Any recommendations for learning Japanese through video games?

16 comments

1. If you are not aware of it, I can highly recommend the [Game Gengo](https://www.youtube.com/c/GameGengo) Youtube channel which has this as its main topic and often times has useful advice.

   The most important aspect is probably to not overthink it too much. It sounds like you are planning to turn the games into a chore by making the time the most efficient, this is a good way to make it something you don’t enjoy anymore.
   What currently works best for me are actually games that have some sort of script or other easy access to the written text available. I started out with a game on the Switch that had Furigana but no way to get the script, so whenever I didn’t get something I had to type things into a dictionary and look it up, which became tedious quickly. Currently I’m playing through Final Fantasy VIII for which [there’s a script available](http://aizenn.web.fc2.com/talk/ff-serifu.html) and having the time of my life with it. The easy lookup through the script reduced the barrier significantly and I’m actually looking forward to playing the game, rather than getting into the mindset of just getting it over with to fulfill my daily learning goal. And I love the game so much that I want to understand every sentence fully, so my “strategy” is dictated by what I want out of the game, rather than some objective study plan.
   Imho the amount of understanding should be determined by your enjoyment. If you stick to games 5 hours a day by only occasionally looking up words and give up after 20 minutes when really trying to decipher each sentence, the choice is obvious. In another game, you might be so curious about the details that you naturally try to get the full meaning, rather than skipping through stuff.

   So tl;dr: The magic of learning through games, in my opinion, is to make use of their magic. Treat the games as an experience for which the language is a barrier to overcome, rather than a means to study. That way the specific approach to how much you want to understand will come naturally and you will spend much more time with the language without considering it a chore. Whether or not you learn specific vocabular, keigo or whatever will be determined by the worlds you dive into and how central it is for enjoying the games to their fullest.

2. Fallout 4 and Skyrim (I think) both can be in Japanese. I’m in N4 so I honestly didn’t try it yet but I’ve seen few videos about the topic.
   Fallout 4 has Japanese voice acting and dialogue text option.

3. I’d recommend trying to play games via pc instead. That way you can use community created tools to help the reading process go faster. Game2Text and Game2Text Lightning are super helpful. The first allows you to read game text in your browser so you can use pop up dictionaries, the other lets you do the same but in game by hovering over text. They’re fairly accurate, though aren’t without issues. I avoided games until I found these tools, now I can enjoy them without the stress of not being able to read anything

4. It’s generally recommended to hop in after a solid N3 foundation so you don’t spend half the time doing lookups

   But like other people have already said, there’s some japanese bilingual streamers that make this easier. You could watch them play a section as they translate, pause them, and then you go. Otherwise it is like trying to play 80% dictionary and 20 percent game

5. I must say – genshin impact. Or really any story game with access to Japanese audio and english/japanese subtitles, and where you can click through the dialogue at your own pace. I learn a lot through story games. Find a game where the story and gameplay interests you.

6. Fire Emblem has a lot of typical fantasy vocabulary you’ll have to look up every other word, in addition to having character-specific speaking patterns that might be tough to understand if you can’t understand the rest of the sentence very well.

   I second others’ suggestions to play a game aimed more at children, like Super Mario Oddysey or one of the pokemon games. To share a personal anecdote, I tried using games to learn Japanese as well, all that did was make playing games slow, aggravating, and less fun, since I get torn out of the immersion by having to look up vocabulary multiple times per dialogue, but obviously your experiences are likely to be very different than mine! Good luck in your studies! 🙂

7. I think there are people that learn Japanese from visual novels. So you can try going that route.

8. I’m pleasantly surprised that most of the advice in this thread is pretty spot on. Usually the responses to these kinds of questions are ridiculous.

   As someone who has thousands of (mostly wasted) hours learning Japanese I can say with absolute certainty that regardless of how much studying you do beforehand, the first time you look at a native Japanese product will be humbling. With the power of hindsight I actually recommend jumping onto native material, games being my personal choice as well, as soon as you have a minor grasp of the kana. If your level isn’t that high start with something you can enjoy in small bursts. VNs are usually really good for this, if you don’t mind importing higurashi was my first vn, the console port of clannad is really good and has some useful features as well which are outside of the scope of this comment.

   You will be looking up a lot of words at first. This is true regardless of how long you wait to start. Get a good dictionary on your phone (I use akebi on android) and look up words as you feel the need. Don’t dwell too much on grammar, get the gist of what is being said and move on. There will be plenty more examples to correct any misunderstanding.

   I recommend having at least two games, an rpg or VN, with a lot of text that you try very hard to understand, and a more actiony type of game where you don’t stress as much about learning and just soak in what you can. For example I am currently playing Atelier Rorona as a deep dive game and Happy Danganronpa S as a low stress game.

   Lastly, I cannot overstate how impossible this feels at first. Getting through the first game is a mountain. It gets much much easier after that.

9. Lots of good advice in this thread. As someone else recommended, I’d recommend a VN or RPG, since those are text-heavy (giving you lots of resources, and time to look things up). I’d recommend a VN first, because that’s purely focused on text, but an RPG isn’t bad either.

   Content/genre is relevant, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it. As long as you understand that the more fantastical it is, the less “relevant” vocab there will be (for instance, Pokemon names are entirely useless outside of conversations about Pokemon), it’s fine.

   The ideal imo would be a game with full furigana, but those can be tough to find, especially VNs.

   When you play, I would look up every single word/grammar point you don’t know–but you don’t need to compile a list or anki deck of them or anything (if you don’t want to). That’s how I did it when I first started playing games in Japanese. It sucks and it’s not fun at all, but if you keep it up you’ll be amazed at how much easier it is at the end than it was at the beginning.

   As others have mentioned, PC is generally preferable to consoles for this, since you can use a text hooker to make word lookup easier. VNs generally aren’t super-intensive programs, so it could still be possible, maybe. But if not, I have a pet theory that having to look up kanji by radicals or remembering another word that uses them is a lot better for learning than just copy-pasting them into jisho (even if it is a lot slower and more annoying)

   EDIT: A VN with voice-acting would also be ideal, because then it can also serve as listening practice, and it makes looking up words easier since you can hear the readings.

10. Someone already said that reading books in Japanese is a great way and I have to agree, it’s specially easy if you have an e-reader, since they come with dictionaries installed and Japanese e-books tend to be really cheap, so I’d definitely recommend this way!

    As for games, I’d probably recommend playing a game that you’ve already played first. And playing on PC really is the best way for this imo, since you can install tools that will let you check vocab quickly and there’s no regional lock with languages on Steam (for most of the games at least), so if a game has been released in Japanese, you’ll most probably be able to play it in Japanese, which unfortunately isn’t the case for consoles, but I understand that you might not be currently able to play games on PC, and I feel you coz I can’t really too since my pc wasn’t made for games 🙁 I don’t have a switch unfortunately, but I’ve got a PS4 and yeah unfortunately if you bought a game on a PS store outside Japan you can’t play it in Japanese, you either have to buy a game on a disc from a Japanese store or set up a Japanese store account, but I’ve gotta say, I feel like games in Japan are more expensive and they lose their price slower.

    I’d definitely recommend playing Yakuza (龍が如く) If you can, I think it’s also on gamepass! And the ace attorney is pretty good too! Fallout or the ender scrolls is available in Japanese too, I know Skyrim is available on switch as well so you can try, maybe you can play it in Japanese there too!

    Anyway i hope you can find something for yourself and I hope you’ll continue learning Japanese, and being able to play games or read books in Japanese is super satisfying! 🙂

11. Hey, just wanna say I agree with everyone here. I know you said you can’t use a pc and the laptop is hard and you prefer console gaming, but there is a potential workaround to play console games on the switch and still use the game2text programs. I believe you can use a capture card to get the switch screen to show on your laptop, then the game2text can select that window and do its magic. You’d still be gaming on the switch and idk if your interested and I know capture cards can be expensive but it’s just a potential workaround so you can still game on your preferred console and benefit from those programs.

    But aside from that, I agree with others that game gengo on YouTube is fantastic for gaming. He has the first hour or so of fire emblem on there I’m sure you’ve watched already. But another super useful thing that can help kick start your studies is his anki decks. Someone made anki decks from all his videos so you can study vocab specifically from fire emblem or the other games he played and there are anki decks for the grammar vids too with screenshots, audio of the sentence, and grammar explainations built in to link you to in depth explainations if you need.

    Because of his channel I’ve managed to start a couple games in japanese. I’m playing the nonary games series (visual novel/escape room/mystery type story) and it’s really fun to study with that and mine words to study in anki and then come back to the game and encounter what I just learned, and then play and read through it quicker with less lookups as I slowly learn the games vocab and writing style. It’s so slow and so hard at first and I fully expect to take at least 100 or more hours for what would be a 20ish hour game in my native language. But idc, it’s so fun and cool and motivating to be actually doing what I started learning to do. And each little section being a tad bit easier than the last feels awesome too.

    I’ve also started persona 4 golden in japanese and that’s great too. I love persona. Its got lots of useful vocab. I also want to play 13 sentinels aegis rim next super bad, but I’d have to do it on playstation and then can’t use game2text (unless I use that workaround I mentioned earlier but I don’t have a capture card, although I may borrow my buddies.) But by the time I finish these games I’m playing now I think I’ll be ready for 13 sentinels without game2text and just use a mobile dictionary and hopefully thay won’t be too bad. I’m also reading some manga and web novels.

    As for studying suggestions, with game2text making anki cards is superfluously easy so I tend to add most everything I don’t know, or even words conjugated in a complicated way or words I know in a new order or phrase just to really get it, but I think you probably will just want to add words that are coming up often or are interesting to you personally as it may be harder and more time consuming for you to mine words or sentences. Lots of people make anki decks for games though so I’d also suggest looking around to see if anyone already make a deck for it so you don’t even have to bother adding things yourself or mining yourself.

    I personally wouldn’t bother studying keigo or formal or archaic speech. I have similar goals and backgrounds as you, so probably not speaking much and reading is my main motivation for learning. Don’t really need to study keigo or formal or archaic speech If you won’t speak it much, at least early on. I just get an idea of what a phrase means like it’s equivalent in normal casual japanese and kind of move on. Like おる or やる. I think it gets in there eventually if you see it enough, but I just make a mental note and move on. I don’t need to know how to reproduce it yet, only recognize it, so I personally will hold off on it for later.

    Anyway, really good for you for starting and taking the dive into gaming and hard native material. Like everyone said, it is I wouldn’t say hard but it is a slog, but it gets easier and quicker and is so dang fulfilling that I’m sure you’ll do well!

12. You can try [Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town (牧場物語 再会のミネラルタウン)](https://harvestmoon.fandom.com/wiki/Story_of_Seasons:_Friends_of_Mineral_Town).

    Just check this [album](https://imgur.com/a/Ku0xm52) of screenshots and see if it’s easy/hard for you. There will be some vocab related to agriculture but nothing too in depth. Each NPC will have an individual style of word usage. Conversations are easy to understand and the setting is set in modern Japan so everyday common words are used (though some still have their own flair of expressions). Furigana is limited to NPC conversations.

13. The first game that I played in Japanese (aside from various action games that had minimal text) was Tokimeki Memorial. I think it’s good for a beginner, because while there is a bunch of text, most of it tends to be repeated multiple times. Also, it’s set in the present day, dealing with day-to-day things that you’d mostly already see in a beginner-level textbook. There are no unusual words like you would see in games with different settings, like the past (e.g. Nobunaga no Yabou), the future (e.g. Front Mission), or alternate universes altogether (e.g. Final Fantasy).

14. I recently started playing games in Japanese at about your level. I started with otome games but there are heaps of galge or other VNs on switch as well. You will be looking things up a lot at the start but it gets better as you go.

    The absolute key for me is a game with no furigana but the option to replay the audio for each text box as much as you want. Furigana sucks for learning because you’ll read it instead of the kanji. If you hear the word you can write it into your dictionary (using a Japanese keyboard on your phone!) or you can write the kanji in with your finger and get some writing practice while you’re at it. I use Midori on iOS for my dictionary and save words to lists for each game/book etc as I go. If a word comes up on multiple lists I add it to a high priority list and make point to learn it! This way you can filter the random words you look up that aren’t that important. Midori also has a 日常 symbol to help indicate more commonly used words. Also just by reading a lot you will learn to read common words anyway so I don’t use flashcards.

    I do make sure the vocab/kanji isn’t too tough or I’ll get bogged down and not want to continue. Looking up lists of games sorted by difficulty is helpful to guide your choice. Also make sure it’s a game you’re excited to play as it can be tough going, you need that enthusiasm to carry you through!

    I started with Storm Lover V on vita and I’m playing Amnesia V at the moment.

    One more thing, if you want to buy Japanese games on switch you need to buy Japanese yen eshop vouchers. I buy them from playasia or similar sites.

15. I recommend Animal Crossing first. Its meant for children, has furigana, a lot of useful vocab for every day items, and pretty easy.

    The best advice I can give you is stick to games you’re interested in and want to play. It makes it far far easier to stick around.

    With lookups, if you can understand the gist of the sentence, its ok to skip most of the time. If you’re lost or it seems like its pretty important, look it up.

16. I’ve played loads of RPGs in Japanese and learned tons from them. Trails series in particular was very helpful because it had such a wide variety of language used. Persona was good for slang and school stuff. Fire Emblem is good too but was one of the harder ones to get my head around. Also playing some western games in Japanese like Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk (Cyberpunk was really hard, I should replay that)…

    As others have said, you will need to look up alot of words and expressions. I made a lot of Anki cards from games. But I found it fun and that was the main thing that helped me 🙂