
I guess this year it will be at N5 level and hopefully next year at N4.
Game Genko did a review on youtube of the demo before the game was available. The development team improve it since and continue to take care of user feedback.
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I’ve started playing マジカルクラフト 猫と魔法のドレス and am finding it’s very good for N4-ish learners. Designed to be kid-friendly, so it has simple dialogues, plus furigana for the more advanced kanji.
This is the most recent game from the Style Savvy series developer, and so far it hasn’t been translated. It’s very inspired by Kiki’s Delivery Service, I think.
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I found a game that I first thought was interesting to learn Japanese but it appears the Japanese inside is not very natural according to what people said, it’s “IN KONBINI”. I wonder why the Japanese text is not good as it is a Japanese developer (maybe full of non-native devs). Too bad because it’s a narrative game with content that could be useful.
That said, I, personally, play Animal Crossing occasionally, which notably helped me to remember the 〜てちょうだい grammar point (for people who don’t know, it’s like 〜てください but for friends/family).