Following the previous game review, I bought several Japanese language-learning games on Steam and tried out a few of them. The one I ended up sticking with the most is Learn Japanese To Survive! Hiragana Battle. It's a cute game with mechanics that remind me of Chrono Trigger. When navigating the world map or inside a specific region, the player has a top-down view of the world and his character. Battles are turn-based with a side view.
The story of the game is that an evil Japanese wizard has come to conquer your country by using Japanese-based magic, and the only way to counter this magic is by using Japanese yourself. A Japanese emissary teaches you the language, guides you on your journey, and fights as part of your team of four. The main challenge comes from fighting the Hiragana warriors, enemies that are characters in the Japanese. They are everywhere and you keep bumping into them, and the only way to damage them is by saying which character they are.
That is the main difference with a regular game. In a normal game you have multiple attacks and combos you can use against the enemy. Here you have all the normal moves and equipment, but the only attack you can use is to say the name of the character by selecting it from the menu.
I played the game on my Steam Deck. Even though the game doesn't have controller support, the default controller configuration on Steam Deck allowed me to play it as if it were designed for the device. Nevertheless I encountered a few problems:
- When running I'd lose control of my character, who would continue to run even when I let go of the run button and even turn in random directions. I solved this by changing the game settings to always run so that I don't have to press a button anymore.
- By default I can't use the joystick for anything and instead am forced to use the D-Pad. I could configure it, of course, but that's an annoyance that shouldn't be there in a game that should support a controller to begin with.
- Instead of using the B button to go back and close things, I often have to use the menu button for the same purpose. There's no reason for this. The menu button should be just for the menu, and B should be for back and cancel.
- In the menu, each time I do something such as equip a character, I press the button to go back and get taken back two levels in the menu instead of just one, so then I again need to select the equip menu before I can switch to equipping a different character. Once or twice is tolerable, but not each time I get a new piece of equipment and want to make sure that all of my characters have the best equipment available to them.
Aside from that, it's a decent game, but I feel like it somewhat lacks balance in the combat aspect. I keep randomly encountering enemies far too frequently, then no matter how well I remember the names of the Hiragana my characters still get a beating, and by the time I reach the end of the level I've exhausted my supply of healing spells and potions. The fact that I can run away from battles without penalty helps, but then I feel bad for skipping out on learning and on helping my characters gain EXP. I also feel like the battles are too simplistic. I'd have liked a more complex combat system as far as offensive moves are concerned.
Overall I think it's a fun and effective way to memorize Hiragana, but it could be so much better. I'd recommend it for those who are absolute beginners in the language.
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