Dating sim with damaged girls

Many North America gamers probably have never heard of the Sakura Wars series, let alone played any of the games. They've been a notable success in Japan though, so Sega decided to give the series a soft reboot after a 15-year hiatus. This new Sakura Wars maintains many of the concepts that makes the series so iconic, while adding a few new ideas to the mix in an attempt to keep things feeling fresh. Sadly, Sakura Wars stumbles over itself several times, and the game sports outdated game mechanics.

The story of Sakura Wars borders on nonsensical, but is so unique that it's hard not to enjoy it. Players take on the role of Seijuro Kamiyama, a former Navy Captain who has been appointed as the head of Tokyo's Imperial Combat Revue. This elite task force serves a dual role within Tokyo's community. Their day job is as a theater troupe that must keep the people of Tokyo happy. Whenever demons attack the city though, this team must climb inside their Gundam-style mechs and use their unique skills to bring them down.

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Kamiyama has joined the Imperial Combat Revue at the worst possible moment though. The theater is failing because the team is incapable of putting on a good show, and their mechs are falling into disrepair. It's your job as Kamiyama to step in and help the team gain confidence both on stage and in battle. The group decides to enter the Combat Revue World Games in order to gain recognition and earn more funding to keep the theater running and this eventually morphs into a pretty generic "save the world" plot as the story progresses. The story continues to grow more ridiculous by the end and at times it's challenging to follow what is happening.

The place where Sakura Wars shines most is in its animation style. The 3D animation is beautifully rendered, and it is fun to explore Tokyo and take in the sights. During cutscenes, Sakura Wars switches to an impressive anime-like CGI. It is easy in these moments to forget that Sakura Wars is a video game and not a very well-made anime.

It is difficult to nail down exactly what genre Sakura Wars is though. Part of the game plays like a dating simulator or visual novel, and the other part is an action-adventure fighting game. Both parts of the game have glaring issues that detract from the pretty graphics and neither aspect of Sakura Wars finds a way to be particularly fun to play.

The dating simulator aspect of Sakura Wars is where players will spend the majority of their time. In between battles players have free reign to explore several locations of Tokyo to their heart's content, while also being able to interact with the five team members. These interactions range from solving disputes, helping them with small tasks, or even taking them out on dates. The all-ladies team includes characters from different backgrounds with different personalities, so players will be tasked with deciding which one they care about most.

Players can effectively complete the game by only completing the essential quests to progress through the dating sim portion of Sakura Wars. Most of the interactions with the women in the Imperial Combat Revue are optional, but by completing them, their combat power will increase. By gaining their trust, each character acquires increased health and damage output for the combat portions of the game. This is actually very helpful in the last combat section of the game, when players get to choose which teammate they would wish to accompany them.

The largest issue that a western audience will have with Sakura Wars is the implications of entering a relationship with the women on the team. First and foremost, Kamiyama is technically the boss and superior officer to the romance options. This makes any relationship with them feel inappropriate as there will be a clear power imbalance. And of course, there's the glaring reality of the age of the game's characters. Kamiyama is stated to be 20 years old, while the majority of the team is 16 0r 17, with one of the girls even being 13. This is hard to ignore and Kamiyama comes off as creepy no matter who he flirts with. Japanese consent laws may differ from most of the developed world, but this is still jarring for anyone who decides to play Sakura Wars.

It also doesn't help that most of the women that the player can interact with are almost helpless without Kamiyama's guidance. The titular Sakura is a master swordsman and talented actress, but she is constantly doubting herself. This leads to Kamiyama having to boost her confidence and she credits him for enabling her to achieve success. Almost all of the women in the game act similarly despite being capable in their own right. Most of the optional interactions with women in the game are resolved by the player informing them how pretty they are, so that they begin to feel better about themselves. At no point in time do these characters begin to value themselves without Kamiyama's influence.

After players spend time with the dating sim portion of Sakura Wars, they will then be introduced to combat. During these segments of the game players can switch between Kamiyama and one of the other women on the team to fight off the demons attacking Tokyo. Players can fight using light and heavy combos, dodge enemy attacks, and even use strong special abilities to obliterate enemies. Switching between characters is simple, accomplished with the touch of a button.

Combat in Sakura Wars is mostly sufficient, but there are several aspects that leave it feeling incomplete. The most noticeable is that players are incapable of locking onto the enemies they encounter so there's constantly a need to fight the camera to stay in one place while throwing complicated combos at demons. This isn't much of an issue against large groups of smaller enemies, but once more difficult and agile demons are introduced it becomes frustrating. With some enemies gameplay devolves into swinging the camera around to discover where they ran off to, which opens the player up for an attack from behind.

These segments of the game also become repetitive over time in Sakura Wars. There isn't enough variety to the enemies of the game, and most enemies are taken out by just spamming the attack button. Players will even be forced to fight one boss in the game several times, with little change to tactics or difficulty. Fighting is just far too simple most of the time and more experienced gamers will be begging Sakura Wars to give them a challenge that isn't associated with the finicky camera.

One of the most upsetting aspects of combat in Sakura Wars is that the player is given very few options to choose which teammate will join them in combat. During the course of the game players will constantly be paired up with Sakura, but will only have a few opportunities to fight with other members of the team. This is frustrating if players are having to fight airborne or ranged enemies, but their team does not have anyone capable of using ranged attacks. Sakura Wars also resorts to coming up with bad excuses every fight for why the entire team can't fight together or why a certain character must sit the fight out.

Sakura Wars does a lot of things right. The storyline is ridiculous but fun, and Tokyo is beautifully crafted. It is difficult to forgive the game's serious issues though. Many players will not be able to see past the gross implications of Kamiyama's relationships with his younger subordinates, and combat isn't interesting enough to hold the attention anyone accustomed  to more complicated action games. Players who aren't massive fans of the series may find Sakura Wars difficult to stomach.

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Sakura Wars releases on April 28, 2020 for PlayStation 4. A PS4 code was provided for the purposes of this review.

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