I just bought a Nintendo switch. desperately need games for beginners vocabulary with furigana.

Prefers Visual novels, although I doubt there are visual novels with vocabulary for beginners in Japanese with furigana

8 comments
  1. If you like RPGs too, I can recommend Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the white witch (JP:二ノ国 白き聖灰の女王). Has furigana for everything and it’s how I started my japanese immersion journey, seeking vocabulary. It taught me a looot, jumpstarted my understanding and is very memorable.
    Has the advantage of being developed with kids being able to play it in mind and the main character and his friends being kids as well himself so stuff tends to be simpler.
    Major disadvantage is that it’s still a fantasy game so will find some sentences that are deliberately archaic and the side kick actually speaks in kansai dialect which can be really daunting as a beginner.

    Other than that for an enjoyable experience I liked the Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening remake (夢を見る島). While it has stretches of gameplay where there is little to no dialogue in dungeons for example, figuring out puzzles with clues from conversations means you get direct feedback on your understanding. You can also turn furigana on/off in the menu if you want to challenge yourself on a second playthrough for example!

  2. Yokai Watch 1 and 4. 1 is much easier to read. However, this topic is covered a lot, so you can find other suggestions as well.

  3. Check the main website for the game as some games let you sitch the langueage, and others do nto. Nino kuni, for example, doesn’t let you switch the language sp you’d have to buy the japanese version of that game.

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    Anyway, Id recommend Pokemon Mystery Dungeon! They also color parts of the text for things like Items and Pokemon moves so it makes it a lot easier to read juz its more obvious what is nonsense, etc.

    You should make a japanese nitendow shwitch account and download somedemos. Pokemon msytery dungeon, Doraemon, etc all have demos, so you can see if you like it and test some games to see if they have furigana.

  4. I would stick was basic games or maybe Pokémon if you want to use games to learn and study.

    Animal crossing. People say this is a good game for beginners. For playing, absolutely yes you can go along in this game without reading anything. For learning? Maybe if you’re N2+. There’s a lot of keigo here, difficult words, and a bunch of different speaking styles (casual and polite).

    FF: difficult. Playable at maybe N3 to understand basic story but you may miss things. N1 will put you in a decent spot at least grammar wise, but there will still be a lot of unknown vocab.

    Fire emblem: hard AF game series. I passed N1 awhile ago and this is hard as shit. Harder than any games I’ve ever played. Lots of ancient vocabulary and grammar. Complicated war/holy/political vocabulary. Etc…

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