🎮 Video Game + Visual Novel Natively Levels

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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I’ve just started Persona 4 - so far so good, I like the way it reminds me of being in Japan, and having both audio and the written dialogue together is handy listening practice :slight_smile: has anyone else played this series?

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I’ve played Persona 5 Royal and Persona 5 Strikers. Both great games imo though I did only used the Japanese audio and English text as I wasn’t very good at listening or reading at the time so thought the audio was better than nothing. Did the same with the Yakuza series as well.

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Check out Game Grammar YouTube channel. They have play throughs of some VNs and games where they read the text, and talk a out the grammar.

I’ve been watching their Ace Attorney (Phoenix Wright) playthrough lately. Fun way to learn!

Edit: Game Gengo is great too! But doesn’t seem to do full playthroughs… Still very useful tho

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I recently finished まほコレ~魔法☆あいどるコレクション~ on the 3DS.
Would definitely recommend for a beginner. The beginning takes a bit, but there’s lots of repeating language and the grammar is simple. I still wouldn’t consider myself quite N3 and I was able to make it through with fairly minimal lookups, while understanding 90% of what was going on and what to do at all times.

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this is probably not gonna add a lot but fall guys in japanese is super light to read if you want a casual way to be exposed/practice

I would probably put 頭痛 around N2+ on the more difficult level
里帰り and 廃村巡り around N2+ on the easier level

milk inside a bag… N1+ simply because not only are some of the kanji difficult, but the font itself makes it super hard to read, distinguish and even look up words you dont know

Yomawari: Night Alone is N2+ on the easier side

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So… something I just realized:

This thread is currently tagged as Japanese, but I assume learners of other languages would find it useful to have a thread to grade/recommend video games as well. Should I change the tag to All Languages? Or should this continue to be a Japanese-only thread?

What tag should this thread have?
  • All Languages
  • Japanese
0 voters
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:joy: I know we all love polls @meagstudies but this really doesn’t need a poll. I’ll tag it as all languages as this feature will be available for all languages.

Edit: OH WHOOPS. Sorry thought this was the product request… continue on with your poll

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ah I knew the feature would be available for all languages, I just didn’t know if this thread in particular should stay in all languages (since this is a discussion thread not a product request)

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I don’t think the discussion here would be relevant to other groups, and vice versa. I’m sure other language groups will make their own thread if it’s of interest… And Natively will have VNs & games at some point :slight_smile:

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That makes sense!

Based on that and the poll results, I’ll keep this thread tagged as Japanese

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I’m currently playing the Ace Attorney trilogy (currently only in the second case of the first game because vocab list making is slowing me down).

There’s a lot of lawyer and workplace lingo but apart from this it’s lower N3 level I would say. A good start for VN beginners if you like the whacky humour.

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Game grammar has a playthrough here:

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This site has the script for the trilogy (plus 逆裁4 and a little bit of 逆転検事) which helped me a lot in doing lookups and making Anki cards quickly!

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