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Japanese Import Games for Non-native speakers


Drew-013

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A lot of the more classic RPGs like Dragon Quest, Zelda, or the early FFs use furigana mostly. So for those weak with kanji but still would like to play some sort of rpg, I recommend those games  :)

That's super helpful thanks.

Any game with Furigana is pretty much an instant purchase for me at the moment, since it's one of the easiest ways for me to nail the Kanji.

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That's super helpful thanks.

Any game with Furigana is pretty much an instant purchase for me at the moment, since it's one of the easiest ways for me to nail the Kanji.

 

Yw :) The Dragon Quest series have furigana on top of the kanji in most of their games, so those games will be good for learning kanji. Some of the Zelda games as well (like Zelda Windwaker). The early FF games and recent Zelda games use kanji sparingly, but most of the time are easy kanji, so shouldn't be too hard. Japanese RPGs tend to like to use kanji a lot more these days, so looking through some of the early classic games is your best bet (through the psn store or something) :)

Edited by Raine_Evenstar
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still figuring out out how to download japanese f2p games in the store and still play it on my normall acc 

is it even possible i tried with content manager downloading it on my japanese account on my ps3 but it wouldnt copy

F2P games could be region locked...

 

Anyway, the process is, logging with your JP account onto PS3, download the game, install it, switch to your main account and try what happens.

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F2P games could be region locked...

Anyway, the process is, logging with your JP account onto PS3, download the game, install it, switch to your main account and try what happens.

I downloaded the me vita game on my ps3 (on my jp account)

And tried to copy them with content manager on my vita but it wouldnt work

Because my standard acc isnt the owner of the game it wouldnt copy it

Edited by Nexcus_Sxne
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I downloaded the me vita game on my ps3 (on my jp account)

And tried to copy them with content manager on my vita but it wouldnt work

Because my standard acc isnt the owner of the game it wouldnt copy it

 

To play Japanese PSN games on your Vita, I think you need to set up a Japanese account on a clean memory card.  This article should help although it may be out of date.  I ran across it when PSO2 was coming out.  http://kotaku.com/5983578/how-to-play-japanese-vita-games-on-your-non-japanese-vita

 

To get above the absolute basics and be able to read even small amounts of text I would recommend at the very least a good text book (or three) and a good dictionary (or three).

Here's mine... (i've got loads, and I apologise for that, its become an obsession now).

I am just being realistic and truthful here, there's no short cuts, you can either be happy saying a couple of dozen words in Japanese and typing them in romaji or you can put the work in and actually know what's being said rather than only understanding 1 word in every 20, it all depends on what you want to achieve.

 

That's a lot of books!  Been using Genki and Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese (which I think is ordered a little strangely, but is free so hey) to learn grammar.  Still need to get a good physical J/E dictionary though.  Which of the books in your collection do you think is the most useful?  

 

I hear ya on the subject of shortcuts though.  At my current pace, I'll learn most of the Joyo Kanji by April of next year, so for me one of the most important things is staying motivated over the long term.  Currently for reading practice I usually struggle my way through NHK Easy News (it's a great feeling to at least get the gist of an article without having to use external help or getting a semi-accurate translation with a dictionary).  Picking up an easy light novel or visual novel to slowly work through every now and then would be nice  just to switch things up (also demoralizing based on how little I'll recognize, but that's fine).  I think that having different ways to apply what I'm learning is important for maintaining motivation.  It was a great surprise to recognize "未来ガジェット研究所" (Future Gadget Laboratory) in the background images while reading Steins;Gate (English).  It's nice to have that kind of positive feedback.

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I will put aside the very most useful ones tomorrow and take a picture of those for you.

For a Japanese to English dictionary the Kodansha one (romanji) is such an incredible book, it also contains kana and kanji readings and is so beautifully laid out on beautiful paper, it really is a joy to read. (I have got 11 dictionaries, each one is different in what it does). The very large kanji book you can see at the very far left has got 1700+ pages in it.

It might be difficult to see a lot of my books clearly but one of them is all about particles, and you would never find this in any video game, and is a vital part of Japanese.

To be honest that selection of books might look random, but I assure you I have not just grabbed every book I can find... there is a book for every aspect of Japanese there, from grammar, to particles, to vocabulary to suffixes... there are roughly 8 or 9 manga books too, but I havnt had time to read any, just like I havnt had time to play any of my most recently purchased Japanese games either which bothers me occasionally but game time can wait.

Edited by JapanimeGamer
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  • 4 weeks later...

On another note, are there any games on NA PSN that have options for switching text to Japanese?  La-Mulana EX does, but the puzzles in that game are hard enough in English; I'd never figure it out in Japanese.

 

To (sort of) answer my own question from a month ago, I found out today (on the 20th anniversary of Pokemon) that Pokemon X/Y can be set to 7 different languages including Japanese if you reset your game data.  I tried it out today and it offers the choice of kanji or kana, but no furigana.  It does separate the text with spaces though which makes it easier to read.  Overall, it could be a nice choice for practicing Japanese if anyone else is interested.

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To (sort of) answer my own question from a month ago, I found out today (on the 20th anniversary of Pokemon) that Pokemon X/Y can be set to 7 different languages including Japanese if you reset your game data.  I tried it out today and it offers the choice of kanji or kana, but no furigana.  It does separate the text with spaces though which makes it easier to read.  Overall, it could be a nice choice for practicing Japanese if anyone else is interested.

Yup, iirc all new Pokemon (since 3DS period) support multilanguage.

On the other hand... Pokemon is way too easy to play with hiragana and not that good when you switch to kanji... definitely agree they should add furigana.

 

Borderlands 1 GOTY Edition (from Japan) is English all the way through.

English voice + JP subs?

Because if it's completely English, it's kinda pointless =D

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If you ever find your self on a Japanese website with lots of Kanji that you cannot understand then go to this website...

 

http://hiragana.jp/en/

 

Then in the search box paste the Japanese website address that you struggle reading and click 'GO'.

 

Now all of the kanji has become furigana and this should help anyone who cannot read kanji now read any Japanese website.

 

Hope this helps.

 

(Feel free to use this post in other threads on PSNP as necessary, so others can see it too).

Edited by JapanimeGamer
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Yup, iirc all new Pokemon (since 3DS period) support multilanguage.

On the other hand... Pokemon is way too easy to play with hiragana and not that good when you switch to kanji... definitely agree they should add furigana.

 

Yeah, I recognize and know the readings for the majority of the kanji I've seen so far, but looking up kanji I don't recognize without furigana is a pain.  Still the validation of recognizing words like 知り合い (acquaintance) for the friends list gives me a nice confidence boost.  An almost bigger problem is actually how all the Pokemon have different names than what I grew up with.

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Yeah, I recognize and know the readings for the majority of the kanji I've seen so far, but looking up kanji I don't recognize without furigana is a pain.  Still the validation of recognizing words like 知り合い (acquaintance) for the friends list gives me a nice confidence boost.  An almost bigger problem is actually how all the Pokemon have different names than what I grew up with.

 

Just count the strokes and search for the kanji that way in a kanji dictionary, or if you know your radicals it's easy enough to find the right kanji or even guess them in extreme cases relatively accurately when taking everything else into context.

 

The kanji dictionaries I use are pictured in my profile.

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Just count the strokes and search for the kanji that way in a kanji dictionary, or if you know your radicals it's easy enough to find the right kanji or even guess them in extreme cases relatively accurately when taking everything else into context.

 

The kanji dictionaries I use are pictured in my profile.

 

Thanks for the tip! I'm still new to using kanji dictionaries, so I'm a little slow doing the search, but I'm sure that will improve with practice.  I still need to pick up a nice physical kanji dictionary, so I'll look at the ones you have posted.

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You are welcome, and if my pictures are not too clear (sorry) then i can mention the best one is 'Kodansha's kanji learners course'.

 

It is the blue kanji book far left on my book shelf near the bottom of my pictures.

 

That book has got a sister book called 'Kodansha's kanji learners dictionary' which can be used side by side. (they are pictured next to each other in the same pic).

 

A quick search on amazon reviews should confirm the usefulness of this book, it is quite something.

Edited by JapanimeGamer
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The hyper dimension Nenptunia games are not too hard to understand and follow in my opinion especially the vita remakes. They always put down event markers so it's hard to get lost during the story.

The only struggle with the Hyperdimension Neptunia games is getting the true endings and whatnot if you're not familiar with how the games work ending wise, but if you can translate some minor things then they aren't hard games at all. Hyperdimension Neptunia action U is pretty much a dynasty warriors style game so you don't have to worry about endings and can pretty much go through the game killing everything and end up with the platinum eventually lol.

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The only struggle with the Hyperdimension Neptunia games is getting the true endings and whatnot if you're not familiar with how the games work ending wise, but if you can translate some minor things then they aren't hard games at all. Hyperdimension Neptunia action U is pretty much a dynasty warriors style game so you don't have to worry about endings and can pretty much go through the game killing everything and end up with the platinum eventually lol

Well, not really, considering you need to satisfy some specific requirements that are not simply "kill everything" =D

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