My language immersion gaming diary
Inspired by galactichole's list (https://backloggd.com/u/galactichole/list/learning-japanese-with-ps1-games-and-others/)
I wanted to track my progress in learning Japanese by playing games, since that's something I've recently been confident enough to do. I also wanted to include info for people who are looking for games to study with at their level, as well as gamified study tools.
In chronological order of when I started playing.
For context, I think my current skills are somewhere between N4-N3.
I wanted to track my progress in learning Japanese by playing games, since that's something I've recently been confident enough to do. I also wanted to include info for people who are looking for games to study with at their level, as well as gamified study tools.
In chronological order of when I started playing.
For context, I think my current skills are somewhere between N4-N3.
11 Games
Study tool
Been playing this daily on/off for about a year before making this list.
Copied from my review: As someone with ADHD, finding study methods that work for me is virtually impossible, but this did wonders for my kanji skills. As Baxter said, you could do this on paper, but I think it being on the DS tricks my brain into thinking it's a game. Not sure if this is the intended method but what I like to do is jump into the drill section and complete 3-5 passages a day, while also looking up any words I don't know so I can read the full passage. Super quick and simple, and if you can keep up with doing it daily for a while, you will definitely start to feel more confident I think.
Been playing this daily on/off for about a year before making this list.
Copied from my review: As someone with ADHD, finding study methods that work for me is virtually impossible, but this did wonders for my kanji skills. As Baxter said, you could do this on paper, but I think it being on the DS tricks my brain into thinking it's a game. Not sure if this is the intended method but what I like to do is jump into the drill section and complete 3-5 passages a day, while also looking up any words I don't know so I can read the full passage. Super quick and simple, and if you can keep up with doing it daily for a while, you will definitely start to feel more confident I think.
Voice acting: Yes
Language difficulty: Medium
Fun: Yes
This was actually the first somewhat text-heavy game I committed to finishing in Japanese, and it was entirely by accident. I didn't know the default language setting for the steam version was Japanese so when I opened it I was like, "oh wait I can actually get the gist of what's going on" and kept on truckin. Gave me a big confidence boost.
Language difficulty: Medium
Fun: Yes
This was actually the first somewhat text-heavy game I committed to finishing in Japanese, and it was entirely by accident. I didn't know the default language setting for the steam version was Japanese so when I opened it I was like, "oh wait I can actually get the gist of what's going on" and kept on truckin. Gave me a big confidence boost.
Voice acting: No
Language difficulty: Easy-medium
Fun: No
Simpler than an average atelier game so if you find yourself struggling with one of those, maybe step down to this. Or that's what I would say if this didn't become a basic, slow grindfest for me once the novelty of being able to read wore off.
Language difficulty: Easy-medium
Fun: No
Simpler than an average atelier game so if you find yourself struggling with one of those, maybe step down to this. Or that's what I would say if this didn't become a basic, slow grindfest for me once the novelty of being able to read wore off.
Voice acting: Yes
Language difficulty: Hard
Fun: N/A
Dropped because it's a bit too difficult at the moment, I have to look up words far more frequently than I'd like. Will come back to it once I feel like I'm ready.
Language difficulty: Hard
Fun: N/A
Dropped because it's a bit too difficult at the moment, I have to look up words far more frequently than I'd like. Will come back to it once I feel like I'm ready.
Voice Acting: No
Language difficulty: Easy (has furigana)
Recommended: Probably not
Played for a little bit. Wouldn't really recommend, and I'm saying this as a diehard fan of the style boutique/savvy series. Probably good if you're a beginner at Japanese and enjoy dressup games, but otherwise rather boring as the clothes are very basic.
Language difficulty: Easy (has furigana)
Recommended: Probably not
Played for a little bit. Wouldn't really recommend, and I'm saying this as a diehard fan of the style boutique/savvy series. Probably good if you're a beginner at Japanese and enjoy dressup games, but otherwise rather boring as the clothes are very basic.
Voice acting: Yes
Language difficulty: Medium (kanji-heavy)
Recommended: Depends
Didn't play this for very long, not for me! I could get the gist of stuff pretty easily but for someone less up on their kanji it might be more difficult to read. I think I just don't like dating sims personally, I don't enjoy spending so much time juggling stats and tracking a schedule.
Language difficulty: Medium (kanji-heavy)
Recommended: Depends
Didn't play this for very long, not for me! I could get the gist of stuff pretty easily but for someone less up on their kanji it might be more difficult to read. I think I just don't like dating sims personally, I don't enjoy spending so much time juggling stats and tracking a schedule.
Voice acting: Yes (although barely audible over the music and you can't turn the music down, only off or on)
Language difficulty: Medium
First game I started playing with a texthooker (game2text) and this is a breeze with that. Should've started using one sooner. Other than that, nice little visual novel. Loved the lite fantasy world especially, feels very explorable. I've only played one route (Hinagiku's route) so far but I might play again sometime.
I will also note that I've only gotten into vns recently, and out of the 4 i've played for more than a moment in the past year (counting all of higurashi as one), this is the only one where I felt like it rarely suffered from pacing issues.
Language difficulty: Medium
First game I started playing with a texthooker (game2text) and this is a breeze with that. Should've started using one sooner. Other than that, nice little visual novel. Loved the lite fantasy world especially, feels very explorable. I've only played one route (Hinagiku's route) so far but I might play again sometime.
I will also note that I've only gotten into vns recently, and out of the 4 i've played for more than a moment in the past year (counting all of higurashi as one), this is the only one where I felt like it rarely suffered from pacing issues.
Voice acting: partial
Language difficulty: hard
Enjoyed it quite a bit, it's basically style boutique/savvy with less dressup options but with otome and very basic management elements. The style of this thing is also painfully 2011, I love it. A fair warning though, it's very, very kanji and vocab heavy. I can get the gist of what's going on when talking to friends and customers but had no choice but to pull out google translate for the academy sections if i didn't want to be totally guessing like 4/5 of the test questions. Stopped playing after I game over-ed by failing to win I think the 2nd or 3rd business award, probably due to not going to the academy enough.
Language difficulty: hard
Enjoyed it quite a bit, it's basically style boutique/savvy with less dressup options but with otome and very basic management elements. The style of this thing is also painfully 2011, I love it. A fair warning though, it's very, very kanji and vocab heavy. I can get the gist of what's going on when talking to friends and customers but had no choice but to pull out google translate for the academy sections if i didn't want to be totally guessing like 4/5 of the test questions. Stopped playing after I game over-ed by failing to win I think the 2nd or 3rd business award, probably due to not going to the academy enough.
Watching a let's play of this (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLilypEVBBl1VnbS3psbR-94O7tRAhHfY5) due to my aforementioned skill issue with dating sim mechanics. Funny game so far, only a few episodes in as of writing this.
I tried this shortly after playing totori but decided I didn't feel like playing another atelier game yet, so i came back to it maybe like 9 months later. Some tricky words and sentences here and there, but overall pretty coherent to me. Has full voice acting too. Dropped it because I was really not doing very well and for the most part couldn't figure out why, but I had fun while it lasted and got pretty far, with about 700 days left on the calendar. The shop management mechanic was really fun and I hope it appears again in the series (maybe it does, i've only played this and totori so far) but I do wish it was a little easier to set and forget while you go traveling. I love the music and art style, its giving mid 2000s 2D korean mmo.
This game comes highly recommended! Just google translate the hints if you need to, so you don't flop like I did.
This game comes highly recommended! Just google translate the hints if you need to, so you don't flop like I did.
A favourite of mine, tried replaying it in Japanese today. I'm good enough to technically make my way through the game and understand what's happening but not enough to properly take in the nuances of the conversations in the VN segments, which having completed the game before, kind of makes it pointless. I'll come back in like a year or something.
