Fantastic addition to a great educational series. Fun, with a cute and engaging narrative, while also being a great resource for drilling your katakana learning. It helps if you played the first game or already studied Japanese before coming here (especailly learning your hiragana). But if this is somehow your starting point, it will do its best to guide you along.
The only real downside to this game is that it was made SO WELL in comparrison to the first game in the series. While Hiragana Battle is great in its own right, the game is very old and clunky, and has not aged well. It feel like comparing one of the classic Final Fantasy games to something more modern in that series, like Final Fantasy VI or VII. With Katakana War, the game is fairly well optimized, with lots of quality of life improvements that are non-existent in its predecessor: no more random encounters, more simple and fluid leveling system, achievements, an endless dungeon for easy drilling of everything you've learned, and even lots of scenes that are fully voice-acted, which was a extremely pleasant surprise.
This all means that if this is your first time engaging with the series, it will be REALLY hard to go back and play the first game after this, without all those quality of life additions. So it's recommended that you start with Hiragana Battle before Katakana War, and tough out learning your hiragana before you move on to the katakana edition. Which, honestly, is the more appropriate way to learn the language anyway, so you're doing yourself no harm by starting with Hiragana Battle. Once you graduate to the sequel, you'll be pleasantly surprised by how much the team has been able to develop the series, and excited for their upcoming Kanji release.
The only real downside to this game is that it was made SO WELL in comparrison to the first game in the series. While Hiragana Battle is great in its own right, the game is very old and clunky, and has not aged well. It feel like comparing one of the classic Final Fantasy games to something more modern in that series, like Final Fantasy VI or VII. With Katakana War, the game is fairly well optimized, with lots of quality of life improvements that are non-existent in its predecessor: no more random encounters, more simple and fluid leveling system, achievements, an endless dungeon for easy drilling of everything you've learned, and even lots of scenes that are fully voice-acted, which was a extremely pleasant surprise.
This all means that if this is your first time engaging with the series, it will be REALLY hard to go back and play the first game after this, without all those quality of life additions. So it's recommended that you start with Hiragana Battle before Katakana War, and tough out learning your hiragana before you move on to the katakana edition. Which, honestly, is the more appropriate way to learn the language anyway, so you're doing yourself no harm by starting with Hiragana Battle. Once you graduate to the sequel, you'll be pleasantly surprised by how much the team has been able to develop the series, and excited for their upcoming Kanji release.