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Your best bet would be jRPGs (Japanese Role-playing games).
Titles like Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger/Cross, Xenogears, Grandia etc. for the psx are all great, a might hard (in japanese), but you'll get there!
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Not sure if you have a DS but I was trying out a game called "Last Bullet" (ラストブレット) and I got to practice the shooting part for like three shots, the rest of the time was me pushing the button through all the Japanese text wondering what it said. Not sure if the whole game is like that, but it certainly has a lot of stuff to read at first! play-asia.com has it listed as an Adventure game. There seem to be a lot of Adventure games there, separate even from the RPG category. Either that's a popular category in Japan or else it's a lot of people buying them to learn Japanese from play-asia.com. (and there are um... other ways to get them to try them out)
Edited: 2009-05-30, 11:10 am
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Well Im not just looking for text heavy games, but more something similar to the old PC adventure games, where you could do basic actions like "look at statue" or "use flashlight", and then see the response in game.
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JRPGs aren't the best place to start because they'll have lots of made-up words and fantasy dialogue. Adventure games tend to include more everyday vocabulary. The most obvious recent one is Hotel Dusk on the DS but I'm sure there are others.
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What about Gyakuten Kenji? In English the game will probably be called 'Perfect Prosecutor' and is based on the Edgeworth/Kenji Character in the Phoenix Wright games.
I played a little bit of it today, and while I recognize the kanji I don't understand the conversations. This game would probably have a fair amount of real world vocab and is probably right up your alley as it's also an Adventure game.
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Actually in my "how the hell can I get more japanese input?" challenge I took an interest into DS adventure games a while ago .
Strangely enough while Nintendo is well known for its disney like policy (no sex, restricted violence and so on ) which in our westerner mind would pave the way for adventure games actually there aren't so much of them ..... maybe because in japan adventure game mean visual novel and visual novel mean H-CG (even a 1st rate visual novel like fate stay night has its fair share of it )
Here are my suggestions
-the most obvious choice : 逆転裁判
4 opus and a spin-off 逆転検事 is to be released any time soon .
Lot of text , large array of vocabulary even if it's obviously focused on criminal matter and even if it's not as mind challenging as our good old click & point the cross examination sessions which is the core of the gameplay is all the more interesting it relies on your understanding of the testimonies and proof ...and the penalty system makes sure you don't try to get your neck out of it just through random accusations.
Last but not least it's quite fun...
- the most amusing : レイトン教授シリーズ also known as professor layton
more like a bunch of interesting puzzle wrapped into a dull story . Won't hurt though ....just don't aim for high level proficiency through this kind of game . The game is clearly designed for kids (even if it's enjoyable for adult)
-the most "visual novel" feeling : ひぐらしのなく頃に絆
belong to the ひぐらしのなく頃 series .
2 games up far : 第一巻・祟 and 第二巻・想
it's the epitome of the visual novel style so you'll either love this kind of game or be utterly repelled.... storyline extremely complex, numerous scenaris that you get after completing another scenario .... and almost no interactivity . You'll have a couple of choice in the game and that's it : you'll spend the rest of your time reading pages and pages of text .
But it's definetely the best source to get a s...load of vocabulary .... which is why it's barely a game . The genuine visual novel genre has more in common with novel than with game . You'd better think of it like a light novel with music.....
For what I know it's the only visual novel available on the DS .As for why see my comment on nintendo policy and the eroge issue.
-the most "old school" feeling : hotel dusk
design is nice , gameplay is very close to what we usually expect from an adventure game : which means that game over can came out of nowhere and you'better be extremely careful of what you say .
and that's it for the DS. Don't even think about a point and click game : lucasart has refused to use the ds for meaningless reason and while the Broken Sword series has been adapted for the DS it doesn't seem like it is to be released for the japanese market (same thing goes for gta chinatown unfortunetaly)
Otherwise you have to resort to RPG (FF,DQ, chrono trigger,... )A-RPG(ff crystal,.) and other T-rpg (FFtacticsII,digea) .... they also have their share of text.... but everbody damn know that it's quite unlikely that you ever use even a one hundreth of what you read and you'll spend a lot of time in extremely time consuming battle.... Not efficient.
So once you're done with the small dozen of previously mentionned game
-either you turn to pc visual novel :Type-Moon tsukihime , fate stay night,...
-or you don't expect much from adventure game in your japanese training.... as far as I'm concerned aside from 逆転裁判 I learned more from the original stuff that makes the real value of the DS: cooking soft (damn useful) , kanji dictionnary .... even 押忍 戦え 応援団 has been more useful as it completely rejuvinated my interest for j-music and some of the groups are just great ( asian kung fu generation and yellow monkey are unavoidable..... 175R is nice but hard to find) .You'll learn from j-music through extensive use of goo music and clever use of the latest lyrics soft.....
Edited: 2009-05-31, 10:45 am
