Created On: Wed Mar 09 2022
General Game Info (Availability, Price) [9]
Phoenix Wright seems to be either a love it, hate it, or never heard of it kind of game. With most people I know falling in the love it category. For those who don’t know, or need reminding. Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney is a series of games in which you play as a Lawyer, solving crimes and proving innocence in dramatic court battles, with amazing music. With game play more similar to a visual novel than your standard action or adventure games - the appeal of the game lies very much in the characters and plot.
Which begs the question, can you still enjoy this game if you’re playing it in a language you are learning? This is a question we’ll be exploring over the course of this video.
The PWAA Trilogy is available on Nintendo Switch and Steam on PC - but the games individually are available on the DS series of consoles and even mobile phones - The iOS version here in Japan is of course in Japanese, but in your respective regions you’d have to check before purchasing on mobile. I know however, that the Switch and Steam versions provide multi-language support. For this video I will be playing the switch Version. The game is often on sale too so it’s relatively inexpensive, roughly £10 or 1000円. Which for 3 games, totalling 14 chapters is pretty good value.
Japanese Level [8]
The game itself is entirely text-based with no spoken dialogue, even during cutscenes, so we’re strictly looking at reading practice with this game.
Luckily however, almost all the content in the game allows you to take your time reading, and only progress when ready with a push of the A button - many times you can often repeat content over and over too. Meaning you can really get into the sentence and check understanding. The font size in the game is nice and big, at least on switch, but the lack of furigana can mean lots of checking pronunciations in the dictionary which is rather time consuming.
The vocab itself at first is seemingly pretty high level, I have never watched any Law dramas on TV, so even in English I would struggle with some of the legal words - but, once you have searched these genre-specific words once or twice, the same words appear over and over again - providing a natural SRS which gives you the opportunity to really learn some new words - whether they will be useful to your language goals is a question I can’t answer.
Though of course, between the law jargon there is normal conversation, normal interaction between human characters, questions and answers and lots and lots of context. As with lots of manga, anime and games some characters have language quirks which are unnatural, but if Japanese people can understand them, so should we be able to.
If I had to put a grade to it I would say an N3 level learner would have a good challenge and an N2 level person would be able to happily play the game only stopping to look up the rarer words and jargon.
Story Progression [3]
Here’s what I think is the main problem with learning Japanese with PW… if you haven’t played the game in English, the game's systems themselves could be pretty complex, presenting evidence at just the right time and finding contradictions in testimonies could be really difficult - and potentially progression halting - without a good walkthrough to help you out. It can be frustrating when making too many mistakes as you will have to repeat content and dialogue to get back to the point you’re stuck on… while still being stuck when you get back to where you were.
However, with that warning out of the way - there is some hope. There are 2 seasons of the Phoenix Wright anime released at the time of recording this video. And they follow the story and plot of the games pretty closely. So it’s a great way to compound your reading and vocab practice with something a bit more easy to consume - which then in turn could help you progress back in the games. Just something to think about if you’re considering attempting this game.
(Gaming to Learning) Ratio [9]
As this game is borderline visual novel, the core gameplay sections are divided in to two, sometimes overlapping, activities: the first, reading dialogue, presenting evidence and finding contradictions in court… and the second, moving around locations collecting said evidence and interviewing witnesses. The result being a very strong learning to gaming ratio. If you aren’t reading the text and aren’t following what is happening you can not really just play the game - as something like in Mario where you can run around whether you understand the objective or not. So for a serious study session, it’s great. But for something more casual, maybe this isn’t the right game for that mood.
Fun Factor [7]
It’s difficult to talk about this game’s fun factor, as it’s such a strange genre of game, collection of topics and potential difference in people's interests. What I can say is for people who have played, and loved, the games in English - it’s a really great experience seeing what differs from the translated version and what remains the same - which I think is super interesting from a cultural point of view. The game is broken into chapters and acts so it provides lots of natural stopping points, in addition to the ability to save and quit any time and pick up exactly where you left off.
On the other hand however. If you haven’t played the games before and are just looking for a game to practice your language skills I don’t think I could recommend PW for you, unless you’ve seen the footage in this video and think this game seems like that special something you never knew you needed before now!
Verdict
So let’s answer the question, can you learn Japanese with Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy?
My answer would be… yes, mostly. If you are a total beginner I would say the game is probably too advanced, and with no prior knowledge of the games story and mechanics the barrier for entry is too high. But if you have a decent foundation the game provides great reading practice and comprehension with tons of opportunity to learn, at the expense of any of that mindless fun gameplay you can find in platformers. A lot of the games charm comes from the characters and lots of jokes to pop and nerd culture and I think the translators did a great job. But in the original Japanese there are some times when I experienced something that should be funny, or a reference, but I didn’t quite get it. But hey, sometimes that happens in life, and it didn’t impact my enjoyment of the game overall. And it bears repeating, this is 3 games in one… so in English the average time to complete the games is about 60 hours… so in Japanese we’re talking maybe 100 hours of playtime/study time. Which for £10 is something I have no Objections with... sorry.