LLearn Japanese

Easier Games than Dragon Quest XI in Japanese to Play?

Hello. I started playing DQXI in Japanese for fun since I wanted to have some fun and study. I am about 3-4 hours in and I am thinking of putting it on hold. I can understand the smaller conversations and based on what I understand and context I generally get whats going on. But when character break off into longer tangents I get completley lost. I have no clue about the sub plots going on and I feel I am missing a lot of context even with yomichan and a script. So I am thinking of switching games. The grammer is not bad but some of the vocab I dont know. Are there any easier games out there that are still fun to play. I do other Japanese study so this is mainly just to have fun and immerse so I want to understand a little more. I would also like a game with Furigana. I heard pokemon and yokai watch are easier. Is it true. Between Yokai watch and the new pokemon scarlet which one is easier. Any other suggestions are appreciated. I am on a switch with a JP account.

4 comments

  1. vocab is always the problem for me too

    Rather than playing games in JP and not understanding enough, what you could do is read the scripts for all the older Dragon Quest games, then you will get a good idea of what kinds of vocab to learn.

    If you learn a lot of the main words used in these scripts, you will have better overall coverage when you play DQ11, and you can hopefully be more apt to “fill in the blanks” you don’t know.

    Scripts in JP are called セリフ if that helps you search for them.

    I have some here, though some of these links are dead

    https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/54haix/a_dump_of_jrpg_japanese_scripts/

    but yeah vocab treadmill is a such a big thing

  2. Depends on your interests and your level….pokemon could be easier…but the problem is (at least the pokemon games ive played) its mainly only kana…so it may be harder if you rely on kanji to get some of the meanings

    i started japanese while playing games as my main source of input…almost right after learning kana…Here are a list of the games i played towards the beginning Of my learning in order…maybe you havent played them and want to try em out

    Luigis mansion 3

    Paper mario origami king

    Monster hunter stories 1

    (then i upgraded to visual novels….played about 3 VNs and the upgraded to light novels….read about 5…)

    While I was reading LNs i decided to try a bit of pokemon legend arceus….but fell out about half way through as idk I wasnt too compelled to keep going..just wanted to keep reading LNs lol

    Then went back to playing more challenging games

    Tales of Arise

    octopath traveler 1….but fell out of it halfway through (around chapter 3 of the last character)because the game felt too grindy and wanted to get more input

    halo infinite campaign

    FFVII Remake

    FFVII Crisis Core Reunion

    Etc

    I kept consistenly picking games that are harder in terms of content yet that I never played…

    I cant tell you which game you should play as i dont know your level, but if a fully fledged jrpg is too much because there is a lot to keep track of, and you only use gaming as less of a learning experience and more of a fun experience….maybe you should try a game aimed more towards kids (as you mentioned pokemon)…but either way…maybe try to just do the main story for any game instead of side missions…as going through side missiions could get confusing to keep track of the main story

    TLDR: (read the last paragraph)

  3. I’ve heard a lot of people say Animal Crossing is good one to learn with but idk myself. You are using furigana in DQXI right? There should be an option for it.

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