Learn Japanese To Survive! Hiragana Battle

my son is autistic and he really enjoyed learning the different kana. i even helped him sound them out and showed him proper stroke order! (pause) anyways, if you have a younger kid who loves anime, playing this with them is a great bonding experience.

Apparently my brain is more willing to learn when there is a game quietly tricking it into studying. Learn Hiragana actually helped me get more comfortable with the characters instead of just staring at a chart and hoping something would magically stick. Hiragana can feel intimidating at first because everything is new, and my brain initially treated each symbol like a tiny cryptid with curves. The game is simple, but that works. It gives you repetition, recognition, and enough interaction to make practice feel less like homework. I liked having something that made me actively respond instead of passively reading the same notes over and over while my focus wandered into the woods. It is not flashy, but it does the job. I walked away knowing more than I did when I started, and for an educational game, that is the whole assignment. Rude of it to actually teach me something, honestly.

Bought all three of the games in a Steam sale and regret nt playing them sooner - because if I had I would have been able to return it within the 2 weeks time limit. The plot makes no sense what-so-ever. Game mechanics are SUPER clunky. There is no balance to gameplay or progression. Battle enemies are not randomly drawn from a pool, so battles become repetitive super quickly. The store has a couple options for equipment right off the bat - many of which are insane amounts of in game money, which take hours to save up for. Maps are small and simplistic. Quests rely heavily on reaching one side of the map, finding out you need something, walking as far back to the begining of the map as possible to get said item, and returning to the end of the map. Side quests are based on learning "facts" about Japan and answering questions - however the facts the game tells you are often wrong or inaccurate, while some quests presume you already know the information (and since this game is designed for those who want to learn, many probably don't know said information). That leads to the MAJOR problems with this game: Lessons are often wrong or inaccurate, use different fonts with different str…

This is a great resource for learning hiragana (in addition to using other resources). I think the biggest criticisms for the game (in the context of a study tool) are: 1) The enemy groupings are preset. I had an instance where I fought three enemies. In the very next battle, those same three enemies appeared. It didn't take much thought to just choose the correct answers. And this sort of thing happened a fair bit (maybe not always the subsequent battle, but definitely the same groupings within an area). 2) The battles did become quite monotonous since there was no variation really. The turn order was always the same, the enemies barely did damage (outside of the beginning of the game), and if one of my fighters defeated an enemy in one blow (because it usually took two), then the second fighter was just left to hit a wrong answer by default. However, those are minute complaints within the grand scheme of things. This was primarily a fun and motivating way for me to learn hiragana. I found it effective! I do recommend it as a study tool as opposed to just a casual game to pick up and play.

If you want to learn the alphabet, it's a good method if you do not like the traditional classroom method of learning. The only thing I would change is adding more reviewing of previous lessons in dungeons. Say first level is the new stuff and the next levels would incorporate older lessons. Instead it just hones in on the current lesson so you might not see a Hiragana character for 80% of the game until the final dungeon.

This game supplements Tofugu's Learning Japanese guide. Overall it's a bland RPG but it does its job in teaching/reinforcing Hiragana. If you're trying to learn Hiragana as fast as possible you should probably avoid this game and be more academically studious, but if you don't mind learning at a more casual pace and/or reinforcing your Hiragana in a JRPG fashion, this game is perfect.