小説とゲーム日本語難易度一覧。白き毒男のため

About the categories

Kanji - The overall frequency and difficulty of kanji.
Difficulty - The overall difficulty of each game's grammar and vocabulary. Often corresponds to to the writing style.
Font Quality - How badly mangled the font is. Higher is better. Older games and games on handhelds are the hardest to make out. Games with fast autoscrolling text are also tough. Games with special features such as script reviewing (mostly electronic books) are good.

ゲーム一覧

Game	System	Kanji	Difficulty	Font Quality
Langrisser 4	PSX	Hard	Hard	Average
Rune Factory	DS	Average	Easy	Poor
DQ Rocket Slime	DS	Easy	Average	Good
Pokemon - Any (Platinum)	Various	No kanji	Easy	Average
Fire Emblem Fuuin no Tsurugi	DS	Average	Hard	Below Average
Ouendan	DS	Hard	Hard	Below Average
Guardian Legend	NES	Very Easy	Easy	Poor
Zelda Phantom Hourglass	DS	Furigana	Average	Above Average
Fire Emblem	NES	No kanji	Hard	Terrible
Advance Wars	GBA	Very Easy	Average	Below Average
Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga	GBA	Easy	Easy	Average
Monster Rancher	DS	Average	Easy	Average
Tokkyuu Tenshi 特急天使	PC	Average	Easy	Below Average
Der Langrisser	SNES	Average	Average	Below Average
Ys 3	SNES	Average	Average	Average
Landstalker	Genesis	Average	Hard	Average
Lethal Applicatioン	PC	Above Average	Above Average	Good
Crescent Pale Mist	PC	Hard	Hard	Below Average
Chantelise	PC	Hard	Average	Good
Seiken Densetsu 3	SNES	Average	Average	Average
Astro Boy	GBA	Furigana	Average	Average
Moon Remix	PSX	Average	Average	Average
Fire Emblem Rekka no Ken	GBA	Average	Hard	Below Average
YS: Oath in Felghana	PC	Hard	Hard	Good
Castlevania: Ecclesia	DS	Above Average	Above Average	Average
Ar Tonelico	PS2	Very Hard	Hard	Very Good
Super Robot Wars Taisen Z	PS2	Very Hard	Very Hard	Very Good
Namco X Capcom	PS2	Hard	Very Hard	Very Good
Persona 4	PS2	Very Hard	Extremely Difficult	Good
Super Drakkhen	SNES	Easy	Average	Good
Romancing Saga 2	SNES	Hard	Easy	Average
Umineko no Naku Koro Ni	PC	Extremely Difficult	Very Hard	Very Good
Utawarerumono	PC	Very Hard	Above Average	Very Good
Final Fantasy Tactics	PSX	Hard	Above Average	Below Average
Ever17	PC	Hard	Above Average	Excellent
Langrisser 5	PSX	Hard	Above Average	Average
Sengoku Rance	PC	Extremely Difficult	Extremely Difficult	Average
Vantage Master Japan	PC	Very Hard	Hard	Good
Growlanser	PSX	Average	Average	Average
Vagrant Story	PSX	Above Average	Above Average	Poor
Ar Tonelico 2	PS2	Hard	Hard	Poor

Game notes

Langrisser 4

This was one of the first games I attempted to play in Japanese and it was definitely the wrong choice. Literally, the first noun in the script is 屋根裏部屋. It is full of medieval speech and military jargon. Many other advanced concepts are present. The game has voice acting, but everyone speaks so fast and in sometimes shakespearean Japanese that you will probably miss most of it. The beginning of the game is very difficult, but the Japanese gets easier as character relations become more prominent in the story, as opposed to having audiences with various kings and generals. Otherwise a fun game, although the speed system that was added sort of ruins it. Play the Saturn version if possible. Worth Playing.

Rune Factory

This game lacks really interesting writing and is thus easy to understand, but the font is unsightly. If you don't know most of the high school level kanji well you won't get far. The game itself is pretty tedious and uninteresting. Not really worth playing.

DQ Rocket Slime

Not much kanji and somewhat simplistic dialogue. A lot of the puns and weird accents will be totally lost on non-natives and this can also be a source of confusion. Don't think too hard about any one thing. I don't recommend this to beginners because it won't be a very educational experience without having worked up an extremely firm foundation in the basics. The game itself is a bit childish but definitely Worth Playing.

Pokemon - Any (Platinum)

Has spaces and no kanji. I find this setup tougher than just straight up Japanese. The dialogue is typical quirky pokemon dialogue. Pokemon Red was fun when you were 11, but these games are now intolerable and unplayable.

Fire Emblem Fuuin no Tsurugi

Plenty of kanji, medieval military jargon, and formal speech. The narrator is for whatever reason even more formal and hard to understand in this one. Many advanced concepts are present. What's most difficult is the sheer amount of dialogue. I could not finish the game. They simply do not ever stop talking. The text contains spaces. If you like the other FE games, it's more of the same.

Ouendan

There isn't a whole lot here. It reads mostly like a manga, so it's not easy. It's made tougher by the fact most of it scrolls too fast for learners to match. This game isn't about the storyline though. A decent game, but can't compare to real rhythm games.

Guardian Legend

A legendary NES game. Like all NES games, the font is unsightly, and the "dialogue" is bare and depressingly lonely. Interestingly contains two kanji, 封 and 印, used for the word 封印. The game doesn't coddle you when giving out the clues for unsealing the 封印, and you're expected to be able to understand bare sentences with no kanji like a native Japanese. If you can't figure out what しつこく means (hint: it's the adverbial conjugation of an adjective), you may not be able to pass the 7th 封印 at all and thus never complete the game. Worth Playing.

Zelda Phantom Hourglass

One of the first games I played. Can't recommend it to beginners though, as it was very confusing at times. Contains some advanced concepts and slang you won't find in a book. The greatest feature of this game is it's furigana touch system. By touching kanji, furigana pops up. It's genius. Worth playing.

Fire Emblem

Like all NES games, uses an unsightly font. It's made worse by the fact that everyone is using rare words without any kanji. You would expect lots of medieval jargon but there isn't a whole lot. The NES era just didn't have any complicated writing. Either way this game is just about unplayable now that it's not 1990 anymore.

Advance Wars

Almost no kanji. The dialogue is at sort of at an intermediate level. This isn't seriously a military game, so there's little military jargon outside of a few nouns for tanks, vehicles, rockets, and so forth. The large amount of (uninteresting) dialogue is its weak point. Maybe worth playing.

Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga

One of the easiest games on this list. Uses spaces. I can't recommend it for beginners because of a few tricky points. Not really worth playing after you've already played it in English.

Monster Rancher

The text is tiny but of good quality. The kanji isn't particularly hard, but if you don't know them well, you won't recognize them with the tiny font, and you definitely won't be able to look them up. The dialogue is really quite basic and bland. I think they ruined the game with the new dice-based 修業院 system, so I'm going to say it's not worth playing.

Tokkyuu Tenshi 特急天使

A decent little game. The main storyline is simple and short. The optional "game magazines" are full of kanji and the advanced words and grammar that you'd expect to find in a magazine, but you don't actually need to read them. The game font is sort of strangely stylized. Worth playing.

Der Langrisser

Another one of the legendary Langrisser games. Of average difficulty all around. The story is not really very interesting though. I'd even call it generic, which may increase it's effective reading difficulty one way or another. See the kanji notes. Maybe worth playing.

Ys 3

I remember playing this game when I was like 7 and thinking that the line about the last boss's "shocking hand" was dumb, and ridiculing the translation. Well, it was actually just a reflection of the dumbness of the original Japanese line. See the kanji notes. Not worth playing in this day and age.

Landstalker

A little light on the kanji, but the writing isn't easy. Contains spaces. This is an isometric puzzle RPG or adventure type game. It's also one of those games where you can wander around for hours while trying to figure out where to go or what to do to advance the story or find the next dungeon. These types of games are annoying enough even in your native language. Worth playing if you have a good grasp of the language, but really all the Japanese in the world isn't going to tell you that there's some random invisible guy you have to talk to behind some random house in the third town to advance the plot.

Lethal Application

This is probably the least professional game on this list. It contains a couple of typos and even a few bugs in the script that keep lines from appearing. The storyline itself isn't exactly prize winning literature. Some lines might be tough to understand. While it uses a lot of difficult kanji, the script writes a lot of words in just plain hiragana sometimes, usually whenever it feels like it. I did a fan translation of this, but you won't level up your Japanese from playing that. Worth playing.

Crescent Pale Mist

Stylized font, tough dialogue, and loads of hard kanji, although not a whole lot of dialogue overall. The game is also terrible. Do not play.

Chantelise

A fun doujin action RPG. Likes to use a lot of kanji for simple words and expressions such as 御馳走様. The dialogue is itself of average difficulty. Worth playing.

Seiken Densetsu 3

Another legendary game, and like a lot of games from that era, the dialogue had evolved past the nonsense of the NES era. One thing You'll start to notice about RPGs from beyond this point is that items and equipment often have difficult names, but one you learn them, they're actually very tough to forget. 兜 for instance. Another thing you'll start to notice is the obsession with using certain words (真空,無月) in special attack names. This is mostly perpetrated by Square. I lost count of how many special moves contain the word 真空. Overall worth playing.

Astro Boy

This game uses furigana in parentheses as part of the main text, which isn't pretty at all. It reads like a manga otherwise. The game itself becomes very puzzling later on, and you're going to have to rely on extremely vague clues embedded in the Japanese to figure out how to advance the plot. While the dialogue isn't hard, you may end up never beating the game. Maybe worth playing.

Moon Remix

This game is about a boy that likes RPGs who finds himself transported through his TV into one. Somewhat of a cult classic in Japan. There is no information in English about this game anywhere. This makes it somewhat more fun to play. Overall of average difficulty, although several characters use strange accents that you probably won't fully understand. Worth playing.

Fire Emblem Rekka no Ken

See Fire Emblem Fuuin no Tsurugi. It is about the same, but starts off with easier, less formal dialogue situations.

YS: Oath in Felghana

A remake of YS 3 in 3D for the PC. PC games tend to have a much higher literacy level than console games. There is no real limit to what kanji can be used, although they don't go too overboard in Felghana. A lot of the villians and noble types in this game will speak using typical nobility jargon and sinister sounding archaic Japanese which is tough, but not even really essential to understanding the plot. Worth playing.

Castlevania: Ecclesia

This game is interesting in that it's designed to be played more than once. You might not understand everything fully the first time through, but if you go the whole nine yards and play through 3 or 4 times, you will learn the vocabulary. Not just "memorize", but "learn", through graduated repetition. I can still recall some of the plot essential words i picked up from playing this game, such as 悲願 and 役目. As for the kanji, there are a significant number of fancy/cool/tough ones, which you can expect from a game like this. The font quality isn't the greatest ever. Worth playing.

Ar Tonelico 1 & 2

Since this is a PS2 game, the first thing ト note is that it has plenty of voice acting, which is good. The font is extremely hard to see unless you have a giant TV or sit too close to a tiny TV.

Tough na Kanji Notes

Ar Tonelico

詩 uta - Read as うた.
唄 uta - Yet another version of うた used in many item and spell names
謳う utau - Kanji for the verb うたう.
嫉妬 SHITTO - The difficult kanji for the word しっと
殆ど hotondo - Rarely used kanji for the extremely basic word ほとんど
只今 tadaima - I don't know why you would use kanji to write ただいま but apparently they needed to
辿り tadori - The rarely used kanji for たどり
淋しい sabishii - Unnecessarily fancy version of 寂しい
庵 AN - Difficult kanji used for 薬庵 YAKUAN
羨ましい urayamashii - Difficult kanji for the word うらやましい
点心爛漫 TENSHINRANMAN　- Possibly a pun of the word 天真爛漫

Names

亜耶乃 Ayano
心の護 kokoro no mamori
三謳神 SAN'OUSHIN
慰霊碑　IREIHI
韋駄天 IDATEN

Der Langrisser

裔 EI - This game loves to throw the word 末裔 around and it's the only tough kanji in it

Lethal Application

洒 SHA - Rare character used in the word 洒落. It's not 酒 sake

Ar Tonelico 2

everything in AT1 +

埒 rachi - This word is all over the dialogue
御子 miko - 御子

YSO Origins

瘴 - "Miasma" used in several words. (part of the SHOU sound group along with other kanji containing "章")
醍醐味 DAIGOMI - The writer loves this word

Final Fantasy Tactics

猊下 GEIKA - First time I've seen this word. Used often in this game
貴公 KIKOU　- A rare pronoun you will end up learning if you play this
獅子 SHISHI - Lion, with the kanji for Lion 獅

YS 3

讐 SHUU - Used in the word 復讐. An intimidating kanji until you notice that it's used quite often. 復讐 is a rather important concept in the YS series, and this is easily the most difficult kanji in

the game.

Vagrant Story

危険請負人 - "Riskbreaker"

Indispensable non-general use kanji for gaming

闇

音読み: アン
訓読み: やみ
意味: Darkness
記憶術: Common enough that you don't really need any special mnemonic to remember it by. You will end up rote memorizing it easily.

Comments: If you were to separate all video games into stacks of those with and without 闇, the withs would dwarf the withouts. It is basically guaranteed that video game plots contain some type of darkness or evil causing the main conflict. The ministry of education may be making this a jouyou kanji sometime in 2009.

呟

音読み: ゲン (Part of the GEN sound group along with other kanji containing 玄)
訓読み: つぶや.く
意味: mutter, grumble, murmur
記憶術: Somewhat difficult to remember because there are a number of kanji that contain "玄". I learned 玄 as a sort of "twisting rope" or device, but its meaning is "mysteriousness". So you have mouth 口 + twisting, or mouth + mysteriousness. This is decent ammo for a mnemonic meaning "mutter". What you really need to remember is the kun reading of つぶやく, because this is almost all this kanji is used for.

Comments: If you read Japanese books or play visual novels, this is one of the top 10 non-general use kanji you are going to need. Outside of things with some kind of narration, I don't think I've ever seen it.

囁

音読み: ショウ (practically unused reading)
訓読み: ささや.く
意味: whisper, murmur
記憶術: How many kanji can you think of that contain three 耳? The mouth radical is thrown in for good measure 口. Unforgettable kanji, but the important part, the kun reading ささやく, is just as hard as any kun reading to learn.

Comments: In the same class as 呟. If you read Japanese books or play visual novels, this is one of the top 10 non-general use kanji you are going to need. Outside of things with some kind of narration, I don't think I've ever seen it.

俺

音読み: エン (practically unused reading)
訓読み: おれ
意味: (masc) I; me (rough or arrogant-sounding first-person pronoun, formerly also used by women); (P)
記憶術: Extremely common, no real need for a mnemonic.

Comments: Many games use the word おれ, but not all of them actually use the kanji. Some opt to use katakana.It's a must-know kanji either way.

蘇・甦

音読み: ソ
訓読み: よみがえ.る
意味: Resurrection
記憶術: The first variant is made up of a confusing and unhelpful bunch of parts. It also has that typical look of a kanji that one is likely to forget. It's a bit more common than the second variant. The second variant has a somewhat fancy and unique appearance and is easier to remember. For a kanji meaning resurrection, you might be able to see a bare boned skeleton rising from a coffin in　甦. There is no sound group to help remember the ON reading of ソ, which is used occasionally in words like 甦生.

I noticed something that may be extremely helpful in remembering the kun reading よみがえる, and is probably where the word originates. If you look at the word yomigaeru, you might be able to separate it into two words, the noun "yomi" meaning the underworld, and "gaeru" or "kaeru", meaning return.　Yomigaeru. To return from the land of the dead. Resurrection.

Comments: About half of the time in games, yomigaeru will be written in hiragana. There is less chance of hiragana being used the younger the game or the higher its general literacy level is.

斬

音読み: ザン (part of ZAN sound group along with 暫)
訓読み: き.る
意味: Beheading; to kill (a human) using a blade; in games and manga "slash"
記憶術: Composed of the carriage/car radical 車 and the axe radical. No good mnemonic comes to mind. Its kun reading of きる is the same as 切る and has virtually the same meaning and usage.

Comments: While it has various meanings such as beheading and killing, in video games it's almost always used as a fancy version of "to cut; to slash", and is basically interchangeable with 切. Grandiose special attacks and such use 斬 instead of of the very basic kanji 切.

呪

音読み: ジュ
訓読み: のろ.う
意味: Curse, Spell
記憶術: Composed of the mouth radical 口 and the "big brother" or "demon" 兄. The demon will probably be more helpful as a mnemonic device here.

Comments: Often seen in medieval settings.

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