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[dark10x]

OK, that sounds really pathetic, I know...but I've realized just how much better of an experience I have with it. I think one of the factors that has allowed me to enjoy Wild Arms 4 so much is that very feature. I've been able to enjoy the story and dialog at a speed not too far removed from what I'd experience had the game been in English. It's good reading practice and it's fun...but finding games with such a feature is fairly rare.

Without rubi, I sometimes becomhe lazy and stop looking up unknown kanji and just go with a "general" meaning, which isn't always enough AND it prevents me from discovering new words (which is one reason for the playtime).

Aside from WA4, Code Age also had it (tough game, though, whew). Is anyone aware of any other potential candidates? Any suggestions would be really appreciated!

 

[Bebpo]

heh, I was going to jump in and say Wild Arms after reading the title

I think it's a standard in all Sony published rpgs to allow furigana. Legaia 2 had that as well. Popolocrois PSP maybe has it? Hmm, not 100% on that. Otherwise it's really rare. Unless the game was aimed at kids (like the Rakugaki Oukoku series) you won't see furigana in much.

So all that's left is just...learn more kanji! The more rpgs you play the more kanji you'll pick up. Same with manga (non-Jump) stuff as well. Hell I played Xenosaga ep1 after like 3 years of the language and that has 9kanji long compounds

 

[dark10x]

heh, I was going to jump in and say Wild Arms after reading the title

I think it's a standard in all Sony published rpgs to allow furigana. Legaia 2 had that as well. Popolocrois PSP maybe has it? Hmm, not 100% on that.

So all that's left is just...learn more kanji! The more rpgs you play the more kanji you'll pick up. Same with manga (non-Jump) stuff as well. Hell I played Xenosaga ep1 after like 3 years of the language and that has 9kanji long compounds

Yeah, that's kinda what I thought...

Alright, how about something that's a bit easier to handle? I've made tons of progress in the last couple months, but I still have a ways to go. For example, I replayed the good parts of Grandia III last week and found that I had almost no troubles understanding it now (whereas, back in the summer, I kinda struggled). That was very encouraging. Then I went back to OZ (not even an RPG!) and, while it was certainly more readable, there was still so many things that I just couldn't read without looking them up. That was quite DIScouraging, of course, which kinda bummed me out (though, I showed some of those words to a couple of my friends and they were kinda like "err, those are really odd words to be studying?"). Only one person even knew what 結界 was.

 

[Bebpo]

Yeah, that's kinda what I thought...

Alright, how about something that's a bit easier to handle? I've made tons of progress in the last couple months, but I still have a ways to go. For example, I replayed the good parts of Grandia III last week and found that I had almost no troubles understanding it now (whereas, back in the summer, I kinda struggled). That was very encouraging. Then I went back to OZ (not even an RPG!) and, while it was certainly more readable, there was still so many things that I just couldn't read without looking them up. That was quite DIScouraging, of course, which kinda bummed me out (though, I showed some of those words to a couple of my friends and they were kinda like "err, those are really odd words to be studying?").

Hmm, well with the upcoming rpgs (how long are you going to be in Japan btw?) I'd say the Japanese level is probably:

--Rogue Galaxy (Maybe furigana! Otherwise should still be pretty easy->medium. Plus you'll pick up some vocab on planets, galaxies, etc...)
--MGA2 (fucking hard. Seriously MGA was extremely tough for me as it had insane amounts of kanji and there's no voice acting to help you out like Xenosaga)
--Tales of the Abyss (Probably very medium. Wouldn't be a bad idea to give it a try. Tales games often use odd-words and some tough vocab here and there but the majority of the dialogue tends to be conversational and fairly easy. It's a good mix)
--Kingdom Hearts 2 (should be medium. Might even have furigana but besides Code Age I don't recall any other SE games with furigana. Square games are never jokingly easy, but they aren't super tough either. Worth a look if you're not holding out for the US one with English voices)
--Front Mission 5 (Hard! But at the same time it's not like the dialogue will be really tough, but rather that they'll use a bunch of military terms + geographical terms [country names for instance]. Actually a fairly good way to learn some geographical/historical terms. But definitely will be full of 5-8 kanji words with no furigana)
--FFVII DoC (Probably medium. If you've seen FFVII:AC, it should be about that level)
--Ar Tonelico (No clue, haven't really played much of Gust games)
--Devil Summoner PS2 (Atlus R&D1 games are hard. Really only worth it if you're willing to challenge yourself to the extreme. Also there might not be voice acting which will make it even tougher. SMTIII was a bitch)
--Disgaea 2 (Easy. N1 games are great for practice. Fully voiced and not too complex makes them good learning tools plus they're really entertaining games. If you haven't checked out their previous games those are great as well [except La Pucelle which is boring IMO])
--Baten Kaitos 2 (Medium to Hard. Monolith Soft. games tend to have pretty complex scripts. Might be kinda tough)

Only one person even knew what 結界 was.

lol, I picked that one up reading CLAMP's manga X. In fact, I don't know what type of manga you like to read (if you like reading manga at all), but I'd highly recommend CLAMP works for Japanese practice. None of their serious stuff feature furigana but their writing is extremely easy and it's excellent practice. Tokyo Babylon, X, Chobits, Suki Dakara Suki, XXXholic, Gouhou Drug, Clover, are all top-notch and great for practice.

Also I read Berserk which is really really hard (was hard for me 4 years ago when I tried reading it bi-weekly in Japan, and is still hard for me today when I read it bi-weekly). Still despite it being extremely tough (I just skim through stuff that doesn't seem important and has a bijillion rare kanji) it's kind of a good push manga that keep pushing me to learn more and work on my skills. If you can find something that's really hard it's worth trying to stick with it and look up kanji that come up often.

Good luck with it. Getting to the point where you can pretty much play any Japanese game, read any manga you pick up, understand any song you hear, or watch any film/tv show that airs...is soooooo worth it in the end. It's great if you can use it for a job, but even if you can't it's still just wonderful to know such a poetic awesome language. Classical Japanese rocks as well and is worth looking into after you get comfortable with the language, but if you don't use it often you start forgetting it (I took a year of classical but almost 2 years later now I've forgotten 90% already ^^.

 

[Red Scarlet]

Try Famicom and some Super Famicom ones (well not really furigana..just no kanji).

 

[XVI]

The Wind Waker is the only game with furigana that comes to mind.

 

[dark10x]

Thanks a lot for the recommendations/assessments.

Anyways, I'm only able to spend 3 months here this time. I have to go back and do a project for work, and since they are the ones that allowed me to come in the first place, I can't really argue. However, I plan to return upon completion of that for work/study. I'm only 23, I still have plenty of time (unless something...tragic happens :|). I've become much more motivated by being around here, though, and have improved a ton. I'm going to keep at it hardcore while I'm back home so that I stay fresh until the return. You're success inspired me as well. :thumbs up:

Anyways, Rogue Galaxy DOES seem like a good one. I saw a bunch of ads on the train today and was thinking about it myself, actually. That comes out pretty soon, so I might jump on it.

Tales of the Abyss might be interesting as well, but what about, say, Legendia? I was going to wait for the US release, but it might be more beneficial for me if I play the JP version instead. It seemed easy enough, based on what I've seen, and the drama tracks on the OST are fine as well (if that represents that type of dialog the game offers).

I'm agreeing with you on the military games, there. The few that I've tried with hardcore military/historical terms had me furiously digging away to make sense of it.

Out of my current collection JP PS2 games (from memory), it's been kinda mixed...

WA4, Saru Getchu 3, Grandia III, Code Age, and WA-ACF. Those are all quite easy, for the most part. There are a few large terms in WA4, suprisingly, but the furigana helps a ton there. Oh, and yeah, I bothered with ACF. You're right, not so good...but not too bad either. Very easy reading (I had to look up all of, like, 8 words in the first several hours) and the music rules.

On the flipside, the most difficult game I own has to be Drag-on Dragoon 2. I get the general outline of the conversations, but none of the meat, so I feel as if I'm missing a lot. Lots of unfamiliar kanji and words being used that is entirely different from most other games I've played (and Nowe loves to talk in a very low, almost muttering voice). OZ is so-so, but I need a dictionary handy for that one still. I grabbed MGS2 JP version for cheap, and that's kinda tough. Also found Anubis for cheap, and that's much much easier (most of the time)...and much better than the awful US version (though I can see what happened there). Any other games I have probably sit somewhere in the middle.

It's sucks that I have to use the TV tuner in my laptop for some of these, though, as the TV I have here is small and uses composite only. It makes reading really hard on the eyes, should the font chosen be small enough.

I'll have to check into some of that manga as well. I might do that tomorrow even!

Thanks again!!

 

[Bebpo]

Try Famicom and some Super Famicom ones (well not really furigana..just no kanji).

This is worse than kanji though IMO. Without any kanji at all it's hard to break up the sentences and the nouns/verbs from the particals. It takes me 3-4x as long to read a sentence in all hiragana or katakana (damn Katamari king) then in standard Japanese with kanji for the start of verbs and kanji for nouns.