Sakura Wars provides insight to a question posed by Metal Gear Solid in 1998: Can love bloom, even on a battlefield?

It's funny to think that many of the tropes that Sakura Wars leans so hard on are the ones that I usually don't care for at all, including (but not limited to) romantic comedies, dating simulators, and harems. However, when Sega brings a franchise back from the dead, one from the Sega Saturn era no less, I figure that it's at least worth a shot. (Gotta support those oddball niche IPs, lest we get the same AAA drivel until the end of time.)

Sakura Wars' gameplay is a lopsided balancing act between two different styles. On the lighter end, we have the more climactic hack-n-slash action with steampunk mechs. On the heavier end, we have the slow burn of exploring locales, collecting bromides, moving the plot along, experiencing side-stories, and building up relationships with all the girls in a hybrid of adventure/dating sim gameplay. Odd as it may sound, this dichotomy between genres and its imbalance works in Sakura Wars' favor, albeit not in the way I think the devs intended.

The adventure segments quickly became the selling point of the game for me. Kamiyama is the captain of the Imperial Combat Revue's "Flower Division". The Flower Division puts on theatre performances in order to soothe the hearts and minds of Tokyo's citizens, and dons mech armor to fight off demons and protect said citizens. It's your job to build trust with all the lovely ladies, support their theatrical endeavors, and lead them to victory. There's an inherent charm to the setting of "1940's steampunk Japan". Art direction aside, I think what really brings it all together is a phenomenal soundtrack done by Kohei Tanaka, known for composing the music for the likes of Gravity Rush and One Piece. Whether it be talking to your childhood sweetheart, taking a peaceful stroll through downtown Tokyo, or triumphing in battle, Kohei Tanaka's compositions fuse a sense of grandeur with melodies that refuse to leave my head. The game may be a bit addicted to its own theme song, but to a degree, I think it's earned that right.

Choosing specific answers in response to certain prompts under a time limit is certainly nothing new for video games, and definitely not new for Sakura Wars either. However (and this is probably just me), the fact that you're also running a theatre troupe recontextualizes these choices in my mind. It's almost like an improv production, where I'm constantly attempting to stay in character and choose what I feel is the "correct" thing to say in a given situation. I'm sure this isn't the intended mindset for the game; after all, there's an option in the menu to disable the protagonist's voice, leaning towards that "self-insert" role that the main character usually takes in plots like these. On that note though, I'm glad that the game lets you deliberately avoid/engage with the more "pervy" events. It's a relief to have control over a more undesirable aspect like that.

The mech-action gameplay that takes place (usually) at the end of each chapter is simply good. I wish they were better, but they're enjoyable as a vehicle for the story, and a nice burst of dopamine to break up the slow burn of reading text. The major flaw these stages hold lies in having no real gameplay progression. Aside from a couple story-related upgrades to a certain character, everyone's movesets will remain exactly the same for the whole game. Those movesets aren't the most in-depth either. Just your basic light attacks, heavy attacks, and dodge. There is a "morale" meter in each stage that will increase/decrease depending on what's happening, giving an attack/defense boost for every bar filled, up to 10 bars. Again though, it feels mostly negligible. If I could change the battle system in any one way, it would be to tie character movesets to their level of trust with Kamiyama. In this case, I'd also tie Kamiyama's moveset to his "captain rank" you get on the party status screen.

Characters can perform a unique special attack once they've picked up enough blue crystals. If you've built enough trust outside of battle with a character, you can also use a unique team attack with them, providing a temporary invincibility/attack bonus (you can also use your special attack during this for massive damage). Doing shit like this makes it pathetically easy to obliterate any boss fights, including the final one. There's no difficulty select, which is an extremely jarring absence for any kind of action game. Mix it all up with point-A-to-B level structure, and you get action gameplay that leaves next to no impression on me. This is exacerbated by the "battle bot" simulator you unlock mid-episode 3. It lets you replay story missions with any character you desire, and get ranked for each individual character+stage combo. I truly pity you if you wish to 100% this game.

The story is, for lack of a better phrase, "anime as fuck". It partakes in a lot of typical shounen tropes. There are moments where, for example, the villain comes onscreen, and you can tell he's the fucking villain 10 hours before you actually reach the point where it's formally revealed that he's the villain. It uses a lot of these tropes for the sake of comedy or building excitement though, so it didn't particularly bother me in the long run. It's doled out in an episodic format, with "intermissions" that let you check your team status and save your game before continuing, making for good stopping points so you can pace yourself. Episode 4 is probably the most contrived of the bunch, but it reels between both sides of absolute stupidity. On one end, I can't stand how stupid some aspects of it are, and on the other, I'm laughing along with the raw absurdity that the plot throws at you.

Flaws aside, I'm glad to say that Sakura Wars on PS4 provides an unforgettable experience, at the very least. I'll definitely look into playing the originals as soon as I acquire a Sega Saturn. For now, I await the Flower Division's next big performance with bated breath. Flower Division...TO VICTORY!

Also, Hatsuho best girl. I will not elaborate further or argue on this point.

Esse jogo tem seus problemas, mas a maior qualidade dele não está sendo apreciada como deveria.

Shin Sakura Taisei não tem muito mérito em nenhum de seus aspectos. A história funciona mas é repleta de clichês, o combate é simplista demais (combos limitados, repetição de cenários, sem upgrades nem nada do tipo) e ao todo, bem comum. Os personagens são tropes bem manjadas, tem certo desenvolvimento (menos a Hatsuho por algum motivo) e tem mais deathbait que Chaos;Child (sério por que fizeram tantos momentos assim).

Em suma, esse jogo se resume a isso. Ele funciona.

O que eu não contava era que ele seria carismático PRA CARALHO!

Esse jogo emula o feeling de animes dos anos 2000 muito bem. Tipo, surrealmente bem. Os dois últimos capítulos foram um ótimo climax porque o jogo se aceita como simplista e isso faz com que a direção tenha sucesso em brincar com suas emoções em certas partes. o jogo é aconchegante e isso já me faz apreciar a experiência.

One of the best surprises I've experienced.
The visuals are great with a pleasing art style that manages to look both cute and cool.
The main cast is a lot of fun to interact with. Even the side characters are fun to talk to! You'll come out liking at least one member of the imperial combat revenue.
The story is pretty solid with some minor hiccups but it's very enjoyable.
Only complaint would be that the combat can get dull, but the characters and music more than make up for that.
Also Hatusho.

As a preface, my experience with the Sakura Wars series consists of playing the 5th game, watching the anime series, OVAs and Movie and doing some lore research many years ago. The reboot of the series has left me with mixed feelings.

I didn't find the main story particularly interesting not to mention being very predictable. I was never really hooked at any point. The major focus on the world games and the competitive nature of the various Combat branches left me perplexed. I thought it went against the spirit of the Combat troops from the previous games so I didn't think this Olympic style competition fit well.

The story does have loose ends that weren't resolved by the end of the game. As a side note, there is an anime that takes place after the game, but doesn't really resolve these loose points either.

The characters were pretty decent especially the main heroines and Kamiyama as the main lead. The latter is very expressive and his various dialogue responses are hilarious. The heroines receive a decent amount of development although others are a bit lacking.

The supporting characters of the various Combat branches were underdeveloped as a whole.

Gameplay-wise, I didn't mind the shift from tactical SRPG battles to an action based one since I didn't think the previous system was amazing or anything. The problem is that this new musou style combat system isn't all that interesting either. Combat doesn't have a lot of depth and there's very little enemy and level variety. Things get old pretty fast. Worse, the combat isn't even 60 fps. There isn't any notable RPG mechanics either and nothing really carries between battles or chapters except for collectible Bromide cards.

The slice of life sim mechanics are pretty nice and is the highlight of the game. Many events (not all) are voiced and there's a lot of dialogue choices.

The graphics look pretty decent at times. The environments of Tokyo in particularly looked quite nice, but sadly, pretty small in size so there's not much to explore.

Overall, I thought the slice of life sim stuff were pretty fun, but once it got into the overarching story events, the game loses a lot of interest for me.

The Sakura Wars theme tune is, seemingly, timeless. I couldn't get this song out of my head for days to the point I've put it on my Sony Walkman and happily bop along to it. The song originally came out in 1996 twenty-six years ago with the original game release and every sequel since has had updated versions of it including the anime spin offs and I love every version.

Why am I going on about the Sakura Wars theme? Mostly because it's the only positive I really have about this game sadly. This is the first in the series I've played never getting the chance to purchase or play the others for a variety of reasons and my disappointment is so palpable I can almost physically taste it.

The game essentially has two gameplay aspects to it. Exploration and combat:

Exploration:-
This is essentially the hub where you get some mini side quests and talk and interact to characters. Sakura Wars is based in a fictional steampunk historical era in Japan where a group of all female theatre performers also pilot giant battle mechs to fight demons when required using funds from their shows.
(The theatre is based on a real one as well as the troupe names, would love to see one of the shows. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takarazuka_Revue)

Honestly it's completely crazy but I love the premise and the art and visual design of (most) of the characters and locations are top notch. The issue I have is that a huge amount of the character interactions simply made me uncomfortable or outright cringe. I'm no stranger to anime dating sims or tropes but this was just bad. The character's awful over the top animations, head patting, blushing, creepy comedy bath scenes etc. It honestly made me want to curl into a ball and die. I like romance in games, I can deal with a little cringe but this was just too much.

Combat:-
When not feeling embarrassed playing whenever my girlfriend walked in with the exploration side we have the combat. This is another can of worms. I understand the other games were all strategy titles which really appeals to me but for the 2019 release they scrapped that for a purely action system. It's terrible. The levels are extremely linear, mostly bland to look at, the bosses are all forgettable and the combat completely lacks any impact or weight considering you are piloting giant mechs around. It's honestly just weak and boring. It's sort of like Dynasty Warriors but with the fun aspects removed. Yes, I said it.

Overall this game was such a let down to me and the thing is I really wanted to like it and occasionally story scenes to it are genuinely good and a little heart warming but it never stays at that consistent level of quality. It's simply too cheesy to follow or too bland to actually play in most cases.

Still, I'll always have the theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7a-Yprudqs

+ Great theme song.
+ Excellent art.

- Cringey, cheesy animations and dialogue.
- Combat is just bland and boring.

play this game if you like

A) very stylish presentation combined with an incredible sense of atmosphere
B) really wonderful characters, with at least one being a high chance of winning you over
C) stories about overcoming seemingly impossible tasks and challenges with the power of teamwork and intense determination
D) girls named Sakura

Sakura Wars 2019 feels like a modern iteration on the original in every aspect and in most cases it's a notable improvement. The artstyle looks great and the character models are really high quality. I was quite happy seeing the imperial theater in its remade PS4 glory and the other locations look nice too. Even the loading screen looks beautiful. The story retains the soul of the original where it takes a bunch of cliches and bundles them together into a surprisingly charming package with a likable cast of well-designed characters. Out of the protagonists I have experience with, Kamiyama is the most likable of the 3 though I've only been able to experience Ogami's story in 1. I was weary going into the game because of a lot of remarks about the game feeling like it was just made to set up for a sequel but it didn't feel that way to me at all and I quite enjoyed it from start to finish. I think the original revue is used in an interesting way with their mysterious and potentially tragic circumstances, especially with Sumire being the new manager of the theater. I also like new sakura much more than old sakura, especially since she's voiced by sakura ayane MMMMM. I would say the only parts where the reboot falls short of the original are novelty and soulful saturn anime cutscenes. The new combat is a pretty simplistic musou style but the attacks feel good and the presentation is solid. The combat environments could use some more variety though. The music is good and the theme song in particular is wonderful but they do play it a tad too much. Another issue I encountered was that some dialogue choices have really unpredictable results which can be pretty annoying since they put so much emphasis on the relationship-building. Overall I'm very pleased with the direction this new Sakura Wars is taking and I think they've set a really solid foundation for a modern series. I only hope it did well enough to actually get that continuation.

I’ve never played a Sakura Wars game before, so I didn’t know what to expect besides mech fighting.

Turns out, despite being a mech game, the mechs aren’t really a focus? It’s more of a Slice of Life/Harem Visual Novel with simple hack-and-slash mech combat thrown in.

That’s not to say it’s completely bad, it’s just different than what it was advertised as.

The story starts pretty decent, but around the midpoint it kinda forgets it has a main plot for a little bit and just focuses on character driven plot lines. This wouldn’t be a problem in a longer game, but Sakura Wars is about 15-20 hours long, and this part just makes the main plot lose momentum.

Characters are for the most part well written, but after a certain point almost every interaction with your party members is ‘comedic misunderstanding’, where the protag is accused of being a horny pervert over the most random things.

Combat is super simple and doesn’t evolve or change in any way, except for one party member getting an upgrade. All the characters play differently though, but you can’t choose your party for most of the few combat sections this game has. Combat is also paired with awkward platforming.

If you need a quick mech fix, I’d recommend playing this for at least one playthrough.

Although the main cast all fall into pretty standard anime tropes (the childhood friend, the hotheaded tomboy, the cool beauty, etc.) they're all really likeable and bounce off of each other really well in the scenes that aren't just them and the MC. Despite this, the main story is just okay. The smaller character events are super enjoyable and watching the Flower Division grow from basically nothing into a real team is great, but the actual plot falls pretty flat in places. The new real-time gameplay is fine ,but it kind of just feels like a stunted Musou with more of a focus on platforming. It gets the job done since it's only like 25% of the game, but it really isn't anything special. The best part of the game is that you can play Koi-Koi with basically every named character in a mode called Koi-Koi Wars, and once you unlock this there's an option on the title screen that goes straight to it, circumventing the main game entirely. This game coming out also led to Bandai making a whole line of HG Sakura Wars model kits that are pretty sick, so I can't hate on it that much. I enjoyed my time with it, but even if my PS4 was still functional I wouldn't have much of a desire to revisit it to see the other character endings or something like that. I have no idea what this game goes for nowadays but if you find it for like $30 or your regional equivalent of half price, it's worth checking out.

A bright, burning 10 out of 10 in my heart. People are extremely eager to point to some of its flaws, and they're not exactly wrong, but I don't think, at this point, that I could tell you a single one of them bothered me.

Late into my first playthrough, my wife and I realized that we could just leave a save and easily grab every one of the game's five endings without replaying much at all.

By the time the credits rolled on our first playthrough, we both knew there was no way we weren't giving it at least one more run.

5 playthroughs later, and my appreciation for the game only grew deeper. It is the rare game that knows exactly what it wants to be and commits to that wholeheartedly.

I love it more than I know how to express, it is, almost certainly, one of my favorite games of all time.

This is the type of game you play once, get the ending you want with your favorite girl, and then never touch again.

I like the story and characters but the biggest mistake here was turning an entry in this strategy RPG series and making it a button mashy real time RPG instead (similar to what Square did with FFVIIR this year as well)

2/5 please just let turn based games stay turn based I beg you.

Minha experiência com esse game foi uma montanha-russa de impressões positivas e negativas ao todo.

Sua história não possui muita qualidade mas é divertida, repleta de clichês narrativos junto com alguns fan services aqui e ali; o que se destaca mesmo é o elenco de personagens, bem esteriotipados e expressivos no geral. Enquanto você não estiver interagindo com eles (ou elas mais precisamente, já que majoritariamente falando só tem mulher nesse jogo) você estará enfrentando hordas de inimigos em um sistema de combate bem simplista, superando ainda mais a simplicidade dos jogos musous que temos atualmente. Não existe evolução de personagem, muito menos melhoramento de ataques ou equipamentos, nem mesmo seleção de dificuldade para apimentar sua playthrough, então não espere muita coisa.

Indo para termos técnicos.. o game é bem bonito, tanto na modelagem dos personagens quanto nos cenários em si, as batalhas são de encher os olhos com todas as partículas voando dos ataques especiais e tals.

A trilha sonora em sí tem seu carisma, mas pessoalmente não me agradou tanto assim, gosto pessoal mesmo.

Como adendo, quero elogiar o sistema de bromides além do mini game Koi Koi Wars; achei bem legal essa ideia de coletar figurinhas das personagens como colecionável, é bem satisfatório para os waifuzeiros de plantão, e o Koi Koi é um ótimo change of pace caso você se canse da narrativa do game.

Levando em torno de 20 e poucas horas pra chegar no zeramento, Sakura Wars como um todo é um bom jogo, mas poderia ser bem melhor com mais incrementações. (Sakura best girl btw)

My interest in Sakura Wars came from it's inclusion in the Project X Zone games. Based on what i had seen there, it seemed pretty fun so finding a physical copy of this game at GameStop was neat and i ended up playing a game from a franchise i previously only had exposure to via crossovers.

The story is nothing too spectacular but it's not bad either. It's anime as hell but as a whole, it's serviceable with likable characters. I really liked how expressive the character models were. Sometimes they would be moving a bit too much but it was pretty neat seeing these characters full of life in this way. The game only has a Japanese dub although there are weird instances where there'd be no voice acting but the scenes would be playing out as if they were. Though I will have to dock points from the story for pretty much forcing a romance between the two main leads despite giving you other options. Thankfully, a lot of the choices you do make don't have anything to do with romance. There's nothing super impactful that will change the direction of the story since the choices are more limited to the character moments but they did add some potential humor to the game. And i have to applaud the fact that you can avoid cringe anime fanservice scenes by simply choosing to not be a dumbass.

For all intents and purposes, this game is basically a visual novel and normally, i would never play a visual novel but since Sakura Wars has actual gameplay, it was alright in my book. The actual gameplay is pretty mindless and the lack of difficulty options means what you see is what you get. There were hints of a deeper system, like perfect dodges and even finishers but honestly these don't matter too much. You can get away with just spamming your AoEs. Honestly, you can make an easy comparison to Warriors games, in which you hack-and-slash to your hearts content and the fast movement makes this feel pretty good. Unlike Warriors games though, the level design is much more linear and you simply get from beginning to end. The visuals of these levels are generic and uninspired, which was disappointing. Perhaps that was never the focus but it all blends in together and nothing stands out. I could say the same for the music, while the main theme is a banger, nothing else really succeeded in clicking with me. Oh well.

When taking everything into consideration, Sakura Wars is pretty much a textbook definition of a 7/10 game. It's good, it works but i've played better. At the same time, it's also not bad at all and i'd still rank it higher than some other 7/10 games i've played in the past.