I laughed out loud at the 11 hours and tutorial bit. That’s how it goes for sure. Good luck with the game — this is one of the best ways to remember things.
I had a lot of fun reading that in 2020. I started it July 10th and finished it on the 19th. I was that pulled into the story. Very rare for me because I don't really get interested in visual novel type games but all the Sci-fi tropes and everything really came together well. I probably would have learned a lot more if I actually did mine it but I just didn't have the level of motivation I do now.
It's actually not that bad, since those words get spammed you end up learning them I guess. The one downside is that you're learning words you probably won't see often in other types of media.
Use Google Lens on your phone and snap pictures for console games. It is so goddamn good I vastly prefer playing games on console to any method I've found on PC. You can snap a pic of a sentence and highlight the text you want it to read out loud, translate, or copy/paste with your fingers. This way you can have it read kanji that you dont know or copy and feed it to a mining app or just straight up translate it in app. If you want you can also just have it read or translate everything on screen, which I do sometimes, but most of the time I try to grab the parts I don't know so I can try to put the meaning together from there. The highlighting feature is truly a godsend and it beats anything else I've seen both in terms of accuracy and built-in features.
I have tried a couple OCRs and different learning methods on PC but they all make me want to just snap pics with my phone on my PC. Unfortunately for me, it feels awkward and silly to go from keyboard/mouse to picking up your phone in a way that just feels more clunky and slower than controller to phone so I just go for console any time I have the option.
So if you have a capture card and a laptop, you can get the feed straight to GameSentenceMiner and do instant lookups and of course mining. But it doesn't work directly on PS5
While a totally fair tool, I think there's something to be said for the "inefficient" method here. If you transcribe everything yourself, you have to live with the word a bit longer. You have to actually put effort into putting that word into your database, rather than a computer doing it for you, and that means you've already gone some of your way towards learning it. Or to put it another way, I don't think it's as inefficient as it may feel.
The way this is stated, it makes it seem like GSM is automating the process. You are still looking up words & making cards. You aren't going thru the task of scrolling thru a real dictionary & doing that tho. The former is faster, and putting more time into engaging w/ the medium too. Microwave vs Stove. type shit.
That's fair! I personally enjoyed the way I did it because (1) I've never been very concerned with speed, and (2) I appreciated building up the skill of using a dictionary. But I can also appreciate that #2 might just be less of an important skill nowadays, and that some people are concerned with speed.
Microwave vs Stove. type shit.
Haha is it though? I feel like your argument is more that GSM isn't simply a "microwave" solution, and I'm on board with that idea.
My argument is that it's an effective tool for playing games & making cards esp within a given time frame w/ the same end result. You put word onto card. I recommend trying it!
FWIW I think both methods work, but my argument for GSM (my tool) is that there are SO MANY DAMN GAMES that I want to play in Japanese, that I can't be caught spending more than a few seconds per word that I want to learn/sentence that I want to mine.
I disagree. Transcribing something isn't as useful as consuming content. Actively interrupting your session to transcribe words is tedious and interrupts the flow of getting absorbed in the content and drastically slows it down. The negatives vastly outweigh any positives. There's a reason we have technology
If I had a point to disagree with is that it's less about learning efficiency and about the more important factor: friction. As in friction actively discourages people from even participating in the consumption of native media at all. The more friction there is the less people there are who even survive long enough to make it anywhere. Too often the discussion is about what way of learning is better when it should be about, what's the best way to let people survive long enough to make it anywhere. Pretty much 95% (it's way higher than this) of people are quitting before even making it to the point where they can do things and chill with the language. People are dead and have moved on long before they reach even 1000 hours.
friction actively discourages people from even participating in the consumption of native media at all.
Yeah that's definitely the case. For whatever reason, I never actually minded looking stuff up and didn't really experience it as friction, so I think I do sometimes forget how much it can be--but the more I think about it and read and have these types of discussions, the more I see that many people do, and that's a totally fair position and real experience worth working towards avoiding.
it should be about, what's the best way to let people survive long enough to make it anywhere.
Agreed too, it would be good to frame more of these discussions in those terms. Thanks!
"Transcribing something isn't as useful as consuming content"
It is not so much that it is not as useful as it is that they just don't reach the same objective.
That's why it is generally recommended to have both a study/sentence mining time, for which transcribing would be better, and a longer pure immersion time
I'm just not a fan of having to transcribe, it's also less accurate. I'd rather just enjoy the content and make the card quickly. A bit crazy to get down voted for it.
"I'd rather just enjoy the content and make the card quickly"
Sure that's one way to do it, I personally don't even sentence mine that much anymore
"A bit crazy to get down voted for it"
You got downvoted because you used wrong arguments to defend your personal preference. If anything, I find that pretty healthy compared to most of the downvotes I usually see on Reddit
Well I don't think I said anything wrong. It's my personal opinion that it's more efficient to do more uninterrupted immersion than immersion interrupted by transcribing. It's called an opinion.
I stand corrected, it isn't so much that you said something "wrong" (most of it was subjective), but that you stated it in a way that invalidated other people's opinions
"It's my personal opinion that it's more efficient to do more uninterrupted immersion than immersion interrupted by transcribing."
This is funnily not an opinion, efficiency being something objective. It is a belief
Ah must feel good to play gotcha on the opinion vs belief thing. Ah reddit such a great place...well at least you couldn't say what wrong arguments I made.
As some other user said, and... based on my own experience, sometimes the super efficient tools can be counterproductive.
I've recently started reading, mining, etc, couple of weeks or so. Something I've noticed in the last couple of days is how I "got used" to my tools. Kanji pairing I don't really immediately recognize? I look it up by holding shift and reading it's meaning, kanji pairing I kind of recognize? Depending on my energy I might not try too much because it's too easy to look it up. A relatively complex sentence I might understand if I try for a bit? I just press a button and it's in English (VN feature).
While convenient, sometimes that convenience can make you build bad habits. What I'm commenting is obviously a personal thing, but I think it's similar to having furigana, you know you shouldn't be reading them but your brain automatically does the easier thing which is kind of looking at them when you don't immediately recognize a kanji.
I don't disagree with you but just wanted to point that out, having way too convenient tools can make it so you learn less than you could. Just don't wanna hit either extreme.
I’ve been playing all the Zelda games, currently on ocarina of time, it was super difficult for me at first but has become progressively easier as time went on.
Ocarina of time was a challenge for me because the kanji is so blurry on the N64, sometimes I literally cannot make out the strokes. I got a 3DS just to play the remake with clearer dialogue boxes :’)
I wonder if japanese people think anything of the clearer text on remasters or if it's just whatever when you're fluent. Remasters of games like FFVI and Chrono Trigger are a godsend as a learner because the clear HD kanji are a million times easier to read.
I’ve actually done some research on this subject before while I was in university for Linguistics. Native Japanese people have no issue deciphering the kanji. Even if you can’t make out any individual strokes, the shape of the kanji “block” (strictly looking at the edge outline of the entire kanji) paired with context of what’s written before it, leads them to be able to read it with ease. The mind is very impressive on how it can adapt!
I first played FFT when I was in my second year of junior high school. Even as a Japanese person, it was difficult to understand because it uses a lot of Japanese words and expressions that aren’t used in everyday life. It wasn’t until I became a university student—and later an adult—that I was finally able to fully grasp the story and dialogue.
For learners of Japanese, playing the game in Japanese can be quite challenging, but it’s a masterpiece, and I strongly recommend giving it a try.
You know, I want to say thank you because I hadn't even thought of that. But I just found Tactics entire script in Japanese. So, yeah that saves me a ton of time now. Many thanks.
If you use an extension like yomitan it can give really good explanations of words. Hover over text and press shift. Some people like to build decks in Anki using this way but I just reference the word when I see it again. Reading is its own source of spaced repetition
You can and should use GameSentenceMiner or Yomininja, GSM is better imo even if you aren't mining. You can use Meikop if you want something very simple and easier to use, I would recommend if you find GSM too much.
You can hoover the word in the game itself or just use the option where the text is extracted to a webpage, it is easier because you can also look up things on the game and not just the scripted text.
On another note what level are a you? Just at the beginning or you have some experience?
Well, I'm sure you'll enjoy the game. Just bear in mind that compared to other levels, N1 is focused more on semi-formal and formal language that usually appears in newspapers. For example, there were words like 当面, which will most definitely not appear in this game. Nonetheless, I'm sure your reading comprehension will improve and that you will learn some useful words, just don't be shocked when instead of verbs like 鍛えた and 消えゆく you will encounter verbs like 交付する which you encounter only in semi-formal settings.
I'm curious, why wouldn't you expect a word like 当面 in a game like this? Because it has a reputation as one of the more stiff and wordy Final Fantasy games (though that may just be that the english localization punched it up)
Is it just the kind of word that you don't ever see in fiction unless it's in a fictional newspaper or news report or something like that? (I'm not familiar with it)
I'm sure you're aware of formality in Japanese, so you can think of this in similar terms ... I wouldn't expect the word 当面 to appear in informal settings in the same way that I would not expect verbs like 応じかねます to appear in everyday casual conversation. Of course, it's not entirely impossible, but one should be aware of these limitations if they genuinely aim to pass the JLPT N1 exam, otherwise why not write "I'm looking forward to this game to learn some badass vocab, etc." instead? On the other hand, I get why people are (often unnecessarily) excited about the prospects of passing N1, so I can't really blame them.
Turns out humans are very bad at judging what kind of words show up in what kind of media/material. The vast majority (like 80%+ probably) of my Japanese learning is based on purely videogame media consumption, especially JRPGs. Including Final Fantasy. I've been in many formal situations in real life where I only knew the vocab and expressions used because of all those videogames I played. I'm talking about stuff like discussion with banks, lawyers, meetings with labour board, court hearings, etc. I'm not kidding when I say it's often I find a word I hear in formal speech and go "ah, I learned that from <videogame>".
当面 to me feels like a completely normal and common word, something that I wouldn't be surprised at all to find in most JRPGs.
I looked on jpdb and they unfortunately don’t have Final Fantasy Tactics, but they do have Final Fantasy 7 remake. Would you expect 当面 to appear there? …Because it does
FF has mega tons of situations that use highly formal registers. Classism and social hierarchy are a strong themes. Like pretty much all native media, games feature a rich stratification of both formality and politeness that scales up and down per situation for every character and interaction.
You can very much pass N1 without studying and just reading shitloads VNs and fantasy novels.
There's even a setting in FFT (Bar rumors and job requests) which are frequently formatted like newspaper articles and announcements. I'd expect 当面 to be there.
That said, while I agree you can certainly pass N1 by just reading native material, if your specific goal is to get the N1 certification, studying N1 study material is going to be far more efficient. It is a test after all, so it's always best to study exactly what will be covered.
No this isn't the kind of post that falls under that. They were just offering advice to help with some assumptions about you at worst. Why do you believe this even remotely falls under those things you listed? It's not that.
They don't know who you are. They don't know you've lived in Japan for decades, Taken 漢検２級 and have 30k anki cards. All they know is you said I'm on my way to journey to N1.. from what point? N3? N5? A lot of people say that stuff--at worst they made some long reaching assumptions.
I actually started playing it tonight, although not with the JP text. Perhaps I should switch it, after all I already played a Fire Emblem game in JP. I just kinda suck at listening sometimes so I might get lost during cutscenes
I recently started re-playing FF9 actually, and it's my first time playing a Final Fantasy game entirely in Japanese. The Moguri mod also adds a dual-language mode, which is handy - gives a key press for switching between two languages. I know the game's story well enough to not need it for dialogue, but it's helpful for those "huh, that's different from the English localisation" moments, and for checking on ability names and such.
I'm looking forward to replaying FF8 in Japanese soon... I wish it was reasonably possible to do the same with FF7! Final Fantasy Tactics is a game that I missed but I'm looking forward to playing it at some point, be that in Japanese or English.
This was a tough one for sure. A LOT of the vocab is highly specialized and uncommon in standard Japanese. You'll be seeing a ton of military and political jargon that you might never use, especially towards the end when dialogue basically devolves into two characters slinging political/moral rhetoric at each other.
That said, the grammar exposure will help a lot. I would say it's a pretty even split between plain Japanese and more antiquated or classical. You'll get used to it, but it can be dense.
I was keeping a list of all the terms and names since I know I would be typing them out frequently but downloading the script really helped making the easier.
If you're on PC my approach was using Windows key+Shift+S for the screen grabber, then pasting my clipboard into lens.google.com for its text recognition. Saves time having to find kanji in new words or copying into SRS.
How do you play them? Are they on Steam or something? I’ve never had the opportunity to play these games as a kid, might as well do it now while I’m also studying Japanese!
The OP's photo is specifically for the newest remaster, which is on Steam. It adds better graphics, a bunch of QoL features, additional combat conversations, new difficulty options (easier and harder options), rebalancing and (IMO the biggest addition) voice acting. It doesn't have the additional content from WotL, but the voice acting more than makes up for it.
I wish I played, but I'm awful at video games. When I was younger, I used to play platform stuff on Game Boy until Pokémon Crystal... I tried Tomb Raider on PS1 but never left level 0 😂 I was that bad. The only thing I managed was Spyro 😂
How's the language? I'm a bit worried about playing this (when I reach N3) because the language might be a bit archaic. Same worry I have with anime with medieval settings
I’ve been exposing myself to a lot of medieval setting related media for the past few months now so there is a lot of overlap. I sorta get the jist of things but long political things like my example go over my head for the most part and have to look things up.
I bought a copy of ff12 revenant wings and didn't realize it was in japanese, lol. Happy accident as I have japanese n64 games already. The worst part is trying to read some of the characters on the small 3ds screen cause of the pixelation.
Game Gengo has a link to the Japanese script. Using that in conjunction with Yomitan would make the process of vocabulary mining significantly easier. OCR is another potential route, but access to a script is an easier approach, in my opinion.
Consuming content in this way avoids the risk of burning out quickly. You can always take another pass at the game upon completion and write out every word and definition by hand if you like. The key point is to keep at the process however you can.
I think FFT has the best Final Fantasy story of the series.
Edit: Never mind, it seems you are already taking this approach. Enjoy!
I was fully prepared to transcribe it as it came but now that I found the script and basically all the text in the game it seems. I'm actually quite relieved because now I can review the words and dialogue before I even encounter it in the game.
I’ve… Actually done that many years ago on the PS3. The dialogue is in English at least the voices are. And I used a Japanese 攻略 site to help me along. Honestly the game itself is harder.
I was a huge JRPG fan growing up. It’s going to be fun playing them again one day but in Japanese.
Currently mining 13 sentinels as N4. It's been 11 hours and i am still at the tutorial, but it has been an awesome learning and fun experience.
I laughed out loud at the 11 hours and tutorial bit. That’s how it goes for sure. Good luck with the game — this is one of the best ways to remember things.
I had a lot of fun reading that in 2020. I started it July 10th and finished it on the 19th. I was that pulled into the story. Very rare for me because I don't really get interested in visual novel type games but all the Sci-fi tropes and everything really came together well. I probably would have learned a lot more if I actually did mine it but I just didn't have the level of motivation I do now.
Have fun it's definitely a great story.
That’s going to be really tough, with all the sci-fi terminology…
It's actually not that bad, since those words get spammed you end up learning them I guess. The one downside is that you're learning words you probably won't see often in other types of media.
People who make the most progress usually aren't turned off by a challenge.
The game has an in game glossary, and records past story events for easy viewing. It's quite helpful and I used it a lot when I played.
Good luck! Honest any Final Fantasy game is a treat to play in Japanese. Do you use any OCR’s to mine? Or just do things the old fashioned way?
I just have my laptop here on the coffee table and typing things as they come.
With GameSentenceMiner you can do the card in 1s and even get the audio, perhaps something to consider.
Does it only support pc games?
You can use a capture card and have the feed show on your PC. I know several people that do this
Does this work for PS5 games or is this PC only?
Use Google Lens on your phone and snap pictures for console games. It is so goddamn good I vastly prefer playing games on console to any method I've found on PC. You can snap a pic of a sentence and highlight the text you want it to read out loud, translate, or copy/paste with your fingers. This way you can have it read kanji that you dont know or copy and feed it to a mining app or just straight up translate it in app. If you want you can also just have it read or translate everything on screen, which I do sometimes, but most of the time I try to grab the parts I don't know so I can try to put the meaning together from there. The highlighting feature is truly a godsend and it beats anything else I've seen both in terms of accuracy and built-in features.
I have tried a couple OCRs and different learning methods on PC but they all make me want to just snap pics with my phone on my PC. Unfortunately for me, it feels awkward and silly to go from keyboard/mouse to picking up your phone in a way that just feels more clunky and slower than controller to phone so I just go for console any time I have the option.
So if you have a capture card and a laptop, you can get the feed straight to GameSentenceMiner and do instant lookups and of course mining. But it doesn't work directly on PS5
No I don't have that. But I just found a website with the ENTIRE game script in Japanese. So, that saves me time there.
Could maybe use ps remote play to stream it to your pc.
This is the play if you don't have a capture card, just point game sentence miner to the remote play window.
Definitely use GameSentenceMiner if you don't want to be inefficient
While a totally fair tool, I think there's something to be said for the "inefficient" method here. If you transcribe everything yourself, you have to live with the word a bit longer. You have to actually put effort into putting that word into your database, rather than a computer doing it for you, and that means you've already gone some of your way towards learning it. Or to put it another way, I don't think it's as inefficient as it may feel.
The way this is stated, it makes it seem like GSM is automating the process. You are still looking up words & making cards. You aren't going thru the task of scrolling thru a real dictionary & doing that tho. The former is faster, and putting more time into engaging w/ the medium too. Microwave vs Stove. type shit.
That's fair! I personally enjoyed the way I did it because (1) I've never been very concerned with speed, and (2) I appreciated building up the skill of using a dictionary. But I can also appreciate that #2 might just be less of an important skill nowadays, and that some people are concerned with speed.
Haha is it though? I feel like your argument is more that GSM isn't simply a "microwave" solution, and I'm on board with that idea.
My argument is that it's an effective tool for playing games & making cards esp within a given time frame w/ the same end result. You put word onto card. I recommend trying it!
I might look into it if I ever did things like make cards anymore! I can totally see the utility, and thanks for the explanation.
ストーブを使うと食べ物がおいしく調理できます。
FWIW I think both methods work, but my argument for GSM (my tool) is that there are SO MANY DAMN GAMES that I want to play in Japanese, that I can't be caught spending more than a few seconds per word that I want to learn/sentence that I want to mine.
Makes total sense, sounds like a good way!
I disagree. Transcribing something isn't as useful as consuming content. Actively interrupting your session to transcribe words is tedious and interrupts the flow of getting absorbed in the content and drastically slows it down. The negatives vastly outweigh any positives. There's a reason we have technology
I disagree too, but I suppose there we are.
If I had a point to disagree with is that it's less about learning efficiency and about the more important factor: friction. As in friction actively discourages people from even participating in the consumption of native media at all. The more friction there is the less people there are who even survive long enough to make it anywhere. Too often the discussion is about what way of learning is better when it should be about, what's the best way to let people survive long enough to make it anywhere. Pretty much 95% (it's way higher than this) of people are quitting before even making it to the point where they can do things and chill with the language. People are dead and have moved on long before they reach even 1000 hours.
Yeah that's definitely the case. For whatever reason, I never actually minded looking stuff up and didn't really experience it as friction, so I think I do sometimes forget how much it can be--but the more I think about it and read and have these types of discussions, the more I see that many people do, and that's a totally fair position and real experience worth working towards avoiding.
Agreed too, it would be good to frame more of these discussions in those terms. Thanks!
"Transcribing something isn't as useful as consuming content"
It is not so much that it is not as useful as it is that they just don't reach the same objective.
That's why it is generally recommended to have both a study/sentence mining time, for which transcribing would be better, and a longer pure immersion time
I'm just not a fan of having to transcribe, it's also less accurate. I'd rather just enjoy the content and make the card quickly. A bit crazy to get down voted for it.
"I'd rather just enjoy the content and make the card quickly"
Sure that's one way to do it, I personally don't even sentence mine that much anymore
"A bit crazy to get down voted for it"
You got downvoted because you used wrong arguments to defend your personal preference. If anything, I find that pretty healthy compared to most of the downvotes I usually see on Reddit
Well I don't think I said anything wrong. It's my personal opinion that it's more efficient to do more uninterrupted immersion than immersion interrupted by transcribing. It's called an opinion.
I stand corrected, it isn't so much that you said something "wrong" (most of it was subjective), but that you stated it in a way that invalidated other people's opinions
"It's my personal opinion that it's more efficient to do more uninterrupted immersion than immersion interrupted by transcribing."
This is funnily not an opinion, efficiency being something objective. It is a belief
Ah must feel good to play gotcha on the opinion vs belief thing. Ah reddit such a great place...well at least you couldn't say what wrong arguments I made.
Stating opinions as fact, especially ones that are of personal style/taste, will lead to downvotes.
As some other user said, and... based on my own experience, sometimes the super efficient tools can be counterproductive.
I've recently started reading, mining, etc, couple of weeks or so. Something I've noticed in the last couple of days is how I "got used" to my tools. Kanji pairing I don't really immediately recognize? I look it up by holding shift and reading it's meaning, kanji pairing I kind of recognize? Depending on my energy I might not try too much because it's too easy to look it up. A relatively complex sentence I might understand if I try for a bit? I just press a button and it's in English (VN feature).
While convenient, sometimes that convenience can make you build bad habits. What I'm commenting is obviously a personal thing, but I think it's similar to having furigana, you know you shouldn't be reading them but your brain automatically does the easier thing which is kind of looking at them when you don't immediately recognize a kanji.
I don't disagree with you but just wanted to point that out, having way too convenient tools can make it so you learn less than you could. Just don't wanna hit either extreme.
I forgotten how to #cook from years of using the airfryer, #owarida
My brother, throwing something into some electricity using device, waiting and then taking it out to eat is all the cooking I know!
I’ve been playing all the Zelda games, currently on ocarina of time, it was super difficult for me at first but has become progressively easier as time went on.
Ocarina of time was a challenge for me because the kanji is so blurry on the N64, sometimes I literally cannot make out the strokes. I got a 3DS just to play the remake with clearer dialogue boxes :’)
Yeah! I’m playing the 3ds version as well. Some of the language used is a bit obscure but still manageable.
I wonder if japanese people think anything of the clearer text on remasters or if it's just whatever when you're fluent. Remasters of games like FFVI and Chrono Trigger are a godsend as a learner because the clear HD kanji are a million times easier to read.
I’ve actually done some research on this subject before while I was in university for Linguistics. Native Japanese people have no issue deciphering the kanji. Even if you can’t make out any individual strokes, the shape of the kanji “block” (strictly looking at the edge outline of the entire kanji) paired with context of what’s written before it, leads them to be able to read it with ease. The mind is very impressive on how it can adapt!
I first played FFT when I was in my second year of junior high school. Even as a Japanese person, it was difficult to understand because it uses a lot of Japanese words and expressions that aren’t used in everyday life. It wasn’t until I became a university student—and later an adult—that I was finally able to fully grasp the story and dialogue.
For learners of Japanese, playing the game in Japanese can be quite challenging, but it’s a masterpiece, and I strongly recommend giving it a try.
I’m currently on playing ff7 in Japanese. I have a browser open with the games script and use a plugin to quickly look up words I don’t understand.
You know, I want to say thank you because I hadn't even thought of that. But I just found Tactics entire script in Japanese. So, yeah that saves me a ton of time now. Many thanks.
If you use an extension like yomitan it can give really good explanations of words. Hover over text and press shift. Some people like to build decks in Anki using this way but I just reference the word when I see it again. Reading is its own source of spaced repetition
Edit: here’s a data base of video game scripts https://game-gengo.com/en-au/pages/scripts
This is the article that originally gave me the idea https://blog.nihongo-app.com/using-videogames-to-study-japanese/
You can and should use GameSentenceMiner or Yomininja, GSM is better imo even if you aren't mining. You can use Meikop if you want something very simple and easier to use, I would recommend if you find GSM too much.
You can hoover the word in the game itself or just use the option where the text is extracted to a webpage, it is easier because you can also look up things on the game and not just the scripted text.
On another note what level are a you? Just at the beginning or you have some experience?
Well, I'm sure you'll enjoy the game. Just bear in mind that compared to other levels, N1 is focused more on semi-formal and formal language that usually appears in newspapers. For example, there were words like 当面, which will most definitely not appear in this game. Nonetheless, I'm sure your reading comprehension will improve and that you will learn some useful words, just don't be shocked when instead of verbs like 鍛えた and 消えゆく you will encounter verbs like 交付する which you encounter only in semi-formal settings.
I'm curious, why wouldn't you expect a word like 当面 in a game like this? Because it has a reputation as one of the more stiff and wordy Final Fantasy games (though that may just be that the english localization punched it up)
Is it just the kind of word that you don't ever see in fiction unless it's in a fictional newspaper or news report or something like that? (I'm not familiar with it)
I'm sure you're aware of formality in Japanese, so you can think of this in similar terms ... I wouldn't expect the word 当面 to appear in informal settings in the same way that I would not expect verbs like 応じかねます to appear in everyday casual conversation. Of course, it's not entirely impossible, but one should be aware of these limitations if they genuinely aim to pass the JLPT N1 exam, otherwise why not write "I'm looking forward to this game to learn some badass vocab, etc." instead? On the other hand, I get why people are (often unnecessarily) excited about the prospects of passing N1, so I can't really blame them.
https://trailsinthedatabase.com/game-scripts?p=1&q=%E5%BD%93%E9%9D%A2
Turns out humans are very bad at judging what kind of words show up in what kind of media/material. The vast majority (like 80%+ probably) of my Japanese learning is based on purely videogame media consumption, especially JRPGs. Including Final Fantasy. I've been in many formal situations in real life where I only knew the vocab and expressions used because of all those videogames I played. I'm talking about stuff like discussion with banks, lawyers, meetings with labour board, court hearings, etc. I'm not kidding when I say it's often I find a word I hear in formal speech and go "ah, I learned that from <videogame>".
当面 to me feels like a completely normal and common word, something that I wouldn't be surprised at all to find in most JRPGs.
I looked on jpdb and they unfortunately don’t have Final Fantasy Tactics, but they do have Final Fantasy 7 remake. Would you expect 当面 to appear there? …Because it does
FF has mega tons of situations that use highly formal registers. Classism and social hierarchy are a strong themes. Like pretty much all native media, games feature a rich stratification of both formality and politeness that scales up and down per situation for every character and interaction.
You can very much pass N1 without studying and just reading shitloads VNs and fantasy novels.
There's even a setting in FFT (Bar rumors and job requests) which are frequently formatted like newspaper articles and announcements. I'd expect 当面 to be there.
That said, while I agree you can certainly pass N1 by just reading native material, if your specific goal is to get the N1 certification, studying N1 study material is going to be far more efficient. It is a test after all, so it's always best to study exactly what will be covered.
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No this isn't the kind of post that falls under that. They were just offering advice to help with some assumptions about you at worst. Why do you believe this even remotely falls under those things you listed? It's not that.
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They don't know who you are. They don't know you've lived in Japan for decades, Taken 漢検２級 and have 30k anki cards. All they know is you said I'm on my way to journey to N1.. from what point? N3? N5? A lot of people say that stuff--at worst they made some long reaching assumptions.
I actually started playing it tonight, although not with the JP text. Perhaps I should switch it, after all I already played a Fire Emblem game in JP. I just kinda suck at listening sometimes so I might get lost during cutscenes
I recently started re-playing FF9 actually, and it's my first time playing a Final Fantasy game entirely in Japanese. The Moguri mod also adds a dual-language mode, which is handy - gives a key press for switching between two languages. I know the game's story well enough to not need it for dialogue, but it's helpful for those "huh, that's different from the English localisation" moments, and for checking on ability names and such.
I'm looking forward to replaying FF8 in Japanese soon... I wish it was reasonably possible to do the same with FF7! Final Fantasy Tactics is a game that I missed but I'm looking forward to playing it at some point, be that in Japanese or English.
In any case, enjoy!
This was a tough one for sure. A LOT of the vocab is highly specialized and uncommon in standard Japanese. You'll be seeing a ton of military and political jargon that you might never use, especially towards the end when dialogue basically devolves into two characters slinging political/moral rhetoric at each other.
That said, the grammar exposure will help a lot. I would say it's a pretty even split between plain Japanese and more antiquated or classical. You'll get used to it, but it can be dense.
I was keeping a list of all the terms and names since I know I would be typing them out frequently but downloading the script really helped making the easier.
If you're on PC my approach was using Windows key+Shift+S for the screen grabber, then pasting my clipboard into lens.google.com for its text recognition. Saves time having to find kanji in new words or copying into SRS.
Any recommendations for N5 and N4 levels please??
How do you play them? Are they on Steam or something? I’ve never had the opportunity to play these games as a kid, might as well do it now while I’m also studying Japanese!
Yes, a lot of classic FF games are on Steam.
The OP's photo is specifically for the newest remaster, which is on Steam. It adds better graphics, a bunch of QoL features, additional combat conversations, new difficulty options (easier and harder options), rebalancing and (IMO the biggest addition) voice acting. It doesn't have the additional content from WotL, but the voice acting more than makes up for it.
I've learned a lot playing the tactics advance on my GBA, think about getting this one for PSP
I wish I played, but I'm awful at video games. When I was younger, I used to play platform stuff on Game Boy until Pokémon Crystal... I tried Tomb Raider on PS1 but never left level 0 😂 I was that bad. The only thing I managed was Spyro 😂
How's the language? I'm a bit worried about playing this (when I reach N3) because the language might be a bit archaic. Same worry I have with anime with medieval settings
I’ve been exposing myself to a lot of medieval setting related media for the past few months now so there is a lot of overlap. I sorta get the jist of things but long political things like my example go over my head for the most part and have to look things up.
北天騎士団騎士（男）
「士官候補生の諸君、任務である！
「諸君らも知っているとは思うが、昨今、このガリオンヌの地には野蛮極まりない輩どもが急増している。
「中でも骸旅団（むくろりょだん）は王家に仇なす不忠の者ども。見過ごすことのできぬ盗賊どもだ。
「我々北天騎士団は、君命により骸旅団せん滅作戦を開始する。この作戦は大規模な作戦である。
「北天騎士団に限らず、イグーロス城に駐留するラーグ閣下の近衛騎士団など多くの騎士団が参加する作戦だ。
「諸君らの任務は後方支援である。具体的には、手薄となるイグーロスへ赴き、警備の任についてもらいたい。
Damn nice. Im planning to play the steins;gate vn in japanese with an extractor tool and yomitan. Does anyone know what level it is around?
what do you use to mine?
I bought a copy of ff12 revenant wings and didn't realize it was in japanese, lol. Happy accident as I have japanese n64 games already. The worst part is trying to read some of the characters on the small 3ds screen cause of the pixelation.
Correct.
Game Gengo has a link to the Japanese script. Using that in conjunction with Yomitan would make the process of vocabulary mining significantly easier. OCR is another potential route, but access to a script is an easier approach, in my opinion.
Consuming content in this way avoids the risk of burning out quickly. You can always take another pass at the game upon completion and write out every word and definition by hand if you like. The key point is to keep at the process however you can.
I think FFT has the best Final Fantasy story of the series.
Edit: Never mind, it seems you are already taking this approach. Enjoy!
I was fully prepared to transcribe it as it came but now that I found the script and basically all the text in the game it seems. I'm actually quite relieved because now I can review the words and dialogue before I even encounter it in the game.
Damn bro I can't even fully comprehend the dialogue of this game in my native language
Imagine playing Dark souls in Japanese lol
I’ve… Actually done that many years ago on the PS3. The dialogue is in English at least the voices are. And I used a Japanese 攻略 site to help me along. Honestly the game itself is harder.
Goodluck have fun !!
I'm a fan of Final Fantasy games, maybe replaying those old games might help me learn? I played from 7 to X-2
The voice acting is a god-sent.
Godsend*
Yes, I am quite impressed.
すばらしい
The game is so well voiced in English, I couldn’t bare to switch to Japanese