Judgement: Not Recommended
View review on Steam
So... I'm gonna start by saying that I'm a person who learned a bit of Japanese before. However, the alphabets don't really stick to me and I was hoping to find a way to force them into my brain using something more fun than flashcards (ugh). Well...
4 hours into this game and I went to my wishlist and removed other titles from this series.
It's bad. Frustrating. And it distracts you from learning with bad design choices.
Look, initial lessons are done quite okay, it's done 5 signs at a time, in order, you can see how they are written and what sound they make. Cool. Then you go off on an adventure, right? Technically, yes, but, my dog, that is a one turd of an adventure.
Premise is boring - a bad guy shows up, does damage, you have to learn Japanese to defeat him. Written like could seem potentially okay. But its delivery in-game is not. I literally couldn't be more disinterested after the initial scenes. And store page has the audacity to say "exciting story". LOL.
Characters are boring. I don't even remember their names and I stared at those for quite a while now.
Jokes are boring too. There was one (literally one) dialogue so far, that made me smile but for whatever reason I can't take screenshots in game, so it's gone forever. And I don't even remember now what it was about, so probably nothing worthwhile.
Fights. This is my main criticism. Fights are extremely tedious. EXTREMELY. To attack an enemy once you need to
1. select the hero
2. select if they attack or do other things
3. select the enemy hiragana sign
4. select the right sound that sign makes from a long list
5. accept
All that for one hero to attack a sign once. It wouldn't be too bad in a regular j-rpg style game, where these attacks can really vary and stuff, sure. But this game is supposed to teach you an alphabet and I can surely think of better ways to direct focus towards learning, instead of "try not to missclick in the menu while doing the same steps four times".
Imagine how nice it would be if there would be only three steps:
1. select the hero
2. Select attack
3. type in the sound using your keyboard.
Revolutionary, I know, using the keyboard like that. It would improve the gameplay 100% and maybe I wouldn't be so annoyed with it.
All the enemies are the same - so, hiragana. Their attacks don't really differ, it all falls flat and becomes boring very very early in the game.
Fights happen all the time. You enter the location - there are chests you want to reach and a passage north. Every few steps, a fight. Even worse, I reached all the chests, fought countless fights, reached the passage only to learn I need wood to build a bridge over it. And that I can get wood on the other side of that location (so basically, backtrack to the entrance). I try to do that and after two steps... a fight again. That was a spot where I ragequitted for the day. And let me tell you, these fights are not getting better, further in the game.
Enemies don't have health bars!!!!!! Game, what the hell. How am I supposed to fight when I don't know enemies health, order of the attacks during the turn, anything useful? It wasn't a rare occasion when I scheduled attacks to defeat one sign and it died after the first and the rest of the attacks went to waste. However you square it, stripping gameplay of important information for no reason is just bad user experience.
Equipping items? Yeah, this is bad on its own. It should be transparent and easy to manage. It is not.
Game speed
Everything in game is SLOW. Animations are slow and unskippable, choosing any items or attacks is unnecessarily complicated, some of dialogues and quests are really redundant and only slow you down even more.
Pet peeve: game teaches you keyboard setting that doesn't work (like it cues WASD for walking but only arrows work)
--
I don't feel I'm any close to finishing this game but I guess I'll have mercy on myself this time. It really makes flashcards and duolingo lessons interesting and fresh. Go figure.
Also, by the way, I think that out of all these hours I've spent in-game, maybe 15% of it had anything done with Japanese. The rest is walking, fight's menu, managing items and boring dialogue. And none of that is appealing in the slightest.
4 hours into this game and I went to my wishlist and removed other titles from this series.
It's bad. Frustrating. And it distracts you from learning with bad design choices.
Look, initial lessons are done quite okay, it's done 5 signs at a time, in order, you can see how they are written and what sound they make. Cool. Then you go off on an adventure, right? Technically, yes, but, my dog, that is a one turd of an adventure.
Premise is boring - a bad guy shows up, does damage, you have to learn Japanese to defeat him. Written like could seem potentially okay. But its delivery in-game is not. I literally couldn't be more disinterested after the initial scenes. And store page has the audacity to say "exciting story". LOL.
Characters are boring. I don't even remember their names and I stared at those for quite a while now.
Jokes are boring too. There was one (literally one) dialogue so far, that made me smile but for whatever reason I can't take screenshots in game, so it's gone forever. And I don't even remember now what it was about, so probably nothing worthwhile.
Fights. This is my main criticism. Fights are extremely tedious. EXTREMELY. To attack an enemy once you need to
1. select the hero
2. select if they attack or do other things
3. select the enemy hiragana sign
4. select the right sound that sign makes from a long list
5. accept
All that for one hero to attack a sign once. It wouldn't be too bad in a regular j-rpg style game, where these attacks can really vary and stuff, sure. But this game is supposed to teach you an alphabet and I can surely think of better ways to direct focus towards learning, instead of "try not to missclick in the menu while doing the same steps four times".
Imagine how nice it would be if there would be only three steps:
1. select the hero
2. Select attack
3. type in the sound using your keyboard.
Revolutionary, I know, using the keyboard like that. It would improve the gameplay 100% and maybe I wouldn't be so annoyed with it.
All the enemies are the same - so, hiragana. Their attacks don't really differ, it all falls flat and becomes boring very very early in the game.
Fights happen all the time. You enter the location - there are chests you want to reach and a passage north. Every few steps, a fight. Even worse, I reached all the chests, fought countless fights, reached the passage only to learn I need wood to build a bridge over it. And that I can get wood on the other side of that location (so basically, backtrack to the entrance). I try to do that and after two steps... a fight again. That was a spot where I ragequitted for the day. And let me tell you, these fights are not getting better, further in the game.
Enemies don't have health bars!!!!!! Game, what the hell. How am I supposed to fight when I don't know enemies health, order of the attacks during the turn, anything useful? It wasn't a rare occasion when I scheduled attacks to defeat one sign and it died after the first and the rest of the attacks went to waste. However you square it, stripping gameplay of important information for no reason is just bad user experience.
Equipping items? Yeah, this is bad on its own. It should be transparent and easy to manage. It is not.
Game speed
Everything in game is SLOW. Animations are slow and unskippable, choosing any items or attacks is unnecessarily complicated, some of dialogues and quests are really redundant and only slow you down even more.
Pet peeve: game teaches you keyboard setting that doesn't work (like it cues WASD for walking but only arrows work)
--
I don't feel I'm any close to finishing this game but I guess I'll have mercy on myself this time. It really makes flashcards and duolingo lessons interesting and fresh. Go figure.
Also, by the way, I think that out of all these hours I've spent in-game, maybe 15% of it had anything done with Japanese. The rest is walking, fight's menu, managing items and boring dialogue. And none of that is appealing in the slightest.
Review posted on 26/10/2020, 17:10:00.