When I started learning French (probably 8 years ago), I started with Duolingo. Pairing Duolingo with some other tools/methods, I made good progress, and before long, I outgrew it.

Last year, I decided I'd start working on Japanese, so I did the same thing I did before: hit Duolingo hard, listen to audiobooks to build up my phoneme recognition, etc. I was shocked at how slow progress was - not because I wasn't putting in the effort but because it had me redoing over and over and over again the same damn words and phrases. Gohan, mizu, sushi, gohan, gohan, mizu, gohan, sushi.

I was a proponent of the site/app for quite a while - even after I outgrew it - because I legitimately believed it helped me. Now that I've seen what it's become, I can't recommend it to anyone unless you strictly do it for entertainment value with no expectation of useful education.