DS RPGs for practicing Japanese

Meister

Anyone have any recommendations of good Japanese RPGs for practicing the language? Some RPGs, like Final Fantasy 4, have cutscenes with dialogue that doesn't stop (it doesn't wait for input before they next dialogue box pops up), so those are a no go. Voice acting in addition to the text would be a plus, but it seems that most games that have voice acting have the non-stop dialogue. Of course a good storyline makes the game more enjoyable and exciting.

Right now I'm playing Dragon Quest 5, which is pretty fun, although the lack of voice is sort of a downer.

UncleSporky

I would think that older games are going to be better for this, such as the NES Dragon Quest series. I don't know how most japanese games go as far as kanji but I would expect NES games to lack the memory for anything except hirigana. Of course that depends on whether you're practicing the language or learning kanji.

RainbowDespair

If I'm not mistaken, the Mother games don't use kanji & are available for the GBA so those would be a good choice. Play-Asia has the Mother 1&2 combo pack for $35.

On the other hand, Mother tends to have a lot of humor in it so that would make things more difficult to understand.

Meister

Kanji is actually not a problem for me, because I'm almost done with Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, so I can recognize most of the Kanji. In fact, one this that surprised me about DQ5 was how little/seemingly at random they use Kanji. I'm mostly playing for vocabulary and immersion (learning new phrases, ways of speaking, etc.). The thing that trips me up the most is stuff you can't find in the dictionary (like when the priest in DQ5 uses old-style honorific language to speak with god, that took me a while to figure out. also, I still don't really get the names of the spells. are they just completely fabricated onomatopoeia?).

Musan

Phantom Hourglass sounds like it would fit the bill, since i think all kanji shows matching hiragana and katakana when you click on the text.

CygnusZ

From the beginning Dragon Quest had those odd spell names.
http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~radical/column/magi-dq.htm

There's no getting around that DS games don't have much voice acting. Tales of Hearts has a lot of voice acting if you like that series. Gyakuten Saiban is an excellent series that isn't too difficult to read and it's a pretty funny game.

Really, what you're looking for are the PS2 Tales Of... games, which the plot is almost completely voice acted. There's also a PS1 game called クロス探偵物語 that you should get.

Arkyris

I don't know its specifically what you want, but the Japanese version of Chrono Trigger DS has an english option. So if you ever run into a phrase you dont know you can switch it over get the dialogue and switch back.

That said, you can't switch at all times. The dialogues with important characters don't seem to let you change it back and forth at will, but wandering around and talking to peeps works fine. Or just replay your last save to see what they're saying.

Meister

Wow, that DQ spell site is awesome. I would have never got some of these.
「休み」→「イ木ミ」→「イホミ」→「ホイミ」
I think Tales of Hearts was one of those where you couldn't stop the dialogue during cutscenes, but I'm not sure.

tehmarken

Pokemon diamond/pearl/platinum.

Sonar

look for slime forrest for the PC

Zen Vulgarity

Learn it through fucking classes

FanciestWalnut

Seriously, do you really want to learn Japanese so badly? Also, read a book.

tehmarken

Zen Vulgarity wrote: »

Learn it through fucking classes

He's looking to practice. Playing video games is a great way to practice a foreign language, it drills some unique vocabulary and you get dialogue that is paced.

Grislo

Zen Vulgarity wrote: »

Learn it through fucking classes

Meister wrote: »

Anyone have any recommendations of good Japanese RPGs for practicing the language?

Meister wrote: »

Kanji is actually not a problem for me, because I'm almost done with Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, so I can recognize most of the Kanji. In fact, one this that surprised me about DQ5 was how little/seemingly at random they use Kanji. I'm mostly playing for vocabulary and immersion (learning new phrases, ways of speaking, etc.).

As someone already said, video games can be an excellent way of getting some practice in when you're trying to learn a foreign language.

Meister

Yah, as people have pointed out I'm playing Japanese games to practice; I already take intermediate level classes to learn the language, and I read Japanese novels in class and in my free time. I happen to also play video games in my free time (something I'm assuming most people on these forums do?) so I figure I might as well kill two birds with one stone. Also, I find some of the things that don't translate well interesting, such as the previously mentioned spell names and the various subtleties of levels of politeness in Japanese speech.

I had forgotten about Pokemon, good call. I think Slime Forest is mostly for complete beginners to the language, though.

DeathPrawn

Musan wrote: »

Phantom Hourglass sounds like it would fit the bill, since i think all kanji shows matching hiragana and katakana when you click on the text.

Darmak

Man, that Slime Forest game looks pretty cool. I hadn't ever heard of a game like that being made to learn another language, are there any others? Not just for Japanese either, any other language such as Chinese, Spanish, French, etc.

Meister

DeathPrawn wrote: »

Musan wrote: »

Phantom Hourglass sounds like it would fit the bill, since i think all kanji shows matching hiragana and katakana when you click on the text.

Does Phantom Hourglass have a lot of text? The main reason I've been playing RPGs is because they are mostly lots and lots of text.

Bartholamue

Last I checked, Zelda: Wind Waker JP has kanji, but has furigana to compensate. I know that's not DS.

Rami

Mother 3 for the GBA is an excellent choice, the characters are so emotive you can almost understand what they're trying to say without using the text at all. Other than that I'd suggest Pokemon Platinum since the language is based at a reading age suitable for children.

tehmarken

Man, thanks to this thread I'm gonna hafta dig out my pokemon and play through it again.

leaf

I hear RapeLay is pretty good

Zen Vulgarity

hahahaha

CygnusZ

I think adventure games may be more up your alley than RPGs. These games are nothing but text! Once again, these are mostly PS games.

Machi (PS/PSP)
Kamaitachi no Yoru: Special Edition (PS/GBA)
Missing Parts (PS2)
Policenaughts (PS) (Fully voiced)
Snatcher (PS/PCE/Saturn)
Hayarigami (PS2/PSP)
Kinpachi Sensei: Densetsu no Koudan ni tate! (PS2) (Fully voiced)

darksteel

スーパーロボット対戦 K just came out on the DS. I learned like maybe, 40% of my Kanji just playing that series from the PSX days, so I owe it a lot. If you're a fan of giant robots from old and new anime shows doing a crossover and duking it out in a turn-based tactical game, and the characters having weird interactions with each other, give it a shot.

KiTA

As mentioned in the H/A thread on Learning Japanese, Pokemon apparently has very readable Japanese, and apparently the new Dragon Quest 9 has Furigana.

Darmak

What's Furigana?

Bartholamue

Darmak wrote: »

What's Furigana?

Whenever you see a kanji character, they usually have little hiragana/katakana characters on top of it to explain what it is to younger readers. The characters on the top are called 'furigana'. They usually do that in comic books/games for younger people.

KiTA

Darmak wrote: »

What's Furigana?

The little Kana on top of Kanji in (usually) kids books.

Although I have seen it on ecchi stuff, too. I did a double take.

But then again, Negima is supposed to be a kids manga...

Darmak

Ahhhh, okay. That makes sense now.