Разработчик: Strawberry Games
Описание
Part 2 is a free update and is currently being prepared for release.
In Koe (声) you are sent to Japan as a high school exchange student. Make friends, learn the language and spend time with your homestay family during your time in the rural city of Sakurachou.
Eventually you'll realize this small Japanese city is harbouring a certain peculiarity in its shrine, you'll be transformed and sent on your way to Koe- a world full of cities, caves, shrine, battles along with new friends where your words will be your most powerful weapon.
Using your army of Japanese words you'll be able to attack, defend, heal and grind your way through the vast overworld, while returning to Sakuracho to learn the words you need to strengthen your arsenal. With your friends, will you be able to uncover the mystery of the princess Fleur and her family?
KEY FEATURES
Koe (声) is a narrative driven JRPG-inspired language learning game that aims to introduce the player to the Japanese language over the length of a modern and full RPG. Designed and developed by a team based between Japan, USA, and the UK, Koe (声) is an ongoing development to create a truly unique language learning experience.
A collusion of a rural Japanese city with the fantasy world of Koe is the setting of your journey. As you begin your travels you will find yourself at an airport at the beginning of the game, and will soon travel to your home to the town of Sakurachou. Here you will learn about living in Japan, learning the language and meet a variety of locals along the way. Some native, some from another world.
Your weapon of choice will be the Japanese language itself. By leveling the individual Kana, the building blocks of the Japanese language, you will be taught how to use the language to your advantage in battle as you uncover the secrets of the princess Fleur and the world of Koe.
As words become items, they become your arsenal in your fight against the corruption that threatens Koe. You'll need to learn as much as you can in Sakurachou in order to strengthen the Kana power you have gained, and explore the two worlds to gain as much knowledge as possible.
Поддерживаемые языки: english
Системные требования
Windows
- OS: Windows 10 / 11 64-Bit
- Processor: AMD FX or Intel Pentium Dual Core
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVidia GTX 570 1GB or Radeon 7750 1GB
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 15 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Vulkan supported, A controller is recommended to play Koe
- OS: Windows 10 / 11 64-Bit
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 or Intel Core 5
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: nVidia GTX 1060 6GB or AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 15 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Vulkan supported, A controller is recommended to play Koe
Mac
- OS: Mac OSX 10.11
- Processor: Intel Core i5 (Macbook Pro 2015)
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640
- Storage: 15 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Metal supported, A controller is recommended to play Koe
- OS: Mac OSX 10.13
- Processor: Intel Core i7 (Macbook Pro 2017)
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Radeon Pro 460MX
- Storage: 15 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Metal supported, A controller is recommended to play Koe
Linux
- OS: Ubuntu 14.04 or later, Steam OS
- Processor: AMD FX or Intel Pentium Dual Core
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: nVidia GTX 570 1GB or Radeon 7750 1GB
- Storage: 15 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Vulkan supported, A controller is recommended to play Koe
- OS: Ubuntu 14.04 or later, Steam OS
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 or Intel Core i5
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: nVidia GTX 1060 6GB or AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB
- Storage: 15 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Vulkan supported, A controller is recommended to play Koe
Отзывы пользователей
The game resembles Persona very much, though, of course, it's nowhere near budget-wise. While it shows, it doesn't take away from the story or gameplay. It's great fun if you like JRPGs and don't mind the graphics being a bit rough around the edges. The game is a bit slow sometimes and a lot of locations seem to be a bit bland, but it still manages to make language learning fun.
For Japanese learners, there is one big caveat: you won't really benefit language-wise from playing it, unless you're at least pre-intermediate. I would say the people that will benefit the most would be intermediate learners, (N3-N2 level of 日本語能力試験). You will be able to understand most of what is being said, but will still be able to learn a lot of new stuff.
If you're a beginner, you will simply not understand that much and will either end up frustrated or will simply keep reading everything in English, thus hindering your own progress.
Disclaimer: Pretty early on in game...
I really like this game overall.
If you follow youtuber game gengo and like his style/recommendayions - I think you will like this game.
There is lots of listening practice, ability to see a log and replay sentences and toggle english rough translation on and off.
I would describe it as an immersion experience. You don't have to understand all of it... You can pick up bits and pieces of words/meanings of sentences as you go. You could also go back and do translations yourself at any point.
However, maybe it could have started with simpler language and more repetition of simple grammar patterns at the start. Your character is a foreign exchange student. So it could have made sense for the other characters to speak a little more slowly/easier sentences to start.
In summary, a good game with lots and lots of content, listening practice, and learning from context in an immersive way.
The battle system I believe is also designed to reinforce words and learn from context.
I think the developer has done a good job :)
Waited so many years for this game, very disappointing.
The general idea is great but the execution is lacking, especially for the price.
The biggest issue is memory performance. of the 3 hours I played, I was staring at the loading screen for 2 hours. Most cases are just scenes without any game play or interaction. You just press A to continue and then its loading the next scene for like 2 min. Also the fighting system makes no sense and does not help with learning. The game could really have done better. Games like Fun China World have set a really good standard for interactive game play when it comes to Asian language learning. I fell like at least partly this could have been done with this game too but I have no motivation left in me to stare at the loading screen.
Koe is not such a bad game overall, but it's not a good resource for learning Japanese (maybe only good for intermediate or advanced Japanese speakers who have been seriously learning for 2+ years), the only reason I bought this was because it could help learn and practice, and it kind of does but not well at all.
The game does give vocabulary and Kanji as you progress, but it's not much really and the order in which it teaches some things doesn't help. There are many conversations through the game in japanese, but it's pointless because the game has an extremely slow pace teaching things, and the level of japanese used in conversation is hard.
The overall difficulty of the game doesn't really work, it was patched to make it easier at anytime to fix that. There are opportunities to fix some things, and to add many more japanese lessons from the teacher, and a way to review stuff learned with exams, but I'd say the result after so many years is quite disappointing, the main thing in the game was supposed to be teaching japanese.
only played the beginning so far, but I'm really enjoying it though! You will be immediately thrown into learning japanese, so i suggest knowing hiragana at the very least before jumping in. I'll be using this game in conjunction with other apps and a tutor. This game, so far, has been good for vocabulary. I do wish i could reverse the left and right for the right joystick however, little annoying. Can't find anywhere in settings in-game where i could change it. Maybe through steam its possible?
Still really early in the game, initial impressions:
As someone who is still struggling to understand native Japanese content, really enjoying all this quality of life options that let me play the game as an intermediate step towards Japanese VNs or manga chapters.
I set it to have the Japanese dialog first in the textbox with no furigana so I can try reading the easiest sentences by myself. Then I turn on furigana to review the readings I couldn't recall (most of them) and lastly I reveal the english localization once I feel I gave my best attempt at taking in the meaning.
If it gets too overwhelming I start tuning the time I spend on the Japanese version.
If you're a complete beginner, I think you'll get a lot of mileage out of the item words (飛行機 as a first word might throw you off, it's the only 3 character word for a while, don't worry). My recommendation is to write them down in a piece of paper as best as you can manage with their reading and their meaning. You'll probably feel like you're being bombarded with a torrent of information, some brief notes can help with that.
Consider commiting every kana to memory before starting the game and use Koe to review them. And first of all, don't panic if you can't remember 90% of what you were just taught, it's part of the process! If you still feel like Koe is too fast paced for you consider skimming through a grammar guide like Tae Kim's before playing so you can make the most of Koe.
One thing I'm not sure about is the built-in dictionary. I find it a tad cumbersome to navigate and sort of barebones. A bit janky with mouse + keyboard and barelly usable with a controller (is Koe supposed to be a controller game? Steam warned me about needing one when I launched it). At the very least it would be handy if I could click on an entry and copy it to my clipboard so I could keep track of new words on my own. None of these are pressing issues.
This is a game I wanted to enjoy playing so badly. Given how rare Japanese learning games are I thought this might be a hidden gem.
However the gameplay is incredibly slow and starts out at first as a visual novel then tries to introduce a battling mechanic whereby you use the words you learned to do combat. Graphically the game is alright, it's definitely showing it's 10 year old age but I'm surprised how jam packed with environmental art and characters the game is full of.
However the actual gameplay was lacking and the battle system wasn't clear on how you're actually learning the language.
Also it doesn't gradually introduce you to the language, it throws you right into it. Despite taking a year of Japanese I could only recognize about 50% of the words introduced to me.
I do recommend this game for learning Japanese and reinforcing words/readings this game is pretty good. You do have to make a conscious effort to ignore all the English but after a bit I was able to do it. The combat is a bit weird because there is no reason to learn the reading or what the word means to win. Chaining words also doesn't really matter like if you were trying to respond or make coherent sentences. There are a bit of graphical glitches but nothing absolutely terrible (characters floating, gliding, poping in and out of existence, weird animations), I'm sure that the majority can be patched out.
What I would like to see tho, having the option to remove English all together and have the Japanese be in the box. Or better yet, the ability to have the text swap places. Have the English be floating outside of the box but having the Japanese be the focal point in the box.
Overall I like the game a lot! I do recommend it and I hope that some of these ideas get implemented and bugs worked out!
EDIT: The ability to switch what text or language you see in the dialogue box can now be changed to anything you want! Japanese in the box and English on top or just Japanese! This is such a fast update! Even more reason to support!
Before we begin, this review will have quite a bit of negativity but overall I am positive towards the product.
The idea of a Japanese learning RPG is nothing new. We have seen several of them before and personally I believe it is a good format. Makes sense to use a genre that has a lot of repetition. In most these games, the Japanese is implemented into the battle system as a translation challenge when attacking. Koe does it slightly differently by having players choose a word as the attack itself, with each syllable of the word gaining experience but needing a rest between attacks or it is weakened.
The problem with the attacking is that it doesn't require the player to do any translation. When selecting your attack, you just look at a bar that shows how strong the attack will be. At the start you might need to plan a little more as you have few words you can use but as you gain more, it leaves little reason to plan attacks. Choose a word with an element the enemy is weak to and that hasn't been weakened. At no point have you had to do any translation or reinforcement of the word. You might not have even looked at the word you used.
Then we get to the way words are learned. The very first word the game gave me was 飛行機 (ひこうき, hikouki). This is a useful word but it is not a starter word. The word is made of three common kanji but two of which are quite complicated with many strokes. The game makes no effort to break the word down or present it to the player when they are ready.
This leaves the game as useless for Japanese learning. Does that mean you shouldn't play the game? That will depend on how you use it. The game is not a learning tool but instead a consolidation tool. The player needs to have a reasonable understanding of kanji before playing, at that point the exposure will be of benefit.
So where does this game fit best into your personal Japanese learning journey? My belief would be as you start to get into native Japanese material. One of the hardest parts is how exhausting it can be to first try native materials. This game can ease that transition due to having a decent amount of Japanese but it doesn't overload you.
Other ways the game provides exposure to the language is that all dialogue is in spoken in Japanese. All dialogue can also be shown in Japanese. This is great but badly implemented. The dialogue box will always be in English. Even when you have the text in Japanese, it will put the text above the dialogue box with no gui element. This leaves both the audio and Japanese text as background noise as the player will naturally end up looking at the English. Changing the dialogue box to display Japanese will help a lot, then the player will be reading the Japanese as the dialogue is spoken, reinforcing both. Then have the English display with a button press when the player is ready.
I've only focussed on the Japanese at this point but what about the game itself? It's okay. The random battles are far too frequent, making the open areas to be a pain to explore. I haven't played enough to comment too much on the design on the areas but thus far they are completely uninteresting.
Graphically the game is a mixed bag. The environments look pretty good but the character models are ugly. The 2D portrait art is especially bad, not up to standard for a professionally produced product. Annoyingly the game has great pixel art but is reserved for loading screens and occasional transition screens.
The engine is also not the best. Game areas are small which lead to constant loading. Occasionally learning prompts will pop up for no reason as the screen transitions but they are too quick to have a proper read. The game appears to be missing basic options such as inverting camera directions horizontally and it is reversed by default, leaving it feel terrible for players who prefer the opposite.
Never heard of this before finding in discovery queue--bought instantly, glad I did.
I completely forgot this was an edutainment game--the atmosphere is great, and it's clear the developers put in the effort to make a solid, polished JRPG, not a "vocab-tool-shaped-like-a-JRPG". The immersion is actually immersive; The Persona 5 style intro/overworld (haven't gotten that far yet) works well for naturally acquiring vocab. Honestly, I was enjoying the story/characters/combat even if it was just a normal JRPG.
Also, the battle animations/spells are the greatest thing ever--casting "Airplane" and "Person" was worth the price of the entire game by itself.
Really well made, looking forward to finishing it.
Added to my wishlist in early 2017. "Released soon" it said.
It is better than I expected, and it helps keep my Japanese level from dropping. Recommended.
I can tell that a lot of love and dedication went into making this game.
Initial vibes feels like I'm playing a Persona game with an emphasis on the Japanese language.
A lot of the dialogue is voiced in Japanese and very early on you can access all the hiragana and katakana for any individual study. I'm not that far in yet, but I am excited to see how much this game has to offer.
This will definitely be a fun way to supplement Japanese study! Everyone, good luck in your studies. がんばってください！
Waited 8 years for this game, worth the wait.
Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Strawberry Games |
| Платформы | Windows, Mac, Linux |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 31.01.2025 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 64% положительных (14) |