Japanese games with furigana subtitles

18 comments

1. Yokai watch 4, Gakuen Y, monster hunter stories 2 have furigana.

   Pokemon Arceus may have as well, not sure.

2. Blue Dragon and the new Crayon Shin-chan game

3. A lot of the switch ones do. The newest pokemons do iirc.

4. What system? There’s a video on a channel I watch ranking the best 50 steam games for learning japanese and some have furigana and some have game scripts which make it easy and logs and voice acting and all that.

   Off the top of my head; dragon quest 11 s has furigana, ni no kuni, monster hunter stories 2, and yeah I think lots of Pokémon and Nintendo games have furigana. Lots of games also can be played with a texthooker or ocr program to read the text also. Lots have scripts online that you can follow along while playing and use something like yomichan.

5. SMT 4 and SMT 4 A

6. I’m currently playing Yokai Watch 1 on the Switch. Full furigana and very approchable vocabulary!

7. I don’t know about recent titles, but I know that Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner is *loaded* with furigana. Probably the whole franchise after 16-bit tends to do that as the resolution would make kanji easier to read but the games also deal with some rather obscure and mature concepts like death, rebirth, the definition of good and evil, and various religious faiths and concepts.

8. It’s a very open ended question. I know for a fact Paper Mario TTYD has them, but only because I watch lots of speed runs in the Japanese version.

   It would be better to first look for the kind of game you want to play and only then look for one with furigana.

9. I’m currently really enjoying Pokémon Mystery Dungeon DX. The kanji have furigana and a lot of the language is pretty easy as long as you don’t stress about the weird Pokémon words.

10. Nintendo Games like Pokémon are very easy to understand and learn

11. Dragon Quest 11 has furigana for almost everything IIRC. You need to to buy the Japanese version or use a mod to restore the Japanese text.

12. Games with furigana that I have played so far: Yokai Watch, Dragon Quest XI, LoZ: Link Between Worlds, Yu-Gi-Oh GX Tag Force 1, Digimon Adventure, Story of Seasons: FoMT

    Hope this list helps!

13. Breath of the Wild has them for NPC dialogue and most large text boxes. Talk to Robbie for some funny examples

14. Animal Crossing: New Horizons has them, and I’m guessing the older AC titles do too. I’m at the beginner level, and it was really easy to pause on text and look up whatever words I didn’t know yet. If you own a Switch, just changing the system language to Japanese will also change the game for you, and you can swap back and forth when you want.

15. Project Sekai and Princess Connect (mobile games with visual novel style stories). They don’t have furigana, but they are fully voice acted, so you can listen to the reading (which I personally find more useful for learning kanji than using furigana; with furigana, my eyes just ignore the kanji).

16. Skyward Sword HD for the switch has it as well, recently replayed it again in JP

17. The Famicom Tantei Club remakes on the Switch have full furigana and are really good for reading practice. I’m pretty sure almost all LEVEL-5 games have furigana by default as well.

18. Animal Crossing is perfect for this