Thanks for the recommendations, everyone!
@Jiell @shablul Funny y’all should mention Pokémon, I was thinking about tackling Alpha Sapphire since I’m the most familiar with the Hoenn games. I would then work my way up to more text-heavy jRPGs with more complicated mechanics. And I agree, tutorials and menus are actually pretty tough to go through!
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I think pokemon games from 3ds and later on do have some kanji, though from what I saw it was very basic kanji (N5-N4-ish levels)
if you want kana only then it’s the gb, gbc and gba games
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I don’t remember how it was for every pokemon game, but in x and y you could pick in the beginning if you want only kana or Kanji. I think thats the case for all of them?
I played through alpha ruby before, and I believe you could choose for the text to be kana only… 
unless I misremember
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I think modern Pokemon games let you pick between all kana or kanji. At least, all the ones I’ve seen (mostly on switch) have let you.
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could be?
I never had any of the newer games except for those I could access on the smartphone lol
a.k.a I’m limited to emulators so things are always half-not working well 
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that makes sense yesyes
actually makes it even better for learning in that case
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Only bad thing is is you can’t switch once you’ve picked; it’s a done deal after selecting the option on startup afaik.
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Just started my 3DS to check this - Omega Ruby at least lets you switch between kana and Kanji in the settings. No need to stick to one or the other.
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Ah, very handy!
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Menus (and inventory) are actually very useful, bc they’re relatively static and you’re constantly seeing them. Some/many things can carry over to other games too. So while it’s a lot of info all at once, if you give them a bit of study (maybe even Anki), they can really help. Unfamiliar tutorials can be torture tho lol
Some other thoughts: if the game you’re playing has a wiki, it might have multiple languages (I’ve been making use of this with Stardew Valley). Also you can often find voiced playthroughs of games (particularly VNs) on YouTube
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Yeah, that’s true. There’s only so many ways to say “items,” weapons," “key items,” “magic,” and so forth. It’s only problematic when a game goes off the deep end and has TOO many game-specific terms.
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Sure - like anything else, you have to get a sense of which words are actually useful… Tho sometimes even words that seem oddly specific unexpectedly pop up somewhere else.
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And one last thing about Pokémon game languages. The first games that had kanji as an option was Black/White. Of course, there wasn’t a language option at the time, so no Japanese for international players. I am so glad they added a choose language option for all of the games afterwards. You can’t change it after starting, though. This is true for the Switch games as well: you can have your game in Japanese, but the Switch language in English.
Anyway, after all of this talk, I’ve dug out my 3DS and I believe I will attempt to play through Alpha Sapphire!
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I used to listen to a lot of Japanese bands. I get irrationally happy whenever I find a highly specific lyrics word out in the wild
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Just bought Judge Eyes: 死神の遺言 on steam!
One hour in and I absolutely love the story, very comical.
Difficulty wise, it’s up there, yakuza language, no furigana either.
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For the past few days I’ve been playing the game 泡沫のユークロニア. It’s the first game released by a new 乙女ゲーム company so I was pretty excited to try it out. Now I remember why I haven’t played any games recently. I’ve got almost nothing else done since starting. I’m now 25 hours and 57 minutes into it and apparently around 40% done.
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Huh, the art style for that game looks really familiar.
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I also have this danger - especially with MMOs lol. At least you’re probably getting in some good language learning!
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RiRi?
Also just noticed it has 松岡禎丞 (my fav 声優) as one of the chars… So I guess I’ll add it to my wishlist
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The art style, I should say.
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