Videogames have become a worldwide affair -- particularly in the HD era where budgets make multi-region and multiplatform development almost a must. It's not just about recouping costs, though; vastly improved localization efforts have led to audiences outside a game's native country being hungry for the unique quirks of a game birthed and nurtured in a far away land can have. Nowhere has this been more prevalent than in the increasingly niche realm of Japanese efforts.

It's a bit of a surprise, then, that it took a whopping 14 years for the Sakura Taisen series to finally make it to the States. In stark contrast to, say, Nippon Ichi's Disgaea or Atlus' MegaTen games, however, it's a little easier to see why the series was initially judged to be the stuff of importers and otaku wannabes: Sakura Taisen is, first and foremost, a dating sim. A dating sim with giant mystical energy-powered robots that duke it out in a strategy RPG setting, sure, but it's understandable that some publishers would be leery of bringing the game over in years past.There's another reason for the initial hesitancy: this is a SEGA game, made by an internal SEGA team, and that originally only appeared on SEGA hardware. The series eventually moved to the PlayStation 2 when SEGA's hardware business crumbled, but the post-Dreamcast publishing environment was even less of a risk-friendly option in the early days, and thus, the series continued to be successful in Japan but only accessible to an American audience with a decent grasp of the Japanese language and the fiscal means to import things.Enter NIS America, who have not only taken on the unenviable task of localizing and translating the reams of digital text that make up the myriad conversations of Sakura Taisen, but who have also opted to do something SEGA never did: NIS is porting the game to the Wii with the help of developer Idea Factory. One need only look at the fact that the PlayStation 2's Special Edition is made up of two discs (one with an English dub and the other with the original Japanese dialogue) to see just how much info is in this game.This is not a series known for its brevity.That's precisely why it's such an interesting and, frankly, amazing experience, though. It's doubtful even the mighty PS2, with what some would rightly claim is the best RPG lineup in the history of games, has seen many titles with this much replay value. Multiple endings are in there, sure, but there are so many labyrinthine conversation threads and character dynamics that even though your first run through things will likely be over a couple dozen hours, the game is so rife with replay opportunities, it's entirely possible you'll head right into a new game after it's over.Much of that attraction comes down to two things. First, the game's turn-based-but-free-moving strategy RPG battles are fantastic, regularly incorporating environmental wrinkles to keep things interesting. Months ago, I plumbed the first several hours of the game to bring you guys some seriously meaty impressions and the general gameplay setup . Given that the preview was a whopping four pages, I'll leave that link above for you to actually get into the bulk of how the game works. What I will happily try to convey, though, is just how much of developer Overworks' later SRPG efforts shines through here. This is the same developer responsible for Skies of Arcadia and the absolutely brilliant Valkyria Chronicles -- and the latter's roots are especially apparent almost from the second you start your first battle.