Japanese Dungeon: Learn J-Word

The game play is okay. The app is probably fun for beginners. It's annoying to have to start on the first dungeon if you already know hiragana. Especially since you use up energy to play through each level. The extra coin mechanic could be designed for learning, but it's just a mindless and stressful. You don't have to spend money, but it would be more useful to spend it on special words that are curated for learning. Overall, the app is ok. It doesn't get my dungeon crawl feels, and I wish I had my choice of adventurer. If you're more advanced, it will be frustrating having to go through the first few dungeons slowly.

It's a really well-rounded, turn based game (see what I did there?). The graphics are in Classic JRPG-style with comfy textures, art and fonts which rocks! This game succeeds at taking the fear of large tasks, such as learning language, and turning that fear into a cheerful desire to level up in battle. The ads are minimal in size, which I appreciate but do note, there are ads you are sometimes forced to watch for 5 seconds, which is fine in my opinion.

The idea has a great potential, but the implementation is mediocre. It assumes that the user is a complete beginner. Otherwise the user has to complete boring levels or buy credits for a game s/he doesn't know yet. Levels are simply the alphabets and then a-z sorted words with no context. May be useful for complete beginners.

Update: Game is great without ads! It's really helping me learn and memorize hiragana & katakana! Wish there was more practice in each round. ** From previous review: Developer added ability to remove ads but you'll end up clicking an ad several times before you're able to actually purchase "remove ads" option. It's basically extortion through ads.

Everything about it is perfect, except that on the Galaxy S10+ (and I'd assume the other models) the game fills the whole screen, resulting in the camera blocking just a tiny bit of the enemy's health bar during the game. Other than that, definitely worth downloading, it's a ton of fun and helpful for memorization!

The game is great for learning kana, some simple vocab and to improve reading speed. The reason I can't bring myself to give more than 2 stars is the frequency of ads. Quite frankly it's ridiculous. Start the dungeon, watch an ad. Finish the run in 30 seconds. Watch an optional 30-second ad for double the gold. Return to the lobby, watch another ad. All the while, there's a huge banner at the bottom of the screen as well. I wouldn't be surprised if the game was literally more ads than game.

It's a very good study guide for beginners, but retention really requires daily study. Sometimes it feels difficult to recall the characters you've just seen because you don't have an opportunity to write them along with the sound. This app works best as a supplement to other methods of study.

Great App! You can enjoy learning Japanese while taking a journey to a RPG game. I would advise a change on the repetition of one on the same dungeon, I passed some understanding only 3 words. As the character have almost no impact on the level, I would appreciate more classes to play. From learning perspective, I really recommend this app, it really really helps to feel rewarded from learning

I used this everyday for 3 weeks to learn hiragana and katakana. I still haven't mastered them, but it was useful for taking my first steps. I stopped using the app regularly after learning the characters. It doesn't REQUIRE money to use the app or advance in level, but there are ads between levels that you can pay to remove and save a lot of time.

Too many ads. Much too slow paced to use as a learning tool. Loading time delay between questions is about 5 seconds and it takes as much as 25 hits to an enemy to beat a round if under leveled (each round has only 5 new words). That's 2 minutes of time completely wasted! Leveling up is just as painstakingly slow and you're forced to grind low level stages of words already memorized to earn enough JUST to progress at a decent pace. Game is unbalanced as is and more a chore than a tool to learn.

Cute little game. Definitely one of the more entertaining ways I've found to learn a new language. To be fair, the sound could use some work, and I would definitely recommend a third party source for pronunciation. Otherwise, the game is entertaining, uses RPG questing and leveling to give you an incentive to come back to the game, and the 8-bit music is reminiscent of old 8-bit games.

I want to like this app, it's a decent little game to help you learn and remember the kana. However due to badly placed banner ads and no way to remove them (I'd happily pay if given the option) I have to lower my rating. The banner ad covers half of the bottom menu and as yet I can't find a way to remove it, not even an option to pay to get rid of it.

Each stage and level will increase in difficulty as the opponent gets stronger. However, the question and option is completely random and does not increase in difficulty. Thebgame does not use the fact that some hiragana and katana were more similar to another (i.e. wa-re-ne-nu-me-no) which is just a bad game design. To make it easier to progress through lvl, you can buy and lvl up characters. But it is a grind for gold. Not to mention you need to buy diamond to unlock the next stage.

It's basically multiple choice flash cards. Simple enough and decent if you like to tie progression to an arbitrary level or character. I wish there was a way to test out of lower difficulty dungeons though. For someone who has all the Kana memorized, getting through to things you don't already need help on might be a slog.

Works good like a dressed up flash card study game. Works great when combined with another language app, like Duolingo. Duolingo is good for a lesson, Japanese Dungeon is good for testing and memorization. Also, for Dustin Cline's review, the level 2 Dungeon is the next level, not the second stage. What I mean by this is level 1 has like 10 stages inside it. You have to beat 1-1 to 1-10 before you advance to level 2.

This game is the only way I have found to keep me entertained while learning hiragana. It is extremely fun, and the randomness it chooses the characters allows me to actually memorize them instead of what order my answers should be in. It would be nice if the levels combined elements from previous levels though.

I think the game is absolutely amazing! Simple design and gameplay, and very effective reinforcement of language. I tried it on a whim after playing some of the how to survive: hirigana on steam. And I prefer this . Love the little dancey movement they do as it feels like playing games of years past. 11/10 definitely

For me this is an awesome way to learn. This is even a more enjoyable way too play these kinds of games. I hope there is enough content for when I've reached the level I'm currently at with Japanese. Clicking the text box to speed the dialog just resets the same message, making it take longer. Please fix this.

This is a fun way to learn hiragana. It doesn't seem to allow for spaced repetition, so far, but is a fun additional tool to brush up on your syllabries. The english text could do with some improvement but Im guessing the dev is not a native English speaker so it is a very good attempt.

nice app. it's good for word/character recognition. guess right and hit the guy guess wrong get hit. I only gave 4 stars because the English translation is a little bad. not really bad just a little. would be a good app for kids (veteran anime watchers who want to learn Japanese so they don't need subtitles. not so much as I was more focused on symbol recognition rather than speach) still good app

It's fun and creative, but the voices definitely need to be louder. There should be a volume adjuster in the options menu. I'm still enjoying it, but I wonder whether I will eventually find it monotonous. I don't know yet know how expansive the character and equipment upgrades are.

Easy, fun, and educational. Little repiticious but I am only a few quests in. Fighter is nice but different units can also be chosen and upgraded. Continuing the adventure to see where it leads It has been several month in and the game is still really great to play.

This app is a perfect complement for those who want to start the amazing jorney of learning a language: in that case Japanese. It is fun, and help you to memorise what you are learning for yourself or with a teacher in a relaxed way.

it's a good idea to grind it until you know it but the business model is horrible, big banner ads covering the creen and forces you to watch a video every now and then (usually when you just want to go back to the lobby to level up or redo the level). also optional to watch a video and do a *2 to the gold you earned in the level, a 15-30 second ad, who wouldn't? but it makes it tedious and not fun to use. why a video ad in addition to the banner ads? why not have those ads banners as well?

Cool game idea but i found a bug that messes with gameplay. You can't get into the level 2 dungeon from the lobby. The only way to plays those levels is to play the last battle in the level 1 dungeon and then keep playing from there, which will get time consuming the more battles you complete in level 2. Are you suppose to pay gems to get access to level 2, even though you beat level 1?

The dev fixes ok problems regularly, such as an abundance of ads, which are completely optional now! It's fun and fairly competitive with the star and critical system. My only problem is that it's fairly obvious that English isn't the dev's first language but it's still legible.