Learn Japanese To Survive! Katakana War

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Game is nothing grand, but so far I think it's working and it's entertaining enough even if the story makes no sense if you think about it even a moment. Good: Basic RPG (16bit style) set up is overall fun. Maybe slight "dating sim" style get to know your teammates. Entertaining enough way to learn Katakana. Eh: There seems to be class types (mage/fighter at least, I haven't unlocked magic yet) but it's not clear at the start what they are or who is what class. Unlike most RPGs where its pretty easy to tell (or sometimes flat out told to you immediately) who is meant for what job in the party. Bad: The story makes no sense. You're in Japan and need to learn the language but then monster Katakana characters arrive and somehow only ONE Japanese native realizes you just need to speak the character to defeat them? Would make more sense if you were in maybe Europe or America and this happens and you stumble across a Japanese English teacher on vacation recruits you to help with the same set up. Also at the start they're like "oh everyone ran off in fear" so you just hijack an entire apartment building and the next day randomly got a dozen people wandering around town? The sound QC is also pretty bad. When attacking it all is kind of hard to make out. When they're speaking (which sometimes they'll say part of their dialogue, sometimes all, or sometimes none) it's clear each VA recorded their stuff on their own. Some sound fine, others a bit metallic/tinny, and some you'd expect it was a 10 dollar PC mic from the early 2000s. Yes my Bad is longer than the good, but I still think the good outweighs the bad! UPDATE: Heads up it says controller not supported, but been using my X-Box controller on this just fine.

If you're looking as a beginner a good way to review katakana, I think this is worth the time. It's definitely not the fastest way, but if you're looking for something fun to push your katakana review, I think it's not bad. If I were to recommend order: Hiragana Forbidden => Katakana War => Kanji Combat and skip the basic hiragana game unless you're really struggling with Hiragana and need to have multiple games. But these games are much better as review/reinforcement tools, barring maybe Kanji Combat. The Good: 1. This is a pretty good way to review katakana. I'm not sure I'd completely learn from this game, but if you're looking as a beginner to just reinforce katakana this is a great tool 2. Some of the music is kinda a banger? There's a couple things that kinda get annoying after a while, but the weapon shop theme and the Obake world theme? Pretty dope 3. To be honest it's actually got a better JRPG system than I thought it would have. Is it amazing? No, but it did get me building a speed setup to go buffer => AoE mage => physical answers to finish off, which is cool that there's some level of optimization. That being said you can kinda just brute force if you want, there's not really a lot of stat or DPS checks The Neutral: 1. This is about the most standard JRPG story. Don't expect to be wow'd 2. The way music loops is kinda weird The Bad: 1. Some character side stories are just not very exciting 2. Weird bugs randomly, nothing soft locking but some animation slow down 3. Doesn't work on steam deck very well

记录：25/10/23入。 并不支持中文的日语学习游戏。——25/11/18

I am fighting hard not to give this one a negative review. The reasons for that lie in technical and gameplay details. For the technical issue: The game has freezing bugs where it runs with 1 FPS occasionally. I tested this game on different machines and this issue occurs either at the end-of-combat screen or the max-friendship dialogue with a character to unlock his ultimate. For the biggest gameplay issue that I have: The dialog is extremely cringey to a point where I dropped the game and learned Katakana the old fashioned way. I then got back to this game to manifest the Katakana into my head and then decided to skip most of the dialog. By doing so I got to enjoy a fairly decent combat system that is improvemed from its predecessor, Hiragana battle. You can now see the battle order of each charackter and can plan your attacks accordingly. Additionally, the Kana table is now a table and not a one dimensional list anymore. This makes navigating a lot easier. A gripe that I have is that the game made the magic system a bit too strong for my case. With that you don't have to name the specific Katakana, but throw a spell at it or them (AOE is a thing here). This takes away from the purpose of the game, to learn the Katakana. At a later point Ultimates are introduced which don't even consume magic. For an easy ride you give Daisuke a Speed Ring and spam GALAXY VOID at the beginning of each battle to bulldoze through the game. At least the devs made sure you have to name the Katakana once to finish them. Otherwise they stay at 1 HP. The main charackter is also a nitpick. He is a generic noname who looks up to Daisuke but has nothing to add on each conversation that is going on. But he somehow still leads the group despite Daisuke being the true leader. It's weird. For the ending I praised the predecessor for its nice twist that it introduced before fighting the end-boss. This is sadly completely missing here. I would have liked to fight through vocabulary you learned through the game. The end-boss is half a copy paste from the predecessor as well. Nothing extraordenary to mention here. So why the thumbs up? Because it teached me the small vowel Katakana and provided me with a list of them. I wasn't entirely aware of this field, but the game made it easier for me to understand. Also the side quests teached me new vocabulary that differ from the predecessor as well. A last note: The game is playable without playing the predecessor or knowing Hiragana, however I would suggest that you learn the hiragana table first, because a lot of vocabulary this game offers is written in hiragana. That's about it. See you in the last game I'm most excited and afraid (in terms of gameplay mechanics like the dialog) about: Kanji Combat.

[h1]Short Review[/h1] I recently played the developers' hiragana learning game, and while its intentions were good, it wasn't a particularly enjoyable game or an effective learning tool. The UI felt clunky, the combat system was tedious, and much of the learning boiled down to matching Latin letters with hiragana characters. This sequel improves on almost every aspect. The UI is much clearer, displaying all available characters at once, which makes selecting the correct one much easier. The combat is also more engaging, with magic abilities that reduce repetition and eliminate most of the grinding from the previous game. The side quests are a nice addition as well, introducing bits of Japanese culture and vocabulary alongside the katakana lessons. The biggest weakness is the writing. While there are now several characters to interact with, most of them are one-dimensional stereotypes with very little personality. I found myself skipping most of the dialogue outside of the main story, which isn't particularly memorable either. That said, I'm not playing a language-learning game for an amazing narrative. I mainly wanted combat that was enjoyable and supported learning katakana, and in that regard, the game succeeds. I do wish the learning mechanics went a step further. Instead of fighting only individual characters, it would have been much more useful to fight complete words, allowing players to build vocabulary while learning the alphabet. The game also never introduces combined katakana, such as チ (chi) becoming the katakana チャ (cha), which feels like a missed opportunity. Overall, this is a significant improvement over the developers' previous game. I still believe the best way to learn kana is with pen and paper, especially because writing the characters helps reinforce memory. However, this game is a fun and worthwhile supplement to traditional study methods, and it's an easy recommendation for anyone who enjoys learning through games.

Prepare a notepad! A good start to learning Katakana. This game doesn't teach all the rules thoroughly but it's pretty good at reinforcing the basics.

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I actually easily mastered reading katakana 2 hours into the game, so it really did help me figure it out. I do think that the vocabulary lessons could have been more integrated into the gameplay; especially as fighting individual characters grew really stale after a while. The affection mechanics were not really interesting and I did not care much for the small cutscenes or the boost it gave. The narrative should have been much more compelling but because the focus was only on katakana, they had a really limited scope. I actually started this when I was in high school, but I grew disinterested in completing it until recently. This game was a useful alternative but it is much more effective if paired with traditional materials and a rigorous study habit.

If you like RPGs and want to learn japanese katakana, or reinforce it (my case) , this is game is perfect! Every 1-2 days I would do a new lesson, practice writing katakana in my notebook as well as fighting monsters in this game, and I'm happy to say that after beating the game, I feel super confident about my katakana writing and reading abilities. Super useful game , Highly recommend!