Platform(s) : Super Famicom, PS2, DS, iOS, Android
Minimum level of Japanese skills required?: have basic reading skills, kana, base vocabulary
Difficulty: beginner-intermediate, no furigana, words are sometimes written without kanji or have uncommon kanji, pixel font if you’re playing the SFC or DS version
Length: 40–60 hours
Like Tim Rogers says in his Dragon Quest XI review, Dragon Quest games are both easy and hardcore. Dragon Quest V is both a good game in Japanese to start with, not because it the text is easy but because the writing is extremely pedestrian, full of common expressions, “kansai accents”, and fantasy vocabulary that you will probably encounter more of when you play other games. The premise of the story is also suited to Japanese learners. To start off, you’re a literal child at the beginning of the game, you press A to investigate a bookshelf, and you can’t read most of the letters! They say 文字(letters) but we know they mean kanji.
Most of the characters talk to you in very simple language, and you feel like you’re a child growing up and travelling the world with your dad. You meet some friends and you go on sweet little adventures with them. And then stuff happens, your character grows up, and things get serious.
It’s good to have some basic reading experience before starting something like Dragon Quest. Manga is the next best thing, I recommend anything in Shounen Jump or Shoujo magazines. I’d personally read Yotsuba&, Fruits Basket and Chainsaw Man before and during my time with DQV.
Since this is a long JRPG, you will often feel discouraged at arriving at a town and realizing you have 10 NPCs of dialogue to get through. I’d recommend 30min–1hour play sessions. Talking to NPCs or getting through a story event might fill entire play sessions by themselves!
I also advise taking breaks which probably means you’re going to be playing for at least a month (I’ve been playing the game for about a year). How Long to Beat reports an average of 30 hours to beat the main story, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a Japanese learner took 60 hours. Heck I’ve played the first 20 hours twice, and I’m 45 hours in my second time through and I haven’t even gotten to the final dungeon!
So whenever you’re faced with dialogue that you don’t immediately get, what’s the strategy?
- Set your controller/DS/phone down. You don’t want any accidental button presses advancing the text.
- Scan the sentence with the Google Translate app (there are other apps probably but Google Translate is free), so that the text can be parsed. Make sure the kanji is correct.
- Copy-paste the sentence into yomichan (firefox/chrome extension), jisho (website) or takoboto (android dictionary), and work through the sentence.
- Take a break, look away from the screen, you might just be tired even if it’s just been 5 minutes. Reading in a language you’re learning is hard!
Sentence breakdown is a topic covered by Cure Dolly’s YouTube channel and it’s something you will practice throughout your time with language learning.
Another good exercise is looking up walkthroughs in Japanese. The game8.jp portal is basically a gamepedia style wiki complete with a full walkthrough, shop listings, and boss guides.
Unless you are extremely thorough, careful and screenshot every textbox, you will miss some stuff (since pressing any button advances dialogue) so feel free to look stuff up like plot summaries just to make sure you aren’t lost. I found it tiring to both read and figure out puzzles, so when I felt lost I just looked at guides.
The battle system was a reprieve from all of that. You learn what all of the options are, what spells you have and you just apply your strategy: use your attacks and spells and keep your HP above 1/2 of your health bar. Grinding was like taking a break from reading, roaming around the world map and watching your numbers go up. Sometimes it’s necessary when you’re going for a particular monster to recruit, or you wanna level your party up. I treasured those moments.
That’s all I have for you! Just go play this game!
