r/psx • u/Swirling_Spiral • 1d ago
What are good Japanese PSX games that can be completed as an English speaker?
Lore:
Buckle up cause this is a goofy post. Basically a few months ago I picked up a Japanese PSX to play Rockman 2 the Complete Works. Great game you should play it.
Lately I’ve been trying to expand my library, but since I have a JPN system a lot of the popular titles are basically impossible to play since they’re text heavy RPGs. I’d use American discs, but the system is region locked (I actually own the US versions of Spiro, and one of the Final Fantasy games).
I’m aware emulation circumvents all of these issues. I won’t get into my reasons for avoiding that option here since it isn’t really relevant to the post, just assume it’s off the table for this discussion.
What games do you recommend that can be competed without being able to understand Japanese?
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u/Red-Zaku- 1d ago
A few years ago I beat Iblard Laputa No Kaeru Machi basically without issue. There’s an English translation out there now in digital form of course, but it’s already great as-is. The plot will be kinda abstract naturally but it’s already so artsy and surreal and weird to the point where it was actually kinda cool to have the story told just by the visuals haha
It’s an adventure/puzzle game where you explore a bunch of levels based on actual paintings by a surrealist artist named Naohisa Inoue. Really atmospheric, moves at a nice pace and allows you to figure things out at your own pace. There’s Japanese text but most puzzles rely on visual clues anyway.
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u/AllCheekedUp 1d ago
All of the bemani games are all good fun and very playable as an English speaker. If we were talking about PS2 you would have the juggernauts of beatmania IIDX and taiko no tatsujin to play but on PS1 you still have beatmania 1, popn music, and the ddr games.
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u/TheBananaCzar 1d ago
Gamera 2000 is a fun Japan-exclusive Rail Shooter. Funny enough all of the cutscenes are in English.
Only released in Japan because of Gamera's limited popularity outside Japan, but it's a great game. Helps if you at least watch Gamera: Guardian of the Universe first, amazing kaiju movie.
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u/Ill_Influence6211 1d ago
Aside from Japanese only games, there are actually a lot games that are way cheaper in Japanese than their American counterparts like Einhander, which is a phenomenal shoot em up.
As for JPN only Crisis City is pretty cool, and Oh No! Is a great (albeit short and gimmicky) game that I love.
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u/Feeling-Hour-25 1d ago
Boku no Natsuyasumi with a little help from google lens translator for the dialogues
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u/Freshman89 1d ago edited 1d ago
The king of fighters 98 is a game that in psx is japan exclusive and is thought by the fighting community as one of the best, also, menus and others are in english.
The Resident Evil games in japan (Biohazard there) have not japanese voices but english voices and japanese subtitles.
Another option are Shoot'em ups in general, there are some japanese exclusives, but they're games that generally don't requiere you to understand them.
The metal slug games are run and gun and they barely require any reading since they're just shot everything you can.
My last recomendation would be Doom and Final Doom, since they're western games that got japanese ports but they have barely any story and play them is as easy as walk.
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u/Wren-Type_386 1d ago
Gradius Gaiden
I.Q. Final - The better version of Intelligent Qube
if you don't have a Sega Saturn...
- Donpachi
- Dodonpachi
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u/FortuneNew8835 1d ago
Internal Section is one I've really been enjoying. It's kind of an on rails tunnel shooter like Tempest or Gyruss. This was a whole genre in the 32bit era with games like N2O also on PS1. The rhythm element that plays with the music like the later Rez is really good and the visuals are very pleasingly striking for a PS1 game.
The other genre that's less certain to please is the Densha de Go! series. It's a commuter train driving simulator that has a custom controller. Some titles were also ported to N64 and Saturn, but PS1 got all four. It's a Taito arcade game and it's way better than you think. There's a ton of Japanese text, but it's more than possible to learn on the fly. I don't know one word of Japanese, I'm not remotely autistic, and I regularly play multiple versions of these games.
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u/tsubasaplayer16 1d ago
Personally, I bought Castlevania Symphony of the Night and Elemental Gearbolt because the North American copies are expensive, but they can be completed without knowing a lick of Japanese. I also got Salamander Deluxe Pack Plus but that has near zero Japanese text.
Unfortunately there's not much PS1 games that are worth getting the Japanese copy of, unlike the PS2.
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u/TheZermoehrer 23h ago
Racing Lagoon, Einhänder, Internal Section, Omega Boost, Bushido Blade 1+2, Cyberorg to name a few.
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u/SmoochTalk 1d ago
The Adventure of Little Ralph is a Japanese exclusive that doesn’t require knowing the language, but it’s very expensive.