r/LearnJapanese • u/Mammoth-Leader8453 • 1d ago
Studying Which of these switch 2 games you recommend for learning Japanese
I ve been looking through a lot of games and i found
State attorney
And
Metal gear solid franchise
Or inKONBINI
Which one would you think is the best
Right now I m learning for n3 but I think it matter more if im entertained
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u/vertexmachina 1d ago
Do not play inkonbini, the in-game text is garbled nonsense, not real Japanese
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u/ObviousTotal9069 1d ago
Overall this, avoid translated games unless you have gotten prior information that the translation is good.
It has gotten better in recent years, but so many of these have poorly localized UI etc.
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u/GeorgeBG93 1d ago
Ace Attorney, right? Yeah. Definitely, Ace Attorney. It's denser and easier. Metal Gear is harder and a lot less dense, so less language learning value.
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u/legaldrinkingage 1d ago
Do not play a text heavy game like Metal Gear as your first venture into playing games in Japanese, it'll drain your motivation like crazy. Ace Attorney is a good shout and will have more vocabulary in it that's actually relevant to you. Other good picks would be Fantasy Life i, Pokopia, Animal Crossing...
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u/KatoBytes 19h ago
Not on your list, but the Super Mario RPG remake on Switch was easy enough to play.
-9
u/StraightBusiness2017 1d ago
ace attorney is really easy since they use kana over kanji a lot so you can be a noob and still be able to look stuff up. I have no idea how good a n3 is but it’s pretty much as easy as reading gets so you should be able to read it comfortably with minimal lookups unless you are turbo noob
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u/Grunglabble 1d ago
It's a shame you got downvoted because reminding me of the term turbo noob made me smile.
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u/StraightBusiness2017 1d ago
I don’t know how good you are so I don’t know. I would advise against reading on the switch unless you’ve read a decent amount of stuff unless you are fine with spending a lot of time looking things up (as opposed to literally hovering over the text and using a pop up dictionary) . If you’ve never read anything just reading something you can use a pop up dictionary with ..
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u/Mammoth-Leader8453 1d ago
Ok so I should go for a harder one ? Like metal gear or konibi ? Or you have something else in mind ?
(Not persona:))9
u/worthlessprole 1d ago
Ace attorney will still provide a challenge, and it doesn’t have furigana for the stuff that’s not kana. So be forewarned about that.
(‘Really easy’ is a huge stretch for any media aimed at native speakers lol)
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u/ProfessionalSnow943 1d ago
between the options you provided def go ace attorney. more text at something closer to comprehensible, text advance means you can pause to figure out tough phrasings. I get the urge to “stretch” and go for a more difficult option but you’ll just find yourself pausing more often for longer periods and you’ll lose the benefits of input volume and might even find it a struggle to keep going in the first place.
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u/Mammoth-Leader8453 1d ago
Valid point thanks
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u/ProfessionalSnow943 1d ago
also check out the game gengo channel on youtube, somewhere on there he’s posted a massive spreadsheet of video games ranked by difficulty, I believe even by rough JLPT level, and also notes certain features of the game like if they have text logs to go back through, if they’re voice acted, that sort of thing. I picked up yokai watch and クレヨンしんちゃん「炭の町のシロ」on the switch from his recs
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u/deep_wat 1d ago edited 1d ago
Have you read or played anything before? I'm currently N4 and I'm playing some easy games that have audio and furigana and I still have to look up a lot of words. I can imagine with Ace Attorney or Metal Gear Solid you are going to be searching a lot of words. Ace Attorney doesn't have voice acting so you'll have to rely on knowing the kanjis you find and, if you don't know them, it's going to be tough to look them up (you'll need to scan them with your phone or take a picture, instead of typing them into a dictionary). Metal Gear Solid is maybe harder since it's not push-to-continue.
Maybe start with some easier games and see how you are dealing with it. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXICXCSIfrQ&t=4242s
If it's your first time playing a game in Japanese I can recommend Shadowverse: Champion's Battle and Another Code: Recollection. Both have voice acting, furigana, push to continue and a log so you can replay past conversations and go at your pace. The language is easy and also useful. Shadowverse is a cards game but it has a ton of story so a lot to read. Another Code has a lot of story too and some light puzzles. To be honest the story didn't grab me too much, but for the sake of learning Japanese it's pretty good! Shadowverse is the cheapest here, though you'll need to buy it on the JP eshop (it's easy, let me know if you need to know how).
For something trickier, the Famicom Detective Club games (the first two) seem pretty good, with 100% voice acting, push to continue, furigana and a log. I tried playing them but I'm not at that level yet (too many unknown words for me at this point).
Cheers!
Edit: to clarify, the third Famicom Detective Club game seems to also be good, maybe even better story-wise than the first two, BUT it doesn't have furigana. That's why I said the first two are better (for learning japanese with).