I had a love/hate relationship with Learn Japanese To Survive! Hiragana Battle. Going into it, I had already memorized about half the hiragana alphabet, which ultimately came back to severely diminish my experience. Without the learning aspect, this game is just a boring cliche RPG-maker game-- so if you have knowledge of the hiragana, you're honestly better off spending 9 hours studying some other way. However, if you have zero knowledge, this is a good place to start.

I should mention, I had to hack my save file and give myself a ton of money to even bother continuing with the game. The battles were just so slow and grindy for me (and I like RPG games) that I had to give myself the best armor so I wasn't spending a full minute "fighting" hiragana that I already knew. Without hacking my save, I'm not sure if I would have bothered finishing it.

I should also point out that I fully realized this game was probably a mistake to buy like 5 minutes after playing 2 hours (which is past the refund limit). I would have refunded the game if I had kept better track of my time.

A couple of my gripes with the game:

• Hiragana can inflict status ailments. So you enter a battle, immediately know the characters (you identify them to "kill" them)-- and then they put 3 of your 4 party members to sleep. Beyond that, the hiragana can all attack 1 party member, killing them in a single turn. Party members that are asleep or dead cannot be used to identify hiragana.

Additionally, a hiragana character typically takes multiple times identifying it to kill it, allowing it to keep attacking your party and inflicting status ailments.

What does this all mean? Even if you know the material and wish to move on you have to spend more time than necessary trying to overcome the frustrating battle mechanics. The game element should take a back seat to the learning, not the other way around.

It came to a point where I would see the characters, say them out loud, and then run from the battle.

• Encounter rates are very high (take a few steps and be put into another battle), which loops back into my first point.

Additionally, you encounter pre-determined groups. By that I mean, characters aren't randomly thrown together before a battle-- you will encounter the same characters in the same groups over and over again. Meaning, you will recognize the group of characters ("Oh, I just had this one last battle. Ji, Shi, Ko, Ku"), rather than actually identifying the characters themselves.

• During the "lesson" part of the game, words are introduced with characters you haven't even learned yet (which they write in romaji). This feels like a huge missed opportunity, as they could easily show you words made of characters you have learned.

For example, imagine you've learned only the vowels. They then show you the word for chair (hiragana: 「いす」) as 「いsu」, rather than waiting until they teach the "s" group, and then introduced the full word. It just feels so pointless, and like such a missed opportunity. Learning words made of the characters you have learned is so rewarding, compared to half romaji/half hiragana words. (NOTE: That specific example does not show up in game, but many like it do).

"So why do you recommend the game?!" you might be asking. As stated, this game will help you learn the hiragana. The game does open up towards the very end, when it focuses more on words and phrases, as well as explaining sentence structures, which I enjoyed immensely.

I will be purchasing Katakana War because I do not know any of the katakana, so I'm sure my experience will be better. (On top of that, I've heard the dev addressed some of the issues with Hiragana Battle). But again, if you do know a majority of the hiragana already, studying via traditional means will be far more rewarding, as well as less frustrating.

Edit: I'm only a little bit into Katakana War but it has already fixed most of my issues with Hiragana Battle. Yay!

I had a love/hate relationship with [i]Learn Japanese To Survive! Hiragana Battle[/i]. Going into it, I had already memorized about half the hiragana alphabet, which ultimately came back to severely diminish my experience. Without the learning aspect, this game is just a boring cliche RPG-maker game-- so if you have knowledge of the hiragana, you're honestly better off spending 9 hours studying some other way. However, if you have zero knowledge, this is a good place to start. [b]I should mention[/b], I had to hack my save file and give myself a ton of money to even bother continuing with the game. The battles were just so slow and grindy for me (and I like RPG games) that I had to give myself the best armor so I wasn't spending a full minute "fighting" hiragana that I already knew. Without hacking my save, I'm not sure if I would have bothered finishing it. I should also point out that I fully realized this game was probably a mistake to buy like 5 minutes after playing 2 hours (which is past the refund limit). I would have refunded the game if I had kept better track of my time. A couple of my gripes with the game: • [b]Hiragana can inflict status ailments.[/b] So you enter a battle, immediately know the characters (you identify them to "kill" them)-- and then they put 3 of your 4 party members to sleep. Beyond that, the hiragana can all attack 1 party member, killing them in a single turn. Party members that are asleep or dead cannot be used to identify hiragana. Additionally, [b]a hiragana character typically takes multiple times identifying it to kill it[/b], allowing it to keep attacking your party and inflicting status ailments. What does this all mean? Even if you know the material and wish to move on you have to spend more time than necessary trying to overcome the frustrating battle mechanics. The game element should take a back seat to the learning, not the other way around. It came to a point where I would see the characters, say them out loud, and then run from the battle. • [b]Encounter rates are very high[/b] (take a few steps and be put into another battle), which loops back into my first point. Additionally, you encounter pre-determined groups. By that I mean, characters aren't randomly thrown together before a battle-- you will encounter the same characters in the same groups over and over again. Meaning, you will recognize the group of characters ("Oh, I just had this one last battle. Ji, Shi, Ko, Ku"), rather than actually identifying the characters themselves. • During the "lesson" part of the game, words are introduced with characters you haven't even learned yet (which they write in romaji). This feels like a huge missed opportunity, as they could easily show you words made of characters you [i]have[/i] learned. For example, imagine you've learned only the vowels. They then show you the word for chair (hiragana: 「いす」) as 「いsu」, rather than waiting until they teach the "s" group, and then introduced the full word. It just feels so pointless, and like such a missed opportunity. Learning words made of the characters you have learned is so rewarding, compared to half romaji/half hiragana words. (NOTE: That specific example does not show up in game, but many like it do). [b][u]"So why do you recommend the game?!"[/u][/b] you might be asking. As stated, this game [i]will[/i] help you learn the hiragana. The game does open up towards the very end, when it focuses more on words and phrases, as well as explaining sentence structures, which I enjoyed immensely. I will be purchasing [i]Katakana War[/i] because I do not know any of the katakana, so I'm sure my experience will be better. (On top of that, I've heard the dev addressed some of the issues with [i]Hiragana Battle[/i]). But again, if you do know a majority of the hiragana already, studying via traditional means will be far more rewarding, as well as less frustrating. [b][i]Edit:[/i][/b] I'm only a little bit into [i]Katakana War[/i] but it has already fixed most of my issues with [i]Hiragana Battle[/i]. Yay!