The yokai are… okay i guess, nothing like pokemon, but with funny names and the atmosphere of the game itself is pleasant. Lots of small dialogs, with basic everyday vocab since you’re playing a child. I spent a few enjoyable hours on the first Yokai Watch (that i got for something like 1500円, so around 12 €/$).

A script really helps to endure these timesĪs for a recommanded game, if you have a Switch you can basically access any game in japanese on the japanese eshop, some of them never translated… That’s a tough call.

Sometimes you have to keep playing even if you don’t get everything that’s going on.

And sometimes you can get the meaning of a word even if you don’t know it, which is impossible in full kana version.

I personally like having some kanji vs all kana because it really helps to know where a word starts/ends.

study grammar before reading/playing, it really helps to get at least the intentions behind the sentences (if it’s an order, hesitation, advice, questionning, and so on…).

I totally +1 what has already been said : Kind of.ĭialogue progresses when you press A, so you can take it 100% at your own pace, the game mechanics are super easy, and the dialogue is cute/funny! Plus, you can always throw the hiragana into Google translate or Jisho to find the Kanji, and it becomes KaniWani style practice. I know myself, and if I had to strain to read every speech bubble, I would simply give up. BUT on the other side of that coin, I feel like it’s a good place to start if you’re not used to reading.

It often opts for hiragana instead of kanji, so you might feel like you’re not getting as much practice as you’re looking for. The negative is that you will get ZERO listening practice.

It also has nice spacing so that it’s easy to read. It uses a mixture of kana and kanji+furigana. I recently started playing Paper Mario: Origami King in Japanese, and I’m really enjoying it. However, my reading is by FAR my weakest skill, and I almost never practice.

You’ve got a lot of great advice already in this post, but I figured I’d add my two cents! I’m literally just going to talk about Paper Mario, so skip all of this if that isn’t the kind of game you’re into.įor reference, I passed the JLPT N4 pretty easily in December, and my spoken Japanese is at a level where I can hold a conversation about day-to-day topics smoothly.

Yokai watch emulator