Kanji no Owari-Learn Japanese! for Android
This game will not help you learn anything. It is just a review game. You already need to know Kana and Kanji if you want to play. There isn't really even a level to learn how to play.
The game is okay. It's different from the other kanji learning apps. Still, there's no easing into it. I had no idea how to play it when I first started. I did fine, as I already know quite a bit if kanji, but for a beginner the game is hard. It gives you 60 seconds to learn five different kanji...then it changes the kanji completely, making the kanji you just learn fall right from your memory. It also gets rather repetitive and boring at times. Fine for intermediates, bad for beginners.
First of all, it's just a demo, not really free. Second of all, the animation is incredibly ugly. Third of all, the "gameplay" is so boring and repetitive I would rather just review kana/kanji on my own. It's total garbage.
Repetitive but as for studying its alright. Bad for beginners. I only could do it because I know a bit of Chinese which is similar to Japanese
Good idea / concept , think "typing of the dead " - but you might consider tweaking down the difficulty level a bit. It feels kinda extreme / unfair.
First App I've spent money on in years and don't regret it, but it's got some gaps that keep it from 5 stars. It's a great way to make tedious memorization engaging and I grind through it regularly. The optional review screen and ability to choose betwen the two alphabets or to combine them are excellant means of limiting the amount of information I have to focus on in the beginning. BUT: I cannot find any options that let me study kanji as advertised, the "kanji list" is blank, and several stages are missing a boss fights.
So far this is the most interesting Japanese learning game I've found. Helps me to memorize the Hiragana and Katakana. Why can't I pick the Kyonshi class though(the girl with the fan)?
It runs upside down! And no possibility to rotate it in a proper way. Please help! All other games (e.g. Angry birds) run correctly on my device!
Great for review, but not initial learning. Good study tool for intermediate users. If you're new to kanji this doesn't really help you learn.
I have had this app for awhile and I think it's a great way to get me to memorize hiragana and katakana. the graphics are enjoyable and I like the upgrading stats aspect, gets me coming back to play as I get better. enjoying the free version =w=
I hoped the negative reviews were just over sensitive folks who just had a hard time learning the kana, but no. They were all absolutely correct. The implementation of this game is AWFUL. It doesn't take advantage of any known good study methods, like repetition to encourage retention, jumping to full new random sets each battle (a battle only takes about a minute). You can't learn from this game. You could maybe... MAYBE review with it. But even though I am extremely comfortable with my handle on hiragana and katakana, it was stupid hard to play. The developer of this app needs to enlist the help of an educator to get a good algorithm for the battles and a teaching mode.
May be too hard/fast for beginners but if you need to refresh basic Kanji or work on speed recognition this is extremely effective, and it will add in the occasional compound which is nice (assuming you already know these characters)
Maybe the best of its kind, but I don't feel like going on. One kanji, a series of meanings, ok. Maybe the advanced version actually combines kanji.
Totally amazing, just starting learning japanese a few weeks ago and played this for an hour or so till my brain was exhausted, very fun.
The idea is great but the execution seems to not have been thought out well. The game is meant to be playable for beginners but there is no learning curve. It just jumps straight into a selection of random characters of varying difficulty. Additionally, there are too many waves before we get to the boss. It would be much better as short rounds, maybe around 6-8 waves each. The set up of the opening/menu UI also needs to be made more user friendly.
Runs upside-down and there seems to be no way to flip it the right way up, making it unusable on a tablet with a keyboard attached. Supporting only landscape orientation is fine, but it should at least rotate correctly. As a game it seems boring. As a way of reviewing Japanese characters it seems ok, but I spend more time looking for which of the four corners has the answer than I do thinking about the answer (probably because it seems you can only do kana in the demo so there was no challenge).
I pressed the back button quite often by accident, and lose my progress in the map. Would be good if there is confirmation to avoid such accident. Overall, the game is fun and i learned quite a lot from it, im looking forward for next update (please make them prettier). Ps. There are still some typo though, such as Tsubasa is written as Tsuabasa in her bio.
Not much enjoyment for a "game", but for studying it's better than just memorizing by the book and practice writing repeatedly. Can't say it's that fun though, also the game's orientation is stuck and won't rotate 180° following the device.
The game is okay. It's different from the other kanji learning apps. Still, there's no easing into it. I had no idea how to play it when I first started. I did fine, as I already know quite a bit if kanji, but for a beginner the game is hard. It gives you 60 seconds to learn five different kanji...then it changes the kanji completely, making the kanji you just learn fall right from your memory. It also gets rather repetitive and boring at times. Fine for intermediates, bad for beginners.
I love the idea of this game, and it has some nice polish, but that's the only good thing I can say about this game. I started out with just the hiragana, which was kind of fun at first because I already knew it, but I can tell that this would be a nightmare for a beginner. It starts with 5 random characters for you to study for 1 minute, then you use them, multiple choice style, to attack monsters, then a whole new set on the next wave! It's way too complicated, and with 16 or so waves it gets boring fast.
Nice learning app. It looks like even I will be able to learn something from it, but why it turns my screen upside down? It is little confusing (one star down). But I love the idea.
This game will not help you learn anything. It is just a review game. You already need to know Kana and Kanji if you want to play. There isn't really even a level to learn how to play.
The app immediately goes to landscape, but upside-down to the way I prefer to hold it (the USB cord gets in the way!). Until the time when the app will allow me to decide which way is "up", it stays off my Nexus 7.
I really want to like this, but when I load it on my tablet, it locks orientation to upside down. Given that my tablet is in a case with a stand and only really sits one way, this is extremely awkward.
Poor control system that barely responds. Needs to allow pressing further than it does. Having to constantly move my fingers out of the easy of the bottom right character forcing a rescan of the screen and making it harder than it should be.
Repetitive but as for studying its alright. Bad for beginners. I only could do it because I know a bit of Chinese which is similar to Japanese
An excellent tutor for those training to memorize those troublesome kanji. If I were to suggest anything be changed, however, it would be to have a "word gems" section in the main menu so you can review your prizes and commit them to memory.
A really cool game, and pretty fun, but covers such large sections of material at a time, and at such a speed in game, that it's ideal for strengthening existing skills, but terrible for trying to learn them from scratch. If you need to solidify your base, this is your game. If you need to build your base, look elsewhere.
Really liking the game, love how you can choose from hiragana to kanji; it has been helping me to better learn the hiragana since it is hands on and repetitive. Heard there will be a pc release at some point looking forward to that as well.
Not that good. I was hoping for something like, learn japanese to survive! Hiragana battle.
I have downloaded the game but it sticks frequently and restarts.
So far this is the most interesting Japanese learning game I've found. Helps me to memorize the Hiragana and Katakana. Why can't I pick the Kyonshi class though(the girl with the fan)?
There are no instructions on how to play this game. At least not that I could find. There were words to review but I didn't know what to do with them. My character was just standing there being attacked.
But some of the romaji equivalents are wrongly written eg: Ji + Yu shouldnt be written as Jiu but Jyu
If you're a gamer this is a good method to use. However it could use some phrases that people would normally say like "Arigato Gozaimasu"
It's wasn't that bad to remember 5 kanji in 60 second , it force us to become more familiar to those words . Tough , it really help.
No explanation of how to play the game, which is just bizarre, I couldn't work it out so I just stood still getting attacked while I pushed everything I could see on screen but nothing happened.
Good idea. Too bad I have no interest right now
This game is a great way to keep katakana, hiragana, and Kanji fresh in your mind. It's fun and addictive!
by Y####:
This is so poorly thought out and executed it's amazing. This is utterly unplayable for a beginner. UI is not user-friendly, system seems broken and pointless, graphics are ugly, and the timing is unforgiving for someone who hasn't just swallowed a handful of Adderall. I'm baffled by the rating. Please stick to art and NOT game development. As someone who tutors world languages the idea is good but the implementation is awful.