🎮 Video Game + Visual Novel Natively Levels

I’ve attempted Fate/Stay Night & Fate/Hollow Ataraxia, and am currently playing through うたわれるもの: prelude to darkness (though I am not very far in). This is a stab in the dark, but I’d put the Fate ones in mid to upper 30s, and うたわれるもの in the mid 20s. うたわれるもの has a lot of voiced lines. Fate has some, but also lots of inner monologue.

By way of comparison, I have an easier time reading Sword Art Online light novels than Fate VNs - both for vocab and grammar. Otoh うたわれるもの is definitely simpler than SAO - though some of the kanji are less common. I haven’t read enough other LNs to place it super well, but I feel more comfortable reading it without English than many manga I’ve tried.

For w/e it’s worth, jpdb has Fate at 7/10 and うたわれるもの at 5/10.

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Unfortunately I can’t advise on difficulty levels (my grading ability seems to gear towards how difficult it is for me personally and that seems to be based on lack of vocabulary not grammar levels) but I do have a fair few games that either have both text and voice over in Japanese or just japanese voice overs though I tend to play voice over in Japanese with English text.

The ones I’ve played most recently:

Tales of Arise
Tales of Vesperia
Tales of Zestria
Tales of Berseria
Final Fantasy VII remake
Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core reunion
Final Fantasy XV
Final Fantasy type 0
Yakuza 0
Yakuza
Yakuza 2
Yakuza 3
Yakuza 4
Yakuza 5
Yakuza 6
Yakuza: like a dragon
Digimon cyber sleuth
Digimon Hackers memory
Digimon survive
Dragonstar Varnir
Dragon Quest XI
New Pokemon snap
Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild
Persona 5 Royal
Persona 5 Strikers

Stardew Valley (text based only - no voice in game)

There are others but these have all been from English versions of the game with the ability to change the in game language.

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I’m currently playing through the original Phoenix Wright trilogy in Japanese :grin: I have played them a couple of times in English, and since I’m a fan of mysteries most of the vocab is familiar and I’m not stopping to look anything up. It’s interesting to find out what changes between the English and Japanese versions! For instance ‘Lotta Hart’ is supposedly from the southern states in the English version, but she’s from Osaka and speaks with Kansai-ben in the Japanese version!

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I have played

which was text-only when I played it, but it now has a full-voice version

and

which is fully voiced

Both are free. Language was pretty easy. If you are N3 or above, you should have no problem.

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Oooh thanks for posting these. I didn’t realize there was a free Nekopara game. I’d only seen the paid ones before.

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Home Post
(Note: all levels are approximate. My memory’s also not all that great for furigana support.)
All kana = no kanji in the game (aside from, like, the title or somesuch)
No furigana = the game does have kanji

Unless I specifically mention voice acting, the game probably doesn’t have it.

シアトリズム ドラゴンクエスト

Game link - 3DS - don’t remember furigana status - N3? - There’s very little text in this game; most of it is help text/text relating to your party (names, items, skills, etc.), so even if you’re not 100% sure of what the text’s saying, you can still pretty easily play, since it’s a rhythm game.

ポケットモンスター 緑

Game link -GB - all kana - N3? - Despite being in all kana, the text is generally fairly repetitive; you’re going to see a lot of set phrases (“A wild ____ appeared!” “Dang, I can’t believe you beat me!”, etc.). Understanding the text is not essential to beating the game.

ポケットモンスター 金

Game link - GBC - all kana - N3? - Despite being in all kana, the text is generally fairly repetitive; you’re going to see a lot of set phrases (“A wild ____ appeared!” “Dang, I can’t believe you beat me!”, etc.). Understanding the text is not essential to beating the game.

テイルズ オブ ファンタジア

Game link - SNES - no furigana - N2? - So this is a long RPG (35-45 hours), one where you’re not going to have a fun time if you don’t understand what’s being said. Grammar was fairly easy (~N3 iirc), while vocab was much broader (~N2-ish). Bumped it up to N2 to account for the fact that it is a story-driven game and there’s no furigana. Plus, being a SNES game, you might run into difficulty identifying pixelated kanji.

キングダム ハーツ ファイナルミックス

Game link - PS2 (played on PS4) - no furigana - N3? - Has subs with its voiced cutscenes. Vocab and grammar are fairly run of the mill; any specialized vocabulary is generally written in katakana. I would say you do not need to understand what they’re saying to play through the game, though the plot is pretty important to overall enjoyment.

キングダム ハーツ メロディ オブ メモリー

Game link - PS4 - no furigana - N3? - Similar to シアトリズム, this is a rhythm game where not understanding the text is not detrimental to your playing experience. Lots of repeated words and phrases throughout in menus and items. There’s a tiny bit of story at the end (voiced cutscenes + subs) where you’re going to need actual language skills (N3/N2, depending on vocab) to understand it, but otherwise you can drift on by.

あつまれ どうぶつの森

Game link - Switch - don’t remember furigana status - N3/N2? - Grammar’s easy, and your day-to-day will likely have extremely similar vocabulary, but the vocabulary range is pretty broad. It’s all common daily items, at least, so it shouldn’t be difficult to look things up. No real story you need to follow.

ポケモン不思議のダンジョン 救助隊DX

Game link - Switch - at least some furigana - N2? - There’s a nice story to the game, but I don’t believe you need to understand it to finish the game. There’s generally lots of text everywhere on screen relating to stats, actions, locations, items, etc. while you’re in a dungeon, and it is recommended being at a high enough level to parse all that so you don’t die in strange and mysterious ways.

キャッスヴァニア 暁月の円舞曲

Game link - GBA (played on Switch) - no furigana - N2? - Not really a whole lot of story; you can play the game without it. You do need to be able to read a little bit in order to follow clues to get the true ending, however, as well as understand the monster souls you can equip and what they do. Pixelated kanji + a generally brief and sometimes awkward script had me bump this up to N2; there’s nothing too difficult here, but the full package may make the actual reading bit a bit tougher than it otherwise might normally be.

神巫女 -カミコ-

Game link - Switch - no furigana - N3? - Almost forgot about this one. My memory’s hazy, but I remember almost 0 text, and what was there might have been in ye olde Japanese?? Absolutely no clue at this point. Suffice to say you don’t need to understand anything they might be saying to beat the game.

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I’m hoping to add to my home post in the future, so I made it separate. I haven’t had much time to play games lately :cry: due to all the book reading I’ve been doing, but here’s a couple more in-progress ones that, if I ever finish before the heat death of the universe, I’ll add to my home post:

All of these besides ファイナルファンタジー I’ve played before in English, so they tend to get pushed to the side… I will say, playing デビルサバイバー has really opened my eyes to the horrors of kanji on a 240p screen. :scream:

I haven’t played any visual novels in Japanese, thinking about it. I’ve played a decent amount in English, but they all predated my “serious” Japanese study period.

Oh, is there a GBA version of this? I’m only familiar with the all-kana GB version. This one’s been on my to-play list for a while. From what little I’ve played I’d mark it up higher than L23 because of all kana + humor, that latter bit especially.

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I forgot 1 game:

This one is a bit more difficult and fairly dark. N2 recommended.
Also free. Not voiced, but you can find playthroughs on youtube. :smiling_face:
My recommendation: 【レムレスブルーの午前2時】僕は幽霊に恋をする。【よなが/#新人Vtuber】 - YouTube

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Nope, I just typed GBA by accident somehow, good catch. Maybe I should have waited until this morning to post like everyone else :sweat_smile:
iirc, the game did have a few kanji like 十 or 大, but it is almost all kana. The level might be a little low now that you mention it too, it’s been quite awhile since I played so I don’t remember the language complexity super well. It is probably worth mentioning that understanding the text is crucial to knowing what to do and where to go in this one, so I might bump it up for that reason as well.

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i’m playing deltarune and it’s a really nice translation I think. it’s really amazing how they translated the unique quirky voice of undertale and made it japanese somehow. the only downside is that there are some sections where the text just goes on without you so you have to keep up.

you might think it’s fully kana like earthbound or DQ or something, but it’s actually not.

i think it’d be around 25

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I’m still fairly new to Natively so I’m not super well versed in the rating system, but I can try to ballpark the handful of games I’ve played in Japanese:

  • ワールズエンドクラブ - fully voiced, no furigana, but otherwise friendly vocab (it is aimed at younger audiences, after all). N3 range
  • ポケットモンスター ソード - every Pokemon game between gens 5-8 has kana-only and kanji (with no furigana) options. I played this in kanji and was still pretty early in my WaniKani progression at the time, so I spent a lot of time on lookup. Though, as eefara mentioned, completely understanding the text is not essential to beating the game. Upper N3-N2 range?
  • ポケットモンスター バイオレット - the kana/kanji options are now gone, and all the text uses kanji and complete furigana (Legends: Arceus does this as well), which makes it a fair bit easier to parse & look up if needed. Some text auto-scrolls during battles or cutscenes, and some side characters’ unusual styles of speech could be a bit of a stumbling block - though none of this makes actually clearing the game harder. Same difficulty as Sword/Shield, roughly. (I definitely recommend playing this one docked - dakuten on the furigana can be really difficult to see on the Switch screen!)
  • AI:ソムニウム ファイル - fully voiced except for some narration and gameplay text, no furigana. The main story dialogue isn’t too difficult, save for some technical/police jargon that the game’s own appendix explains, and a copious amount of puns. N2 range

Quite some time ago I booted up D.M.L.C., which I’m hoping to actually read one of these days, went “oh jeez I need to hit WaniKani 60 before I even think about starting this,” and closed it. It’s unvoiced and doesn’t include furigana, and while I haven’t seen enough to properly rate it, it’s definitely at least N2.

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I’m currently playing through Octopath Traveler 2 and it’s probably the hardest game to rate because of the 8 stories. They all vary a lot in their vocabulary, like the doctor will use a lot of medical terms that you’ll only see in her story.

I’m not too sure how to grade it but I’d say it’s probably somewhere in the N2 level? It’s definitely kind of advanced. It doesn’t have furigana or a text log but it does have voice acting in just about every story cutscene. You can take every line of dialogue at your own pace and you can even replay the cutscenes so that’s nice.

The game does have a fair bit of very rare language here and there though. Also there are a lot of times where they’ll throw an entire paragraph on the screen so that’s obviously going to be more of a challenge than the dialogue.

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I usually try to grade stuff for where it’s “comfortable” to get through it. So, if an N2 person can read something without looking too much up, I go with that. It signals N3 people that they could probably do it, but with extra effort, but it probably keeps N4 away and thus from getting frustrated and N1 know that it’s gonna be a breeze for them. :thinking: Or at least, that’s how I treat ratings. :see_no_evil:

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Random question but how do you get the Japanese text/ audio on a game on the switch if there is no option for changing the in game language?

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Try and set your switch language to Japanese, some games then play directly in Japanese. Which game are you talking about?

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As @sina28 said; if you switch your switch’s language to Japanese, oftentimes that’ll be the trick to accessing the JP version of titles.

An easy way to tell if this will work (usually) is to check the game’s page on the Nintendo eshop in the region you bought it in. Go to the Languages section near the bottom, and if 日本語 is there you’re generally good to go. For games where you can only access the 日本語 version by buying it in the JP eshop, I’d recommend just setting up a separate account for that instead of switching regions on your main one. It’s really easy, and now you can access the JP eshop whenever you like without hassle.

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Thanks, I wasn’t sure if that was the case or if it needed to be purchased in Japanese.

It wasn’t a particular game as such, I just noticed that people were mentioning a lot of games and I knew previously you needed a Japanese version of the game to play it (on DS, GBA etc).

Thanks, I didn’t know there was a bit in the e-shop to check language options (most of my games are cards due to issues I had with trying to transfer data with a previous account from way back).

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As far as I know, that language information should be the same whether you’re accessing the game physically or digitally, so it’s still a good source to check even if you’re 100% physical.

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Playing through Steins;Gate, it’s easily around Level 35. Could be higher, but the more high concept words are in lower rated material like 青春ブタ野郎, so it probably isn’t much higher language wise.

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