I’ve played (still havent finished) persona 4 in japanese but i keep getting tired of always playing the same game in one setting so are there any games with the same lvl as p4 but with a different setting ?
Project Sekai has tons of well-written, fully voiced story content.
You could also try something like Persona 5, Pokémon, Animal Crossing, Ace Attorney, or Xenoblade Chronicles. Haven’t tried them in Japanese myself but it seems like they could work.
People are calling star rail zoomer persona, you could try that. It’s translated from chinese so there might be a few unnatural parts but pretty fine from what I’ve seen
For easy stuff, pokemon (switch games have furigana), animal crossing, ace attorney, or any easy visual novel you can get your hands on. Project sekai is also pretty good.
These two videos by game gengo are pretty good too. They rank the best games for learning Japanese with (switch and steam)
nino kuni is good. I started a yokai watch game (3ds) in japanese and it seemed good. Not sure how they compare to p4
Visual novels are the best. It’s easy to find one fully voiced, and they generally have a feature where you’re able to play back video clips as many times as you want.
If you can handle Persona 4 then you probably can handle more story-based games, like **AI: The Somnium Files** and the **Zero Escape Trilogy** which are mystery/visual-novel hybrids (expect a lot of story twists) but there is some game-play elements. They are also *currently on sale on Steam* right now as part of Spike Chunsoft’s Golden Week sale.
Like Persona 4, it has a lot of slice-of-life dialogue mixed in with more advanced genre-specific words, so they are on a similar level. I was between N3 and N2 level at the time (knew around 4k to 6k words, around 1.5k kanji) when I starting played P4 and those above-mentioned games, so while I did have to look up a bunch of words as I played, it wasn’t that bad.
**Tokyo Xanadu** — it’s a Persona RPG clone. I only played a little of it but the dialogue difficulty seemed really similar (high schooler convos + sci/supernatural jargon)
**Utawarerumono trilogy** — Visual novel / strategy RPG hybrid. Great story. Despite being set in a Japanese fantasy / feudal-based world, a lot of the dialogue was easy to understand, plus you get exposed to some Ainu vocab which I found interesting. If you’re used to Persona 4, then you can also handle the strategy / game-play terminology too. There’s also a backlog feature so you can review past conversations.
**13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (JP title: 十三機兵防衛圏)** — Awesome awesome game. Also a visual novel / strategy RPG hybrid. Also has a backlog option to review past conversations (I really like how it’s implement in this game).
It’s similar to Persona 4 in terms of difficulty of dialogue. Lots of high-schooler dialogue mixed in with more advanced words, like sci-fi-related and tactical-fighting jargon. First time I saw the word 穿つ (うがつ) which means “to drill”, as it’s one of the weapon abilities on one of your character’s mech. NOTE: You’ll need to get the JP version of the game, either the Switch or PlayStation version. At least that’s what I had to do as I don’t think the Western (US) version of the game had JP support.
**PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo** — also check out this mystery game. The story is good. It’s pretty new and *it’s also on sale right now on Steam*. Slice-of-life mixed in with some Japanese folkore / supernatural vocab.
**Famicom Detective Club series** — A pretty fun story-based mystery series on the Switch.
**Yakuza series** — You could also try this fighting RPG series. At the time for me though, around the time when I playing Persona 4, trying to play the Yakuza games was a bit jarring and overwhelming for me. I don’t know why. Maybe it was partially due to some of the yakuza and Kansai-ben dialogue. I found it much easier to play after I had sentence mined some Japanese cop dramas and yakuza TV shows.
You can also play Western games in Japanese. They’ll vary in difficulty though.
**Sony Playstation Western games with JP support**: A lot of the PC ports on Steam have full audio and text JP support, like **God of War, Last of Us, Spider-Man, Uncharted** and **Days Gone**. The Steam PC version of **Horizon Zero Dawn** only has JP text support, not audio (you have to get the JP Playstation version if you want JP audio).
**Eidos PC games:** Some have both JP audio and text support like **Guardians of the Galaxy** and **some of the rebooted Tomb Raider games** (it’s annoying that the US PC version of the first game in the series, which heavily uses Japanese culture in the story, doesn’t have JP support).
**Ubisort games:** They often offer both full JP audio and text support, like the more recent releases in the **Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry**, and **Watch Dog** series.
I will always recommend visual novels. Especially ones that are fully voiced.
7 comments
Project Sekai has tons of well-written, fully voiced story content.
You could also try something like Persona 5, Pokémon, Animal Crossing, Ace Attorney, or Xenoblade Chronicles. Haven’t tried them in Japanese myself but it seems like they could work.
People are calling star rail zoomer persona, you could try that. It’s translated from chinese so there might be a few unnatural parts but pretty fine from what I’ve seen
For easy stuff, pokemon (switch games have furigana), animal crossing, ace attorney, or any easy visual novel you can get your hands on. Project sekai is also pretty good.
https://youtu.be/w_QrcROWKmA
https://youtu.be/w_QrcROWKmA
These two videos by game gengo are pretty good too. They rank the best games for learning Japanese with (switch and steam)
nino kuni is good. I started a yokai watch game (3ds) in japanese and it seemed good. Not sure how they compare to p4
Visual novels are the best. It’s easy to find one fully voiced, and they generally have a feature where you’re able to play back video clips as many times as you want.
If you can handle Persona 4 then you probably can handle more story-based games, like **AI: The Somnium Files** and the **Zero Escape Trilogy** which are mystery/visual-novel hybrids (expect a lot of story twists) but there is some game-play elements. They are also *currently on sale on Steam* right now as part of Spike Chunsoft’s Golden Week sale.
Like Persona 4, it has a lot of slice-of-life dialogue mixed in with more advanced genre-specific words, so they are on a similar level. I was between N3 and N2 level at the time (knew around 4k to 6k words, around 1.5k kanji) when I starting played P4 and those above-mentioned games, so while I did have to look up a bunch of words as I played, it wasn’t that bad.
**Tokyo Xanadu** — it’s a Persona RPG clone. I only played a little of it but the dialogue difficulty seemed really similar (high schooler convos + sci/supernatural jargon)
**Utawarerumono trilogy** — Visual novel / strategy RPG hybrid. Great story. Despite being set in a Japanese fantasy / feudal-based world, a lot of the dialogue was easy to understand, plus you get exposed to some Ainu vocab which I found interesting. If you’re used to Persona 4, then you can also handle the strategy / game-play terminology too. There’s also a backlog feature so you can review past conversations.
**13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (JP title: 十三機兵防衛圏)** — Awesome awesome game. Also a visual novel / strategy RPG hybrid. Also has a backlog option to review past conversations (I really like how it’s implement in this game).
It’s similar to Persona 4 in terms of difficulty of dialogue. Lots of high-schooler dialogue mixed in with more advanced words, like sci-fi-related and tactical-fighting jargon. First time I saw the word 穿つ (うがつ) which means “to drill”, as it’s one of the weapon abilities on one of your character’s mech. NOTE: You’ll need to get the JP version of the game, either the Switch or PlayStation version. At least that’s what I had to do as I don’t think the Western (US) version of the game had JP support.
**PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo** — also check out this mystery game. The story is good. It’s pretty new and *it’s also on sale right now on Steam*. Slice-of-life mixed in with some Japanese folkore / supernatural vocab.
**Famicom Detective Club series** — A pretty fun story-based mystery series on the Switch.
**Yakuza series** — You could also try this fighting RPG series. At the time for me though, around the time when I playing Persona 4, trying to play the Yakuza games was a bit jarring and overwhelming for me. I don’t know why. Maybe it was partially due to some of the yakuza and Kansai-ben dialogue. I found it much easier to play after I had sentence mined some Japanese cop dramas and yakuza TV shows.
You can also play Western games in Japanese. They’ll vary in difficulty though.
**Sony Playstation Western games with JP support**: A lot of the PC ports on Steam have full audio and text JP support, like **God of War, Last of Us, Spider-Man, Uncharted** and **Days Gone**. The Steam PC version of **Horizon Zero Dawn** only has JP text support, not audio (you have to get the JP Playstation version if you want JP audio).
**Eidos PC games:** Some have both JP audio and text support like **Guardians of the Galaxy** and **some of the rebooted Tomb Raider games** (it’s annoying that the US PC version of the first game in the series, which heavily uses Japanese culture in the story, doesn’t have JP support).
**Ubisort games:** They often offer both full JP audio and text support, like the more recent releases in the **Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry**, and **Watch Dog** series.
I will always recommend visual novels. Especially ones that are fully voiced.