Saw A Short Hike was on Game Pass and I started replaying after a while and out of curiosity tried it in japanese and was delightfully surprised! This is a good game for language learning, checks most of the boxes for what I want playing a game for that purpose.
Most of the dialogue in the game is composed in simple sentences very easy to parse and normal day-to-day vocabulary, and the vocabulary that is more specific and I have to lookup are not usually one-offs, so it helps me retain the words I'm learning throughout the game. Plus the nice balance between dialogue and gameplay, feels really good and I never feel overwhelmed by what I have to read.
On the topic... I wonder if it might be worth making a post with recommendations of games I've played that I think fill that role nicely... There's lots of lists of "JP games for beginners" out there that felt so arbitrary in their choices when I went to check them out... I could at least make something I can explain properly why I'd recommend, and this one wouldn't try to aim at beginners but at people who've already been learning but hadn't tried playing videogames for that purpose yet...
