My French Coach and My Spanish Coach - Reception

Reception

My French Coach and My Spanish Coach have received generally favorable reviews from several video game publications. On Metacritic, a website that compiles scores from various video game reviews, My Spanish Coach received a 73/100, based on seven reviews. In a review of the DS versions of both games, IGN called them a "great learning experience" and a more entertaining alternative to traditional methods of learning French and Spanish such as "ours of boring exercises and outdated videos". Eurogamer claimed the games were not substitutes for proper language lessons, but admitted that "as tools for improving your language skills, whether you're starting from scratch or have some basic knowledge, they're great". In a review of the DS version of My French Coach, Nintendo World Report called the game "not be the hottest game to ever sit in your DS, but it is an unusually polished product that achieves the edutainment holy grail – it makes learning easy and fun". During the 2007 Christmas holiday season, video game retailer GameStop recommended My Spanish Coach for "The Academic Gamer". My Spanish Coach led all Nintendo DS games in sales during the week of August 15, 2008 to August 21, 2008.

The gameplay received mixed reviews from critics. In a review of the PSP version of My Spanish Coach, IGN noted that acquiring mastery points in the minigames lead to "quite a bit of grinding" due to the game's repetitive structure. Nevertheless, IGN accepted that the repetition was an effective way to learn the vocabulary, and noted that "icking up on things like gender and age, emphasis and the breakdowns of the actual language itself and proper/casual ways of conversing are made fairly clear and reinforced regularly". IGN's review of the DS versions of both games commented that neither game taught the future or past tense, calling it one of the "most disappointing" aspects of the game, but praised the effective incorporation of the DS stylus into the minigames. Eurogamer noted that the minigames were "only really good for practicing reading" due to a lack of games for practicing proper speaking, but GameZone disagreed, noting that the player was able to hear their attempt to speak the French or Spanish words alongside the correct pronunciation during lessons, and praised this aspect as the "most interesting and intriguing feature of ". In a review of the DS version of My Spanish Coach, Nintendo World Report lamented that many of the minigames "exhibit the same type of unimaginative boringness" and that "it takes ages to unlock new lessons and mini-games"; however, it noted that the minigames were "extremely effective" and "constructed extremely well" in terms of teaching the language. Nintendo World Report's review of the DS version of My French Coach called the game's reference section "a very handy travel dictionary", noting that having a dictionary list and a phrasebook with audio files that could bookmark chosen phrases was "an absurd value".

The games' graphics and audio also received praise and criticism from reviewers. IGN's review of the PSP version of My Spanish Coach noted that the fact that the game appeared on multiple platforms contributed to its "sparse look and feel" because the games' graphics and audio were made for the Nintendo DS. Eurogamer praised the games' "clean, crisp visuals" and "jolly accordion music and jolly fiesta music". In contrast, IGN's review of the DS versions of both games called the music "catchy but repetitive" and the graphics "cute but nothing to write home about". GameZone noted that "he visual concept was obviously not a front runner in conception", and that the audio of neither game " anything remotely special". Nintendo World Report made note of the games' narrator during the lessons, praising its "clear and coherent glory" in terms of pronouncing the words correctly.