Learn Japanese RPG: Hiragana Forbidden Speech

Pretty neat at teaching you lots of basic words and grammar. Easy to get into and basically requires no commitment so you're not likely to burn out starting your learning journey with this.

Learn Japanese RPG has a somewhat awkward game title and is wrapped in a rough RPGMaker exterior, but the quality of the learning offered is really good, giving you a nice overview of the Japanese language and giving you a strong start to continue your learning on your own after the game is over. The battle system is quite fun, drilling you on the fundamental alphabet (hiragana/katakana) as well as basic vocabulary. Typing game enjoyers (like me) will enjoy keying in words with a minor time pressure. The game also repeatedly emphasizes that it's all about learning first-and-foremost, so you aren't penalized for making mistakes. The game teaches you everything from the most basic construction of words, to basic vocabulary and sentence structure to even polite/casual/rough language styles. However, it doesn't bog you down with too many details and tries to keep things easy to follow. I suppose the intention is to keep a new learner engaged in keeping their momentum and accruing overall mastery of the basics, and if they want better understanding of certain concepts later they can look it up themselves. All of this is set to a fun enough story that takes you on an adventure through…

I've been learning Japanese for 7 months and tried other Japanese learning games like Wagotabi (almost done) and So to Speak (only played a few minutes of the demo before getting bored). I tried the demo of Hiragana Forbidden Speech for 40 minutes and I ended up enjoying it and bought the full game. The dialogue is a pretty impolite/rude and causal compared to the very formal and polite textbook Japanese that Wagotabi teaches. Though I recommend playing both games for people who are starting out learning Japanese or are at N5 level. The art and storyline isn't the greatest and its like the whole budget was put into anime-style voice acting where everything is over the top, but somehow its very charming. It makes learning Japanese fun and the humor in the game is pretty silly.

You'll see many learning games for Japanese on Steam nowadays. Most of them are just memorization games that don't actually teach you the proper context. This game does. Alongside TPRS, this game is amazing at learning Japanese. With Kanji and soon Katakana being in the game, one will really end the game with a good foundation of words. There are 250 words in the game with 16 bonus words, totaling 266 words. There are 137 kanji in the game as well. It's honestly a good start to learn Japanese with. I would HIGHLY recommend newcomers to turn on Kanji. It's a lot, no doubt, but it is essential to learn and you'll be glad you did in the long long. The game will convert certain sentences to full Japanese text once it sees you have gotten a understanding of all the words in that sentence. For example, "I like roosters." If you only only 好き, it won't change. But if you know 雄鶏 and 私, you get,「私は雄鶏が好き。」 If you want to learn Japanese from scratch, this game will be the perfect start.

Crazy value for your money. I expected it to be a quick and simple game but it was full of hours and hours of delightful content, witty humor, fun characters, an intriguing story, all while providing in-depth and useful Japanese lessons that not only build a foundation for your Japanese language study, but also provide insight into real, practical spoken Japanese (so you don't sound like a walking textbook). HUGE RECOMMEND for anyone with an interest in Japanese.

Perfect way to learn a lot of information with a beginner level of Japanese. Plus the game makes it to where you can learn kanji if you're literate in reading hiragana. Play this game if you like RPGS, anime, or want to learn more commonly used words casual speech and polite speech.