Japanese levels~

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#1

Ok I have a couple of questions regarding levels of Japanese used in eroge,
You guys said that they are for ‘adults’ so I’m assuming it uses pretty well any and all Kanji in the Japanese language.

So my question is what level of Japanese will I need to enjoy these games and make sense of them, and would I be able to get through the game using a kanji dictionary or something? I’m patient and willing to learn, I just hate missing out on so many good games.

my Japanese isn’t perfect but i know Hiragana and Katakana as well as some Kanji. I would like to learn more Kanji at the same time as enjoying some eroge.

on THAT note, can any of you recommend any Japanese Eroge that aren’t too Kanji heavy yet deliciously entertaining? I own a lot of English Eroge and I enjoy Everything but Yaoi (No offense to the Yaoi fans) Anything I forgot to add in to help you help me, let me know, so I can help you help me help you help me!

Thanks in advance
:mrgreen:

P.S. You guys/gals on this forum are super nice and helpful, far better switch from the negativity of MMO forums I’m used to :smiley:

#2

There’s probably no need to wait - just buy something and play it :). It’s more enjoyable than conventional methods of study at any rate. However, most eroges do use a lot of kanji (?? is much more common than ??? for example) - far more than the average manga, light novel etc. In a lot of games, furigana aren’t used at all, and even if they are, they only appear on rare kanji or compounds, or are used as a literary device to suggest a secondary meaning for something. I can recognise nearly 2250 kanji at the moment, but I still regularly encounter new ones… I’ve got no idea what the upper limit would be, if indeed there is one at all.

As for an initial recommendation - the Sono Hanabira games are well made, short, 100% yuri :P, and are relatively easy to follow and understand. I’ve only played 1, 3 and 5, but out of those, 3 was my favourite.

#3

Yeah I really don’t mind spending time learning Kanji while playing so if a game is good I’m not too picky, since if the game is good it should have some nice images to look at while I figure out what the hell is being said :lol:

I also started studying Japanese (well one of the reasons) was because their written structure is more complex than English and I do like a good challenge. (I won’t go into other reasons or I would have to pretty well start another topic, hehe) therefore I have no problem studying Kanji and actually have learned to enjoy it, so I could deal with a sea of Kanji but would prefer not to :stuck_out_tongue:

I really appreciate your response, I find it quite helpful for sure and if you can recommend any other titles to me I will more than consider them.
edit: Oh wow only 20$ that’s super cheap
edit#2: ok i’m downloading #3 right now :slight_smile:

#4

It’s cheap, but at the same time it’s rather short.

There are quite a few recommendations threads on this sub-forum that are worth reading, and most of the titles mentioned in them have playable demos available. Oh, and there are two major eroge review sites in English here and here.

#5

Hmm, game installed fine and everything worked but in the Chat box the Japanese characters aren’t showing up, just some katakana comes through and the rest is like “… . . . … . . . .”, but the names of the people display on the top of the chat menu and all the other japanese stuff works fine, but the chat text isn’t displaying right, any ideas?

edit: just saw your 1st reply, Yeah I checked the other suggestion forums but none had a suggestion for Kanji stuff, I just saw one about Hiragana :stuck_out_tongue:
edit again: nope that didn’t fix it

#6

Do you have Japanese fonts installed on your computer? (also see point 4. here)

Unfortunately, there are no kanji-light Japanese eroges - the scale ranges from moderate to very heavy. The SH games probably use the least kanji out of the eroges I’ve played though and the vocabulary needed for them is fairly straightforward.

#7

Yeah I have fonts installed and have been using them for a while, It’s not like they aren’t showing at all, it’s odd because some katakana comes through then 95% of the rest of it is ". . . . . . . . . . . "

I already looked at their FAQ it did nothing :stuck_out_tongue: I’ll try restarting then check back here

edit: sadface

#8

Sorry, if that doesn’t help then I’m out of ideas :oops: - hopefully someone else will have a suggestion. Assuming you’re on Windows, there shouldn’t be any problems with getting the Japanese fonts to work properly though…

Edit: Yes, the window name should be in Japanese.

#9

I’ll try redownloading it I don’t know what else to do :stuck_out_tongue:
edit: Should the window name be in japanese or should the window name be “FzFbfgaFbfv” with all Fs looking real fancy cause i’m thinking my file is corrupt (By window name I mean the thing that on the top of firefox says “OTAKUISM.com Forums”)
also, I’m on vista and they got 9 eroge’s running at once so there’s gotta be something stupid making it not work
edit#2: want me to post screenshots?

#10

The window name is not in japanese, the setup file is all messed up with that
here i’ll post a screenshot, can I just post them on here or no

#11

The window name should be in Japanese.

#12

No i’m agreeing, I’m just saying that -my- Window is not in japanese, nor is it in Boxes, it displays really messed up

re/dling right now to see if that’s what it was

#13

Ah ok - I’m sorry, but I’m not sure that if I can offer any more suggestions aside from re-downloading :(. I’m using XP, and I know almost nothing about Vista so I’m not sure about the installation process for Japanese fonts or how to deal with any compatability problems.

#14

It’s even easier than XP and works on pretty well the same kernel except Vista uses PowerShell
What i don’t get it why some Katakana show and the rest dont
It’s almost re-downloaded so I’ll try again
oh and like every single sentence ends in “B”
i have a theory on why it didn’t work so hopefully this fixes it

#15

No dice yet again, here I’ll show you it in windowed mode
edit: lol this turned from a Recommendations thread to a “help!” thread pretty damn fast

#16

Hm… sorry, but I’ve absolutely no ideas as to why that’s happening :(. I don’t think the problem’s with the download though from seeing that screenshot… hopefully someone else will be able to offer some suggestions as I’m completely at a loss :(.

#17

It’s ok, at least you helped me find some review sites and gave me a nice recommendation, other than the Text issue the game looks pretty good, but I don’t know what the hell my person is saying/thinking cause thats 100% text, so I am quite confused
Edit: Yes, Reinstalled after Redownloading, and still getting the same problem, as well I’ve activated every single other asian keyboard that I didn’t already have turned on and still nothing…
At least this will give me time to finish playing through The Sagara Family(And a couple others :p) :smiley:
Also, i’ve moved this thread to the help section if you care to follow it along and want to watch the mystery unfold :stuck_out_tongue:
I’m running out of ideas lol

#18

Fixed the problem! :stuck_out_tongue:

Check out my post on the Help! section of the forum :stuck_out_tongue: (http://www.otakuism.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5657)

Continue with the recommendations! hahaha

And yeah this is not looking very Kanji heavy compared to some things I’ve seen. Awesome! Thanks for everything so far :smiley:

#19

I envy you. I’ve been wanting to try that game.

#20