This question is motivated by this Reddit comment where the author has had success learning Spanish via Anki:
I've been using Anki for about a year (the time it took me to reach C1 in Spanish from zero).
Assuming their self-appraisal is accurate, that's remarkable. However, it makes me wonder if Anki is more beneficial for Spanish than other languages. This might explain why I encounter some students saying Anki is amazing, while others saying it's too much trouble and not worth it (just read instead).
I'm at the stage in learning Chinese where problems arise from knowing too many words without being able to use them fluently. E.g. the other day I wanted to say "fence" in Chinese, and I thought up 栅栏, 围栏, and 篱笆, and didn't know which to use (turns out, they're all okay). And I've had problems with knowing there is a precise word to use (I've studied it), but not being able to recall it quickly, which hurts my fluency. Thus, I feel expanding my vocabulary (such as one typically does with Anki) would not help me, and could possibly make things worse. But maybe this problem wouldn't arise if I were learning Spanish, which is much closer to English (my native language).
Question: Does the usefulness of Anki vary between languages?