Sakura Wars Review – The Show Must Go On

cre: Sakura Wars Review – The Show Must Go On

Sakura Wars on PlayStation 4

Sakura Wars is one of those games that’s hard to call good or bad – not because it lacks any major flaws or strengths, but because it manages to deliver them in a package that works. in the middle of the road and fails to venture to anything remarkable.

The latest iteration of the Sakura Wars franchise and a soft reboot of the series proper, the game stays true to a familiar setup. As the newly appointed commander of the Imperial Combat Revue Flower Squadron, players must get to know and trust the team members of a demon-fighting task force through interactions visual novel style and join them in battles for the safety of the city.

Building stronger bonds with each character reveals more about their background and motivations, and by getting to know each character well, players might have what it takes to inspire them to protect the town, save their struggling theater, Win a contest between Combat Revues from around the world and stop a plot led by a masked ally of the demons.

If this sounds like a few different stories competing against each other at once, that’s because it is. Sakura Wars has several storylines competing for major billing at any given time, and it can make the narrative feel cluttered and blurry on more than one occasion.

Of course, everyone has their strengths. Gaining the trust and inspiring each member of the team makes for some interesting subplots, and overcoming the demons’ latest evil plan comes together satisfactorily enough by the end of the game.

More often than not, this can make Sakura Wars feel bloated with ideas it wanted to fully explore but couldn’t. This in turn leaves several plot threads dangling or anticlimatically linked, and even makes some storylines feel like filler arcs thrown in to lengthen the game’s runtime.

Sakura Wars gameplay is also mixed in its execution. As mentioned earlier, part of the game sees players interacting with other characters through visual novel-style dialogue exchanges. Getting to know the characters and interacting with them in different ways can increase or decrease the position they hold you in and impact the different ending scenes you can get.

Likewise, as players get to know the characters better and increase their affinity with them, sub-plots and minor events will become available.

These run the gamut from emotional confessions to anime cliche shenanigans, and while some are incredibly cringe-worthy – namely, the times when you’ll have to stop your character from staring at the cleavage of female characters or d going to the bathrooms while the female characters are using them – the majority adds to the fun of interacting with each character.

While it’s not anything exceptionally different from other entries in the series, it’s all executed well enough that fans of the genre and older titles in the series will be happy with the outcome.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the game’s combat. While previous titles shifted to a turn-based strategy design for combat missions, Sakura Wars instead features a new direction of hack and slash action. .

As one of six different steam-powered mechs, players can fight their way through hordes of enemy units Dynasty Warriors style. They will then need to defeat an enemy boss to complete the combat mission, which may involve dodging area sweeping attacks or solving illusion-based puzzles to track down the real enemy.

It’s a neat idea, and some of the components needed to pull it off properly are there. Each mech offers different moves and abilities, and the emphasis on dodging attacks with precise timing provides much-needed depth to battles.

Overall, though, these segments can feel like they needed more time to polish. Mech controls can be floating and lead to more than a few occasions where players will fall off platforms or battlefields. The variety of enemies is also very limited, and while there are different moves and combos you can pull off, it gets very repetitive to use them over and over again.

The only aspects that are executed well are the graphics and sound design. The game looks beautiful, with graphics and an art style that really brings the series into the modern generation of gaming. high quality anime.

All the while, the soundtrack and voice acting matches everything that’s going on. Each line is delivered with an expert amount of emotion and timing, with each main character able to run the gamut from calm and collected to furious and passionate depending on the scene.

The game’s music, on the other hand, adapts just as well to each scene it accompanies. While some tracks may feel overused by the end, the majority add life and energy or melancholy to the scenes as a result, and will stay with you long after the game is over.

Sakura Wars isn’t the return fans were hoping for, but it’s still worth seeing and playing. For all the flaws that the new hack and slash action combat and scattered-mind storytelling entail, the character interactions, visual novel elements, and sound design all show the potential of the new version of the series.

That won’t make many new hardcore fans of the property, but for those who want to give it a shot, there’s enough to give them hope that good things could be in the series’ future.

Review block

Reviewer: Keenan McCall | Copy provided by the publisher.

Benefits

• Great dubbing and music
• Entertaining visual novel gameplay
• Excellent graphics and presentation

The inconvenients

• Way too many storylines going on at once
• Hack and slash action combat is half-baked
• Cringe-worthy character interactions

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source: gameplaytrick.com -

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