SenpaiJake 6

(Preface: this comes from someone who never heard of Sakura Wars before this one).



I like trying new games that intrigue my interests. (Preface: this comes from someone who never heard of Sakura Wars before this one).



I like trying new games that intrigue my interests. Especially if they are of a long running series, which seems to be Sega's forte. So when I saw the promos for Sakura Wars for PS4, needless to say I was interested. I had never played a game in the series prior, so my experience and review all come from a newb's eyes.



Right off the bat, Sega was sneaky with the marketing trailers. I was expecting some sort of rpg or action/adventure game with some occasional story, a dating sim on the side, and a whole lot of mecha combat. Maybe some life simulations, because they touted life in steampunk Tokyo a LOT. What I got, instead, was a story-heavy, er, story with occasional dating sim and a very little bit of mecha combat. You play as Seijuro Kamiyama, a captain of a naval vessel recently "demoted" to captain of the Imperial Combat Revue. You find out these hybrid mecha defenders and actresses are facing tough times. They don't have the tech to protect Tokyo appropriately, and their theater skills are, well, bad. At this point, I assumed I'd be tasked with juggling the day to day training of these girls. I assumed "OK, so I'm going to have to do missions regularly with these girls while instructing them on theater and helping them set up plays." But no - this is a story, not a game - and the story kept on.



So, after about two hours of exposition, I got into the tutorial battle and figured "okay, so we're in battle. It's gonna be tough with hordes of demon robots and creatures. I guess we'll be getting deployed almost everyday." No, no no. Here, I am now done with the snarkiness on the game. After the first several hours, it became apparent to me this was more so a feature visual novel. It will be STORY first, and then you get to choose how it flows and with whom. The mecha battles, the idea of exploration are all an after thought.



The story, thankfully its redeeming factor, is a cheesy and over-dramatic classic anime tale. For that, I loved it a good bit. I enjoyed the harem tropes, the MC tropes, the cheesy jokes and funny serious situations, the goofy twist and turns. It screams old anime. A lot of the game's story apparently "changes" based on responses you give when talking. However, in actuality all that changes is how much someone likes you and whether or not they'll talk to you in the epilogue. You don't necessarily change the story, but rather how you're perceived in the story. If you pick the not super obviously bad options, you will still in good liking with everyone, meaning winning over any of the girls is super easy.



The combat, the missions you will do in between chapters and sometimes randomly in between story scenes, is very barebones. There are two attack buttons, a dodge, a team mate switch, a super and a team super. The supers are overpowered, the normal attacks are very basic and some characters do butt-tons more damage than others, but the worse by far is how extremely broken the dodge is. You get iframes that last forever, you can spam it constantly, and you'll almost always get the slow-mo benefit. This game has virtually NO challenge at all in its battle systems. I beat the bosses before the in-battle dialogue even finishes. There's a system to let you replay missions and some other new ones, but it just seems way to boring to want to do.



The overall look of the game is good. The 3d models are a bit weird looking at times and are overanimated in certain scenes, but the mix of the 2.5d and 2d animation cutscenes are nice and refreshing. The second biggest win for this game is its soundtrack. It doesn't have a LOT of music, but it does have GOOD music, and I love all of it.



For my first Sakura Wars experience, I can't say I was all too impressed. I liked the characters, I enjoyed the cheesy story, the music was good and the game looks real nice. But they did nothing to make it feel like anything short of a visual novel with some side stuff to do. There's no life sim features, which games like this usually have; the combat is broken and toddler-level easy, and SEGA didn't do much to make you want to work on another playthrough besides "date this cute girl instead." An overall mediocre anime visual novel, is what Sakura Wars 2020 is. 6/10. … Expand