I was rather excited for this game for 2 reasons. First, well it’s published by NISA, and second, it’s the first game in the long-running Sakura Taisen series to make it to America. So I definitely wanted to see what it was all about.

When I finally received it from the online game rental thingy, I couldn’t wait to try it… except it didn’t work on my Wii since it’s seemingly dual-layered, and somehow my Wii can’t read dual-layered discs (such as Super Smash Bros Brawl…dammit). But today I got the chance to go try it at a friend’s house, and put in 3 and a half hours of gameplay.

So here are my initial impressions of the game. I won’t write a full review, at least not for a while, unless I find the PS2 version for cheap, or if I rent the PS2 version.

Read on and see what I thought!

First things first
I’ll start with one thing to say here. I was expecting a Strategy RPG featuring giant robot fights, with some visual novel elements. Well, I couldn’t be much further from the thruth. In actuality, Sakura Wars is a full on visual novel game, with some Strategy RPG giant robot fights intertwined. As proof of that, in 3 and a half hours of gameplay, I had a grand total of 1 battle(though I was right at the start of the second battle). So this is definitely something to keep in mind if you want to check the game out. If you want a SRPG featuring giant robots, look elsewhere.

Story
You play as Shinjiro Taiga. He goes to join… probably the weirdest group of do-gooders ever. Their goal is to “quell evil through the power of dance and song” (actual quote from the game)… as well as having an army of giant robots to fight evil people… Yeah… So when Shinjiro goes to New York to join them, he’s not instantly accepted by the group, so he has to work hard to eventually be able to help them in battles… which happens after around an hour and a half. You eventually learn of an group of evil supervilains planning on taking over the world and… that’s about as far as I got. You go through various aspects of each character’s daily lives, as well as a bit of this world’s New York and how it’s evolving. And sometimes there’s evil people to fight.

The characters are rather interesting, though none of them are really unique. They’re basically all basic anime archetypes. The fun-loving girl who really likes the main character for no reason, the leader girl that everyone thrusts, the law-abiding girl with a kinda strange sense of justice, the emotionally neutral girl with a seemingly troubled past, the big-boobed girl that… has big boobs (yeah, she doesn’t have much in the way of a personality), the little girl that’s scared of the main character for no reason… But they have some pretty interesting elements to them, and the characters all have some pretty interesting character development.

The Visual Novel part
Well, as far as the visual novel segments (AKA most of the game) go, this game is rather standard. I only played a game or two in the genre, so I don’t really know exactly what the standards are here, but the very little I do know is fairly reminiscent of what I’ve seen here. You read through what the characters say, and sometimes you have a choice of what to reply.

I guess the special element here is that you have a time limit to decide what you say, and if you go too slow you just say nothing, each choice, or not choosing fast enough, changes what the following conversation, and will also change what each female character in the game thinks of you. Sometimes you won’t actually have a choice of what to say, but instead you’ll have to choose how intensely you’ll say it by dragging a horizontal line in the speech rectangle. Sometimes you have to say a sentence very loudly, or very discreetly, depending on the situation. And just like the choices, this will affect the outcome of the following conversation, and what the girls will think of you.

The other special feature is the QTE-like thing. At certain parts you’ll be asked to unscrew things, run fast, or perform certain motions. Those are done with both the control stick on the nunchuk and the D-pad on the wiimote. Each time you do a motion or press on the required direction, a meter fills up. The higher you get on the meter, the closer you get to succeeding whatever it is you’re doing. You don’t NEED to fully fill up the meter every time, but it needs to be high enough to succeed. Like the choices, once again, this affects the events of the game, and the following conversations, and changes what the girls think of you.

There’s also some walking around to do in New York, but really that could have all been handled by menus rather than walking around. There’s also side-quests like taking pictures using your “Cameratron” (it’s a pocket watch+a phone+a camera… so basically a modern cellphone) to take pictures and such.

That’s really all there is to that part from what I’ve seen. I guess it’s a bit more fast-paced than the average visual novel since you have a time limit to choose what to  say, and the QTE-like segments add variety. It’s pretty well done I think.

The Fighting
Well I can’t talk about this too much in detail, since I’ve only been through one battle (in 3 and a half hours of gameplay). Considering the game is mostly a visual novel, once you actually get to a battle, you’ll be surprised that it’s actually pretty good. The only problem I found is the lack of good camera control here.

Each turn is relatively simple. You can move (you can move wherever you want on the board, you’re not stuck to a grid), heal yourself, use normal attacks, use attacks with other characters, use super attacks, refill your SP meter or set up defense for until your next turn. You get a “Mobility Meter”, displayed at the bottom of the screen. Moving a certain distance uses up one segment of the mobility meter. If you move back to where you were before (using roughly the same path), you get that portion of your mobility meter back, so you can correct movement errors. Every other action also takes away from your mobility meter. Attacks take one segment each (you can link 5 attacks in a row for cooler animations, or just use single attacks) and each character has a different range of attack, and some even attack in an area. Healing can heal either the robot you’re controlling, or any other allied robot nearby. To use your Super Move you need to fill up the SP bar, either by spending half the mobility meter to fill it up, or by getting hit by enemies (not sure if hitting enemies gives you any SP). Joint attackscan be done when 2 robots on the field have the same target within their range. This uses up both robots’ SP, but is more powerful than a normal attack.

The second part of the battle I played was an airborne battle against a powerful enemy with multiple target areas. This worked pretty much like ground battles, but instead of moving on a board, you could actually circle around the giant enemy to find weak areas to attack. And the attack ranges are kinda different since the flying versions of the robots use missiles to attack. But otherwise it works just the same as the normal battles.

Overall the fighting system is very nice, and really simple to use. Too bad you don’t see it really often through the game.

How it all fits together
You might wonder how the fighting system and the visual novel parts fit together. Well, quite a bit actually. The most important part is obviously the relationship with the game’s girls. Depending on what they think of Shinjiro, how much they trust him and how friendly they are with him, their joint attacks become more powerful. And, from what I’ve seen before the second battle, the characters in your group will gain stats in battle depending on how you performed in the visual novel segment beforehand. So performance in battle will obviously always change depending on your performance outside of battle.

Overall
I think it’s not a bad game… if you’re in the right mood. But I would’ve prefered an SRPG with visual novel elements between battles, rather than a visual novel with a few SRPG segments.

As far as visual novels go… I’m not too familiar with the genre, but it seems like it’s pretty well-done here. There’s a few relatively unique elements, and the story is rather enjoyable.
The battle system is quite fun, and it’s really easy to use.  I have no big problem with it.

I think it’s a really fun game if you’re in for a visual novel rather than an SRPG, or if you want to try something different from the usual type of games we see over here. But you really have to know what you’re in for if you pick up this game.

jobocan Console, Games, impressions, PS2, wii