Although the Sakura Wars franchise has been insanely popular in Japan for nearly 25 years,
since the era of the Sega Saturn, it’s a property that has gone largely unnoticed in
the west. Prior to this year, five major Sakura Wars games have been released on mainline
consoles, but only the fifth in the franchise had ever been localized into English, and
that probably wouldn’t be my first choice if you were to ask me which Sakura Wars game
you should start with. But now Sega has released an entirely new Sakura Wars game in the west
with a great English localization, and after having played it all the way through, this
might just be the right game to introduce you to this universe.
Shin Sakura Taisen was released on the PlayStation 4 at the end of 2019 in Japan, and has been
branded internationally simply as Sakura Wars for its English release in 2020. There’s
a very specific type of person who will probably be interested in Sakura Wars, and that person
is probably already an anime fan. The franchise is deeply rooted in a history of being part
visual novel, part dating simulator, and part tactical RPG. For this most recent release,
now that the game is in a fully 3D environment, it feels a little less like a visual novel,
and more like you’re watching and interacting with a fully animated anime series. The battle
mechanics have now transitioned from tactical RPG to action RPG, which probably helped make
it a better candidate for English localization.
Sega is really pushing for the idea that this Sakura Wars is a soft reboot rather than a
direct sequel. And to a point, that is indeed true. I found that it was very easy to just
jump right into with little explanation of the games that came before it. However, as
someone who has played previous Sakura Wars games, I also can’t completely say that
it isn’t a sequel to those older titles. This game will occasionally give you some
sweeping backstory about older characters and events that happened prior to this game,
and while you don’t need to know anything about those events, it’s definitely an exciting
treat for anybody who has.
Taking place in an alternate 1940, you play as Seijuro Kamiyama, a former Navy captain
who has been assigned to be the leader of the all-female Floral Assault team, whose
base of operations is a theater, and whose team members all perform in the theater’s
musical performances. When demons begin to attack the city, you and your teammates jump
into your giant steam-and soul-powered mechs known as Koubu, oftentimes also called Spiricle
Armor, and mow down the demonic onslaught.
You’ll have five different women in your team, and it’s important that you’re nice
and even somewhat romantic with all five of them, as raising their affections also improves
how well they’ll work with you once you finally get into a battle. The LIPS system
(short for Live and Interactive Picture System) has been a long-time staple of the franchise,
in which you only have a short amount of time to choose among three different dialogue options.
Oftentimes, those choices result in increasing your bond, decreasing it, or sometimes even
just being neutral and making no change one way or the other. Although the negative options
will usually result in an amusing cutscene, if it’s your first time playing through
the game, you may want to avoid negative choices as often as possible if you want to have strong
teammates in battle.
Sakura Wars is an extremely narrative-heavy game. It was something I expected as a long-time
fan of the franchise, but newer players should definitely be aware that you’re going to
be running around and doing a lot of talking to other characters, watching a lot of character
development, and interacting sparingly with the environment in order to move the plot
forward. This largely stems from Sakura Wars’ previous history as a visual novel experience,
so be ready to have combat be secondary to story.
However, there are plenty of other little tasks to keep you busy throughout the game.
You’ll be able to collect bromides--that is, photographs of your teammates that have
been a collectable staple of the Imperial Theater since the franchise’s inception.In
this game you collect images not only of your current teammates, but of teams from other
cities across the world that you’ll meet, as well as teams from previous games, making
it a touching reminder of the games that came before it.
You’ll also be able to play the traditional Japanese card game Koi-Koi, played using the
Japanese playing cards known as Hanafuda cards, and as you continue playing you’ll unlock
new characters to play against, increasing in difficulty. Koi-Koi as a concept isn’t
too difficult, but will absolutely take some getting used to for anyone who isn’t familiar
with this traditional game.
At a certain point, battle training missions will begin to open up, in which you can replay
the battles from previous missions, which will not only improve your bond with each
of your individual teammates, but will also earn you more bromides to collect. I wanted
so much to collect all the bromides, but being expected to do the dozens of training missions
seemed repetitive and tedious, as you will need to play one stage six different times
to take each different partner through the stage, and at a certain point near the end
of the game, I finally just stopped doing them.
As far as battle itself is concerned, it’s one that is simple to learn, more complicated
to master, and I mostly enjoyed it. There’s no guard button, as the game largely expects
you to really get in close and get aggressive. You’ll be able to boost to move far and
fast in quick bursts, or if you really don’t want to be hit, it is possible to dodge. Attacks
come in circle and triangle combinations, and when your spirit meter fills you can then
perform an extra powerful and impressive ability that’s sure to wipe out most tougher enemies.
Very fun to play, very cool to watch. What may not really be fair in this review is that
I received this game before the first patch could come out, which promises the inclusion
of a targeting system. While that patch is supposed to be included sometime close to
the day of release, not having it was often very frustrating, particularly for flying
enemies, as I oftentimes found it difficult to find those enemies visually, and jumping
for them was almost always inaccurate, either not quite getting close enough due to not
really being able to visualize the depth between myself and the enemy, or because sometimes
I would just jump way too high above the enemy and miss entirely. If this patch is released
soon, I can guarantee that this gripe will no longer be an issue.
It’s a little disappointing that you never have all five teammates out on the field with
you at once. Most of the time, it’s limited to a two-person party, often with the members
dictated by the story. The good news is that each of the women are unique enough to one
another and mostly fun to play as. The titular character of Sakura uses traditional swordsmanship,
Azami uses some cool-looking ninjutsu, Claris uses long-distance magic, and my favorite
girl Hatsuho uses an awesome giant flaming hammer. However, it was especially clear that
Anastasia was the clear winner out of which character was easiest to use and dominate
the field. Using a variety of projectile weapons, she was easily able to shoot down flying enemies,
and even take out smaller enemies with far more speed and power than her other teammates,
not to mention she has a parasol that allows her to float after jumping, giving an extra
dynamic to battle. It made it incredibly difficult not to choose her to join my battles every
time the game gave me the option.
The DLC available is cosmetic and does not affect gameplay, but players may be interested
in the costume packs that will dress your team up as characters from previous Sakura
Wars titles, as well as music packs that replace the soundtrack with those from the previous
games.
The art and music all compliment the story wonderfully and help make the game truly feel
like the perfect addition to this franchise. The main characters were all designed by Tite
Kubo, creator of Bleach, with guest character designs from multiple artists including Ken
Sugimori of Pokémon fame, and Shigenori Soejima who has been the long time character designer
for the Persona franchise. The music is once again composed by Kohei Tanaka, known largely
for his compositions for One Piece but who also was the composer for the original Sakura
Wars game from 1996, and so the soundtrack truly felt like coming home to something old,
familiar, and comfortable. Each piece is fully orchestrated and perfectly fits the mood of
every scene.
The localization only features a Japanese dub with English subtitles, but it’s what
I expected, as Sakura Wars hasn’t yet made a big enough splash in the United States to
likely warrant spending the money on an English cast. But the Japanese actors are all so different
and emotive that I think most players aren’t going to mind that they’ll be doing a lot
of reading. As for the translation, it’s definitely a localization rather than a 1-to-1
literal translation. If you ask me, that’s not a problem. The localization is always
conveying the same feeling as the original Japanese language, so you’ll never misunderstand
the true meaning of what the game was trying to convey, but I think some really strict
language purists might get mad that some sentences aren’t totally identical to what’s originally
being stated. I’m personally not in that camp, as I don’t feel that the true meaning
or feeling of anything in the story has changed.
In fact, I thought the story was great, nuanced, and really fun and engaging. As this is a
very female-focused cast of characters, despite it being something of a romantic visual novel,
the women are actually all quite unique and well-written, even though some of the character
designs are obviously meant to be visually enticing. I genuinely enjoyed getting to know
each character, why they do what they do, and how they came to be at the Imperial Theater.
Despite minor complaints about the battle system, which will probably be fixed with
the patch, and despite feeling like the training area is a bit of a grind, I Loved Sakura Wars.
It’s everything I could have hoped that a modern addition to the franchise would be.
It feels like a traditional Sakura Wars game without being held back by older game technology
and mechanics. The story is engaging, the characters are likable, the music and visuals
are pleasing to the eyes and ears, and even the majority of the battles are pretty fun.
And while there’s currently no legal way to play a localized version of four out of
the five previous games, Sakura Wars for the PlayStation 4 makes for a great entry point
into the franchise. And who knows? With a little bit of extra support, maybe Sega will
see an audience exists that might be interested in some of those older games, too. For now,
I’ll be going back and replaying the game with it’s New Game+ feature and following
it up by watching the currently-airing anime that takes place after the events of the game.
Thank you to everyone for watching this video. If this is something you enjoyed, feel free
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content. Thanks for listening. This has been MarzGurl, and for more on Sakura Wars and
all things gaming, keep it here on GameXplain.