I hope you all doing good, I still haven't finished sakura wars 1. But was very excited to see the second one got a English translation. I know the site down translate. I just like talking about sakura wars.
Turn based tactics gameplay, similar to FF Tactics - [square tile grid movement]
Alternate history post WWI steampunk setting fused with traditional Japanese mythology
It's a SFW dating sim so it has way more dialogue options than most 90's era RPG's.
Outstanding CD Quality soundtrack if you like traditional Japanese orchestra
High quality Anime cutscenes
It has a five season Anime series which ran from 1997 to 2007 plus a 2001 animated film which is simply gorgeous. The first 10 episode's+Film actually received an English Dub in the early 2000nds despite the games never being exported overseas until V: So Long my Love in 2010 (Five years after its JP Release)
It's the purest example of why the Saturn was a powerhouse in Japan but not in the west.
A series of RPG's with a robust multimedia franchise that Sega of America passed on...
Despite the late 90's being the defacto anime boom era. Add some extra Irony considering Tenchi Muyo would air on Toonami in July of 2000 and it- both tonally and content wise is on par with Sakura Wars.
Just swap out alternate history for Aliens, all the Japanese mythology and SFW harem stuff is present in both franchises.
So the argument of "It's too Japanese to release in the west" Sega of America made in 1996 was way off the mark.
(The 2019 PS4 Reboot is the best introduction to the franchise if you're remotely curious.)
Strategy RPG + VN + Saturn game + unlocalized franchise except for the last 2 = allure
There was a lot of an anti-RPG mindset around Sega of America’s then president, which caused Sega’s in house Sakura Wars to become a casualty. It wasn’t until entry number 5 that the series reached the West. Despite this, Sakura Wars also has a presence in crossovers. Sakura is playable in Project X Zone and there’s an attempted reboot from 2019. Naturally people will want to play anything with this type of baggage
I desperately want to play SW3 in English, it stands along Shenmue as the most ambitious games of its era, and deserves more accolades as one of the best SRPGs ever made. I have played through every mainline SW game currently in English, and I desperately want to play the rest, I've never had as much fun with SRPG as I did with Sakura Wars.
SW3 introduces a 3D free-roaming movement system which was eventually reworked for the Valkyria Chronicles games by many of the same staff within Sega (Just with infantry combat instead of mechs). It's super flexible and allows you to do some satisfying optimizations once you learn how to exploit it. After just recently finishing SW5, there's nothing quite as fun as obliterating a line of enemies in the space between you and a teammate with a well-positioned team-up attack.
I also appreciate how every fight in these games feels unique - there are almost no basic "defeat all the enemies" missions, they all have clever twists to objectives and map layouts. Heck, in many missions, your dialogue choices in the VN segments can completely change the upcoming objective! I played a chapter in SW2 the other day where you can
find a transmitter to feed fake information to the enemy squad, and tell them to either attack via the mountains or the beachfront. Depending on which you pick, the mission will change between causing an avalanche to block their advance or destroying some lighthouses to make them unable to find the beach.
It's SUCH a cool idea to seamlessly mesh the two gameplay styles!
SW3 also has an entire game's worth of bonus content, including the only official 3D Streets of Rage game, just packed in as a bonus! It has some of the most creative uses of the VMU out of any game on the DC, giving you a radar/minimap/damage estimator in battles, and letting you take someone from the cast out for dates as a VMU minigame!
If you're curious, I highly recommend checking out MattoBii's retrospective on the series, he helped out on the recent SW2 translation patch, and he's the one of the biggest English-language sources of info on the series:
Really hoping Sakura Wars 3 and 4 get translated before the internet goes down the tubes (THANKS UK). Also, if y'all don't know, SW4 uses your save files for 2 and 3 on the Dreamcast (1 I'm not too sure on) because the point of SW4 is for Ogami to finally shack up with one of the gals. So does 3 and it recognizes who you romanced in 2 DC. Problem is, SW2 on the DC isn't translated, only the Saturn version. Only way they could circumvent these problems is make a unique data file for every single SW2 and 3 love interest combination for the full player experience.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
