So far, so good.

I have been trying to learn Japanese here and there for a couple years and this game may be just what I need to focus a little more on it.

I have learned Hiragana and Katakana plus some Kanji but always forget what I don't use so this game will be an awesome tool to keep it fresh and learn more ways to use it and understand it better.

This was a very fun & exciting game for me! In just a little over a month, I learned all 71 hiragana characters with this game. If you love RPGs, have a very strong passion & desire for learning Japanese, I highly recommend getting this game. For me it was worth every penny. & now I can't wait for Learn Japanese To Survive: Katakana War! さよなら！

Gabin you got me damn it... Never open steam during summer sales after a night of drinking

sick game that helps you understand and comprehend basic japanese. keeps you interested with constant learning and twists to keep you thinking.
only thing they could have done to make this better is voice acting for pronounication, rather than it done by a computer.

Hey! This is pretty good! After 8 hours I've learnt how to say けつをたべる

Good game:)
Pros:
- Simple game
- Doesnt take space on my HDD
- Does the job in teaching you Japanese
Cons:
- Shoulda of ... (better story)
- Coulda ... (better graphics)
- Woulda... (this and that)
Other:
Fun for one who truly wishes to learn Japanese :)
がんばって

Amazing game, not only is it educational but the story is pretty neat. I'm almost finished beating the first part and can't wait to buy the 2nd game. I trully hope we get to see the 3rd Arc where we get to learn Kanji. I have spoken to lots of people about kanji and they are frightened and disinteresed in learning it...I say to the makers of sleepyDuck to wipe that idea from the face of the world with your upcoming 3rd arc Kanji Battle. Everyone should learn another language, it's backed up by reasearch that it's good for your brain, but making it fun ....I beleive only Sleepy Duck is the only one on Earth that can do it. I'm cheering for you sensei!!!

Excellent educational tool. I've struggled to learn hiragana on my own but this game has done a magnificent job of helping me on my way.

Theoretically, while using this game, I am meant to be learning Japanese and having fun.
I am learning some Japanese. I am not having fun.

The lesson sets are fair educational material, with voice clips and tips on writing the hiragana, which are welcome enhancements. The music is fairly good. As a game, however, Hiragana Battle combines the worst missteps of the JRPG genre into a single frustrating experience. Gameplay is clunky and slow, made up of grindy battles in which every attack can take upwards of half a dozen key strokes. You can also use the mouse, but the game isn't well-geared to that either, and you have to click on the hiragana in the tiny menus instead where they loom large on the battle screen.

Drilling the Hiragana by selecting (or better, typing) matching English syllables is a fine thought for practicing them, but every element of the interface seems designed to take as long as possible to navigate and use. Or more likely, they were the default settings of a sort of JRPG-maker program that the devs didn't bother to find a way to improve, despite the fact that they cripple the experience by inserting pointless user-unfriendliness into everything.

Quests and story progression are not special, except that they also are laden with pointless, time-consuming delays and lazy design. Obstacles appear and disappear without explanation to railroad you through puzzles and the game takes up even more of your time with unskippable dialogue and cutscenes designed to show and tell you everything obvious so that you don't get a chance to explore anything on your own. For example, there is a quest to fix the broken bridge (of course) with three nearby logs. You will know where to find them without needing to explore because if you so much as approach the bridge, for the first, second, or twentieth time, your guide NPC will helpfully and vocally wish that you had some materials to fix it with, and you get to watch the camera slowly pan over to where the logs you need to go get are, and then slowly pan back. Then when you pick them up, you are treated to an identical dialogue pop-up congratulating you on finding each individual log, despite the fact that they are right next to one another.

There is no way to skip or quicken the repetitive animations, cutscenes and dialogue boxes that quickly become extremely tiresome. There is, however, a hotkey to quit to menu without confirmation and without saving, so you can lose all your session's progress with the press, even the accidental press, of a single button.

I would love to have games help me learn, but when my blood pressure is screaming because I am too frustrated by abysmal game design to focus on anything else, I don't learn very well. Google Slime Forest for a more user-friendly and less insulting, albeit also less pretty, guide to Japanese Hiragana and Katakana, available for free.

It took me about a month, but this game has succeeded in teaching me Hiragana. It has everything needed for learning it, and it's really well paced. It helped with learning the correct pronunciation of each character, as well as showing how to draw it, as well as showing slight variations on what we might see.

For the pacing of the game, each "chapter" would introduce about 5 new characters to remember. It would go one by one with pronunciation and how to draw the character. You really need a pencil & paper to copy it down. Once I had my next set of characters, I would save & quit, and spend a few days practicing and memorizing these characters. Once I had them memorized, I returned to the game to continue playing, where the game would use an RPG encounter system to practice what I had remembered, and I would do this without referencing my notes. This pacing worked perfectly for me.

In between, it would also show some common words, as well as some basic Hiragana grammar and special characters to know about. My notebook has 2 pages full of notes. One page for the 70 different characters, and another page for words that were taught.

It doesn't do much in teaching actual Japanese or overall grammar of Japanese, but learning how to read & write in Japanese is a very useful first step. All this is exactly as the product describes itself, and it has delivered on what it promised.