I found a neat repo with JPDB deck lists for a small selection of video games. Seems like a mix of old and new.
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That’s the first I’ve ever heard of Volcano Princess. And somehow it’s also a good game? Wishlisted 
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After a long break I continued playing 逆転裁判, am now in the third case of the first game. I think after the long pause I do feel a sense of improvement, I don’t feel like I have to look up much, I look up maybe once or twice between subchapters (when you’re asked to save). なんか気持ちいい😊
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Okay looks like this thread is super dead, but maybe over the course of the year I can single handedly revive it.
I’m almost finished with ぼくの夏休み 2：海の大冒険. After finishing this I’ll have played 1-3, Natsu-Mon, and the Shin Chan spin off games. All that’s left will be 4 and to replay 3. (as I didn’t know Japanese when I played 3) 2 is probably my favorite of the traditional games so far.
After BokuNatsu 2 I’ll go back to focusing on 妖怪ウォッチ4++, which I’m 15 or so hours into now. I’m not sure I like it as much as some of the other games in the series. In particular, recruiting yokai is a lot more annoying with the whole soul collecting mechanic.
I’ve mostly relied on my own knowledge with occasional help from google translate for identifying kanji, but I recently tried the desktop app for Kamui and I’m super impressed. It’s picked up the text in the PSP version of BokuNatsu2 with auto scan perfectly so far. (and that text can be quite…crunchy) I did try it with a PS2 emulator and it seems to have a lot more trouble with auto scan on that. In that it loses the window for some reason. You can still set the scan area and manual scan though.
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Looks cool, though I think I’ll stick with YomiNinja, since it’s free & (more importantly) lets me use JPDB Web Reader. Tho the Google OCR integration is broken , ever since google updated their signin (the API key thing might work, but I didn’t wanna bother). So I’m just using the builtin one, which is fairly solid, and use my phone if there’s something it doesn’t catch. Notably both YomiNinja and Kamui share a flaw: you can’t merge lines, so if your word breaks over a line, you can’t get it like that
I’m theoretically playing Fate/Stay Night, SeaBed, and/or Fire Emblem: Three Houses rn… but I’m also reading and watching a ton of stuff rn, so my playtime is very inconsistent for any of those rn. Home thread for SeaBed - informal Visual Novel Book Club has a book club here. I’m still early on, so not totally hooked yet.
Fire Emblem I’m kinda mixed on - story is nice, gameplay & mechanics I’m iffy on. Language is pretty accessible for me now though, but still need to look things up.
Fate/Stay Night (which I’ve dropped 3x before) actually feels achievable now, largely due to YomiNinja, and a bit of jpdb - but also the grammar and writing style is a lot less perplexing for me now. Last time I played I was double-checking with translation, but not needed this time around.
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So I played another 3 hours of Dragon Quest, decided reading is hard, and haven’t been back 
I have a huge cache of Switch games that are fully voiced and maybe this is my sign to try out another one and see if it’s a better fit for me right now.
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I have a stack of games with Japanese Voices and text but haven’t played anything in a while. I planned to play 13 Sentinels but still don’t think my Japanese is good enough though it does have full voice over and text log for re-reading/ re-listening to the voices, if I had the patience atm.
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I am currently working my way through some visual novels on the switch and just saw that Root Letter and Root Film are on sale in the Japanese store… But only the latter is fully voiced though, while Root Letter apparently is only fully voiced on pc? (According to vndb) But I prefer playing on the switch now.
I use GitHub - AuroraWright/owocr: Optical character recognition for Japanese text currently for looking up words, I am very happy with it!
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I didn’t know about either of these. I’m cool with Kamui for now, especially since I already paid for a year, but I’m definitely going to keep those in my back pocket for later.
One thing I really want to try Kamui with is DS games. I tried to play one last year called ココロノココロン and in the couple hours I played I learned that kanji on the DS tends to be written a bit differently than usual, because of the space issues. I only realized that from using google translate on my phone at the time. It might make my life a lot easier if I just emulate the game this time though. I hate doing that when I went out of my way for a physical copy though.
Oh aren’t we all.
You speak the truth. RPGs in japanese are an especially hard thing to commit to. I tried playing Yo-Kai Watch 4 around 2 years into my learning journey and it was hard af. It took me 10 hours to get to chapter 3 of the game. It’s when I learned “久しぶり” for the first time, which should have told me I wasn’t ready right then.
Now I’m 15 hours in on Chapter 5, so waaay better time this time around.
See I love these threads. I’m learning about a lot of options I didn’t realize I had before.
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I finished BokuNatsu 2 and have gotten side tracked from Yo-kai Watch 4. I was looking up Love-de-Lic games and found out that some of the members worked on a game called PostPetDS 夢見るモモと不思議のペン. It looked super cute and kind of reminded me of the style of Magician’s Quest a little. (which ironically Love-de-Lic members also worked on)
It’s definitely a kid’s game, but it’s been a fun little time so far. The language isn’t very difficult so it’s a nice game to unwind with a little bit at night. The story is that you’re a kid who has been sucked into another world and now you have to befriend pets around this new world and fulfill their dreams, so that they can become a “Postpet”. Which are quite literally pets who deliver mail? Okay look. I don’t know anything about the PostPet universe that this is based on so I’m a little lost on the story here.
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I started playing つい・ゆり ～おかあさんにはナイショだよ - which as you may guess from the title, is a twincest yuri. I’m usually iffy on those, but this one is done well enough, short of being a bit ちょろい, and occasionally some hilariously bad writing (mostly the ero scenes, I burst out laughing a few times). The emotional arcs are done pretty well. You switch between the two leads (who are mostly at odds right now), and it’s very easy to empathize with both. There’s even a side character literally named 百合 (the side chars are basically just there for the sake of relationship progress, or support when things go wrong)
I’m terms of controls, the audio levels are good, and you can modify each character’s volume. The dialogue is fully voiced (though the inner monologue is not). There’s a backlog, and you can replay lines, but not jump to previous moments (unless you saved of course). There are choices, and a status bar (which the goal seems to be to keep in the middle?), and the choices affect the status bar, and give you slightly different scenes (usually one is an extended version, but they both contain something unique, regardless). Apparently there’s good and bad ends to the story. I wonder which one I’ll get?
Anyway the game’s hitting the perfect sweet spot of easy, fun, and interesting for me. I’m about 23% through (the standard playtime is ~8 hrs). So there’s a decent chance I’ll actually finish a VN for once! Despite (or maybe due to) it being pretty basic, I’m finding it fairly engaging. Level-wise, I think I’d probly guess it around like L25? Would only recommend it if you like stories with characters agonizing over forbidden feelings, but are ok with some lack of realism
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I’ve just finished ピクニック which was a charming and fun 2D game with a lot of short and easy Japanese conversational sentences.
Now I’ve moved onto Alba: A Wildlife Adventure which is a cute 3D island explorer - again, a lot of short conversations.
In between these games I’m playing Persona 4 Golden which probably needs no introduction…but anyway, I’m really enjoying the Japanese voice track.
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On the off chance anyone is considering playing this at any point, there’s 4 endings (2 good, 2 bad), at least one of the bad ends is way more intense than I was expecting (specifically: CW for rape, and murder ). Wasn’t quite expecting given the rest of the content so far.
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Wow you must have really messed up
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Yeah, I was like “how the heck do you get there from ‘twincest yuri’ with that fluffy cover image”.
Looking at the vndb spoilers helped 
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It’s the walkthrough’s fault… I was on track for the one of the Good Ends, until I started following it It’s not like I intentionally went looking for the bad end or anything… no way, not me…
Do you know what the red & white capital S there mean, btw?
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White is minor spoilers, red is major spoilers.
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I haven’t finished ついゆり yet, but started
The new artwork is beautiful, and the voice acting is great so far. I almost didn’t recognize Tomatsu Haruka (voices Aozaki Aoko) though - very different tone than other roles I’ve Heard her do. It’s making me nostalgic for SAO tho lol
The language is not so bad, but there’s enough random odd vocab that I’m glad for the voiced dialogue. Also the skip scene button is next to useless (I hate the hospital scene, and have seen it too many times)
So far the original feels a bit gloomier, which I might kinda miss
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I’ve unfortunately come down with covid, so while I’m curled up at home I decided this was a good opportunity to play Angelique Special, the PlayStation 1 port of the original SFC Angelique, which I covered playing earlier, as once you know what you’re doing it’s a pretty relaxing game of watching numbers go up, haha. I was declared Queen of the Universe my first go-round, so I figure this time it’d be better to settle down with a hubby. Not 100% sure who I’ll go for yet; everyone’s pretty minimal in terms of personality, and there are several I like based on looks alone, so it might just end up being whoever confesses first.
Here are a couple of screenshots for you all; nothing fancy since I’m playing on real hardware.
Just an example of the font/text.
You can now visit Rosalia’s room to chat. It does take some energy to do so (not sure how much yet, since I don’t have any to spare), so I’m hoping I can still befriend her without doing so.
They’ve also added cutscenes and voiced lines in this version as well, though both are minimal.
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Haven’t made any further progress on 月姫, but wound up buying 魔法使いの夜 b/c it’s on sale on Steam rn:
It’s definitely trying to be unnecessarily fancy with the vocab, and the level is slightly higher than 月姫 which means a bit more lookups than I’d like (so far like 1-3 per screen). I can keep up w/ auto mode, on the slowest speed, as long as it’s not a really long sentence. So I pause it often enough, but it’s still way less annoying than pressing the Next key ever damn line. I think if I wasn’t having pain rn, it wouldn’t feel so bad.
The music and aesthetic are the most pleasing of any VN I’ve played - ever. Usually I start getting annoyed with BGM, b/c I read too slowly and/or it’s too busy, and loops too much… but this one just feels really soothing and enjoyable. Voiced dialogue is nice of course. Was watching a playthrough for a bit, with the vocals turned off, but the person was reading the whole thing and commenting. In a way I think that’s probly the optimal way to consume something like this, since it’s more organic listening practice. On the other hand, actually playing it is better reading practice - especially for getting myself to read faster, and reinforce some vocab that I vaguely remember or can relatively work out
Anyway I think I’ll try to play a little bit each day. I’d do more, but I really don’t wanna distract myself too much from 続 若草物語 | L39?? right now. More likely I’ll keep up with it than 月姫 tho, since the story is totally new to me, and my friend is also playing it rn (tho far ahead of me)
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