So I picked up Ubisoft’s My Japanese Coach a month or so ago, and I’ve been slowly progressing through it. There are very few reviews on the internet for the game, and I thought most of them didn’t do the game justice.
Let me start by saying that no I cannot speak or read Japanese, and no, after a month of playing this game maybe 30 minutes a week, I can’t speak it, read it, or understand it. And no this is not the magic solution to your troubles.
I think this game does exactly what it is intended to, to be a sort of coach for your learning. If you were learning basic Japanese, some of the symbols and such, some of the minigames are a great way to reinforce them.
If you are merely like me, just wanting to get a general grasp of what Japanese is, and perhaps get a preview before deciding it is time to actually learn it, then the included phrasebook and some of the early lessons are great.
I didn’t have a clue about Japanese before this game, and I mean it. Asides from sayounara, I was clueless to the symbols, words, etc. With maybe 30 minutes a week on this game, I’m starting to recognize Hiragana and Katakana symbols, I know a few more words, and since I am still really early on, I can construct very very very very simple sentences with the extremely limited vocabulary I have.
It’s nice to see that I’m ranked about a preschooler (though I feel that’s an awfully generous ranking).
Anyways, to cut to the chase, some of the mini games are fairly standard, and some of them are fairly good. I can imagine that they’d get a little repetitive, as there are only 12, and probably hours and hours of material to go through.
It isn’t a magic game that will let you learn Japanese in no time, or at all, but it has a nice dictionary and phrasebook. The lessons are nice and short, and actually gets pretty complex for something like this.
Overall, I highly recommend trying this game out. I am aware that there are other Ubisoft Coach games, and it seems to me they are really milking it, but they are genuinely decent games. It is more interesting than class, and because of the repeats of the games and the small amount of material in each lesson, all the words are really pounded into you.
If you have no clue about a certain language and want to just try it out, definitely pick this up. I am also trying out My Chinese Coach, which is quite similar. Having learned Cantonese before, the Mandarin in the game still proved to easy. I’m guessing that if you are taking the language at school as a second language you are already beyond the highest level of the game.
Try it out! 🙂
I really like the idea of that game.. I really need to learn japanese ç_ç to many games, anime and manga! Anyway i’m italian sooooo.. do you know if there is an italian version out there?
Once I get time I will have to use some of it on this. It will come in handy for trying to figure out what exactly I’m supposed to do in Japanese RPGs I am play testing.
Hm, I also recognized that ubisoft is making tons of that Coaches, so I put them into the profit-oriented group.
I don’t think this coach realy helps that much, but maybe I will try it if I have enough time, lol…
Yea it doesn’t help much, and seriously some of the coach games are hilarious, what’s with the “My Weight Loss Coach”, but this one is fun enough.
This is a decent little cart. Some of the minigames feel a bit pointless, but I did learn a few words. Do I remember then right now? Uh…well…no. But if I really cared and really stuck with it it might be of use.
And I think the worst Ubisoft release is My Dog Coach with Cesar Milan. No joke.
i was actually waiting for a game like this after seeing my french coach and i have to say it’s actually a very good game and the whack a mole mini game is more enjoyable than you’d expect
I had the pleasure of playing this game too. I have zero knowledge of the Japanese language so the first test was horrific. I didn’t get many right obviously but the game did get a little repetitive. I loved the voice feature though as it helped with the phonics aspect of the language.
Sayonara.
I last took an elementary course in Jap in 1990, some 18 years ago. This game is really a fun refresher on what I had learnt many years ago.
aero125
Singapore
I played this game for a bit, however, I found this to be a rather boring experience.
does it really helps you study japanese?
that would be impressive (and pretty cool when you have to sit in a car or airplane for hours :D)
ive been searching for these kind of games for a long time, but i always ended up with stupid languages like english, french, germann …{and no dutch :(}
but japanese really interests me, because it is THE country i want to visit !
As someone who has taken college level courses in Japanese, it looks like it would be very helpful to try this. What better to teach than a game?