I found the first game in this series years ago, back when I was still working at the tourist information desk. I wishlisted it and a couple years later found the following two games. They're all called Learn Japanese to Survive, but also Hiragana Battle, Katakana War and Kanji Combat respectively. Each game focuses on one of the three Japanese writing systems.
Hiragana Battle
In this game we meet Claire who lives in a remote northern village/country. The village/country is attacked by a wizard and his hiragana shaped warriors. The village/country are unable to defeat the warriors, and enlist the help of Misaki, a Japanese tutor. Claire is joined by Eric and Leon and off they go to defeat the hiragana warriors. The group finds out that the warriors are being summoned by a wizard named Noburo and after they've saved their country from the warriors they head to Japan to bring the final fight to Noburo and his sister Hana. The game is very straight-forward. You'll learn all the hiragana characters, complete with writing animations, and there's the possibility of infinite repetition. There are a few pure vocabulary lessons as well, and if you do the side-quests you also get some basic phrases. I knew all the hiragana coming into this game, and I finished it only having learnt two new words (あひる (ahiru) for duck and もうふ (moufu) for blanket) :P That being said, I do have some questions regarding some of the words they used for vocabulary in this game. Like じどうしゃ (jidousha) for car. Sure it works and people will get what you mean, but it sounds strange. It's like if a person would go around referring to cars as "automobiles" and you'd low-key wonder which century this person comes from.
Katakana War
This game actually takes place in Japan! The player character is an exchange student who knows zero Japanese and they are joined by a bunch of other exchange students who also know zero Japanese, and a young Japanese English teacher named Daisuke, who initially shows the group how to defeat the katakana warriors and afterwards begins to teach the group katakana. This game takes place ten years after Hiragana Battle, and Daisuke has heard stories about it, which is how he knows how to defeat the katakana warriors. This game also has a dating sim aspect, but we don't get any romance, only friendship, which makes me sad because I want to keep Daisuke-sensei. Other than the dating sim aspect and the more polished look this game works exactly the same as Hiragana Battle. You learn the characters over the course of the game, along with writing animations, and once again there's the possibility for infinite repetition. There are also some pure vocabulary lessons and the side-quests add some more phrases and words. Same as before; I knew katakana going into this game and yet I kept mixing up シ (shi) and ツ (tsu), and ソ (so) and ン (n). Business as usual. I learned a couple of new words in this game too, like ほうき (houki) for broom and かんごし (kangoshi) for nurse. And I also have some questions regarding some of the words. Like イングランド (ingurando) for England... Last I checked it was イギリス (igirisu)... One of the few countries that don't have the exact same name in Japanese as in English. But same situation as with Hiragana Battle, a person would understand you no matter which one you use. Same goes for スクール (sukuuru) instead of 学校 (gakkou) for school and テキストブック (tekisutobukku) instead of 教科書 (kyoukasho) for textbook. In this game the warriors aren't summoned by magic, instead they have arrived from outer space to reclaim their ancestral home.
Kanji Combat
Once again we're a group of exchange students in Japan. This game has the most polished story and the characters even get proper background stories. This is the game I was actually the most excited to play, because while I do know kanji my reading has become atrocious since I graduated. So being all excited I brought out my old denshi-jisho (electronic dictionary) and got started. I soon realised that this game only covers the most basic kanji. Even including the ones learned in side-quests, I came away from this game having learnt only one single new kanji (算). Oh well... I did get my reading brushed up some. This game has a dating sim aspect, same as Katakana War, but in this game too, we only get friendship and no romance. Which sucks because I'd totally follow Elliott to London (why didn't I get to have a say in that!? T_T). In any case, this game takes place five years after Katakana War, which Elliot mysteriously knows about and never explains why he knows about it. Claire returns in this game and we also get a tie-in with the characters from Katakana War. We find out what happened to Misaki, Eric and Leon, as well as some more background information about Satomi and Kyoko from Katakana War. Basically this is the game that ties them all together. The gameplay is the same as in previous games, with one added aspect: settlement building, which I really liked tbh. One new kanji and a few new words. The mnemonics this game uses to remember kanji made me laugh out loud so many times. Some of them were so ridiculous! In this game the warriors are being summoned from a parallell dimension by shinto priests, who are in a cult dedicated to the obake (the warriors).
Bonus: Love Language Japanese
This is another kind of game that tries to teach the player Japanese. It's a visual novel dating sim kind of game while the other three are basic JRPGs. This game moves through the lessons at a much higher speed than the Learn Japanese to Survive games, but it also allows for infinite repetition and it tests you on everything all the time, to check that you're keeping up. It's the standard scenario for a dating sim imho: you're a guy, an exchange student, who comes to Japan and find yourself in a living situation with only girls. Your teacher and your principal are also women. Being a visual novel dating sim you have the ordinary set-up: Morning scenario before school and during school, in the afternoon/evening you get to choose one activity and then you have a night scenario before your character goes to bed and the whole thing starts over. This game teaches you a lot more grammar than the Learn Japanese to Survive games and even delves into basic sentence structure. However it only briefly touches on kanji at the end and for the rest of the game it's 90% hiragana and 10% katakana.
I had forgotten how hard pure hiragana sentences are to read. Anyway, I went into this game expecting nothing, but came away being really invested in all the characters. Especially Miyuki. No surprise there, me falling for the kendoka :P If there ever is a second installment of this game I'm definitely getting it!
I'd say that if you play these games you have a good base for Japanese. The games teach you how to read and write, which is the first hurdle, and some basic vocabulary and phrases. However none of these games give you much on grammar or sentence structure, aside from Love Language. But if you're teaching yourself Japanese, then these games alongside Duolingo for example would go a long way. Reading and writing through games, grammar and vocabulary through Duolingo. You're not going to be fluent, but you'd probably be able to read some and hold a basic conversation with this combination.
