Another great Sakura Wars game, with a really likable and good cast and fantastic music. Overall, this game was a great experience, and I very much liked it. Sakura Wars is definitely a really awesome series.
You know what I need to bring this down half a star, the English dub was utterly painful and made me cringe.
I’ll replay it in Japanese and see how I feel.
I’ll replay it in Japanese and see how I feel.
Weird, dated, wobbly localization aside, this game was fantastic! You play as newcomer Shinjro Taiga, nephew to previous protag Irchiro Ogami, and go to New York City. Exploring the city was wonderful, as a person who used to live in New York I remembered all of the locations that were there, which was very nice and. The game also has a more advanced version of the LIPS system from previous games, choices are much more difficult but I think that added to the challenge. The story is fantastic too with character development that I thought was really nice over the chapters and well-paced, though I was not a fan of the fifth chapter. In addition battles have an added layer of challenge and strategy to them, featuring a lot more enemies and a reworked gameplay system spawning from the third game in the series. The characters for the most part are all really great, with Gemini (who I ended up romancing) and Subaru being my favorites. All-in-all a fantastic experience and I can't wait to play New Game+.
Chocolate waifu supremacy equals endless white boy summer.
I gotta admit shoutouts to this game somehow managing to defy all odds and get released in america in english (even if the translation is a bit subpar but hey I'll take it). I think I can best describe this game as sakura wars 3 but way more unhinged. 3 definitely has its fair share of shenanigans don't get me wrong but this game deadass has chapters with conflicts like "the new york police is threatening to kill every bird in new york unless you find a way to help this girl get over her problems". It jumps the shark a bit, which is dumb both in a funny and a hmm way. The new protagonist going to america pretty much also felt like a similar retread of Ogami going to paris, though Ogami definitely didn't get such a rude welcoming from his squad like poor Taiga did. This game is pretty much the last traditional-style sakura wars game and they went out on a solid note, even if the previous 4 games were better.
Despite the cast being weaker compared to the Tokyo and Paris teams the gameplay improvements make it absolutely worth playing for any fan of its predecessors
what they/them pussy does to a mf
Adventure/turn based RPG/dating sim. Plays out over seven "episodes," each having a different focus but overarching plot of your Japanese character traveling to New York to join a mecha defense force/theater performers. Dialogue system can allow you not to respond or may require you to choose how vocal you are or require a QTE inputs. Often cringworthy due to odd use of American setting/bad anime cliches, poor story, just about every character is annoying, poor 3D models, battle systems is too simple and easy to be interesting.
I never realized just how much i wanted to be a young asian man persuing a romance with an african-american woman before i played this game.
Whoever thought to use the d-pad for LIPs sections is either an idiot or knows something we don’t. Probably not the latter.
a tour-de-force and a love letter with a certain je-ne-sais-quoi, sakura wars v is a revelation and a real eye-opener. a magnum opus, a triumph, a visual masterpiece, an instant classic, its mindbending; a deconstruction and it left me speechless 🐟
This game would be the worst game in its series if there wasn't the spin-off that's a knock-off Mystery Dungeon. The characters are awful, the combat's no fun, and the music has maybe one track better than "acceptable". Play the other games.
If this game came out today it would have been cancelled for bending the knee to the woke mob
La mejor representación de Estados Unidos jamás vista en un videojuego: vaqueros, mechas y gente que se enrolla.
Ahora en serio, la historia no tiene vergüenza alguna y el juego en sí mismo un delirio de principio a fin.
Ahora en serio, la historia no tiene vergüenza alguna y el juego en sí mismo un delirio de principio a fin.
America, America, Chicago to Missouri. When i think of the USA's depiction in video games produced within it's own borders, my mental state is assaulted by images of heroic patriotism, defenders of the glorious nation and it's allies repelling evil invaders and bringing honor to the fatherland. The parallel domestic depiction of the nation would of course be the titles that revolve around the mindless violence and larceny that civilians feel compelled to commit, the equally-popular crime game that represents the nation in a simultaneously similar and opposite way.
The foreign idea of the USA has only ever been critical from my experience. Games like Wolfenstein criticize the torrid history of racism and oppression, while games like Dead Rising are simply extended hitpieces on the for-profit medical and general media calousness.
One would then consider Japanese developers when it comes to making American games. The seemingly apolitical hyper-reality action game that's fueled by nothing but pure adreneline and admiration for the American-made tales of military might and superheroism in ordinary soldiers.
Sakura Wars V falls somewhere outside all of them. A game released in 2005 that attempts to romanticize The Big Apple in the way the previous games had done for the settings of Tokyo and Paris. So Long, My Love is a game about New York created through the perspective of a Japanese developer writing a story about a japanese immigrant living life in the city. It's a simple game about learning to live with the hustle and bustle of the greatest in the city in the world.
What strikes me so hard about the game is just how positive it is about the USA, in all aspects, and how it attempts to blend american cultural values and rhetoric together with the usual themes associated with this kind of story. At a certain point in the second half of the game, The Revolutionary War, The Civil War, and the two-party system are cited as examples of americans putting aside their differences to work for the greater good, the typical "power of freindship" story being compared to these concepts. There is a certain knee-jerk reaction when to be had when the game beats you over the head with narrative of New York being a city of hard-work and dreams, a cultural melting pot of people that accept each other. Since stories usually have this little thing called "conflict" things aren't peaceful and just 100% of time, the game delves into the topics of racism, organized crime, class divide, gentrification, poverty, and homelessness with only slightly more intricacy than you would expect from a game about a theater troupe fighting demons with giant robots.
As for things like gameplay i felt somewhat lukewarm while playing it, but was ultimately satisfied by the unique semi-real time strategy combat, and the heavily unique usage of setpieces. No two levels in this game felt the same, but that could also be a flaw since it means that you have to spend your first attempt at basically every map just figuring out what you were doing. I find the concept of trial and error to be antithecial to a good strategy game, a strategic victory should be brought by proper thinking, not brute force. I did strongly admire the overwhelmingly variaty between the 6 playable characters, all having their own types of attack, move range, super attacks, even their animations have so personality in them, it's the kind of attention to meaningful detail that is rarely seen in modern games.
Not being able to skip animations is always a bummer, and it's not any different in this game. I was playing this on an emulator and making frequemt use of the speed-up function, but even then the tedium was palpable by the end. It's a thorough mixed bag in terms of combat.
As for the VN elements, Sakura Wars has always been the series that i felt accomplished this sort of non-gameplay the best, the high points of this game are all the dialogue and QTE segmants, due in no small part to the genuinely excellent character writing. Even when certain characters aren't the focus in the story they still really stand out, this is one of those stories where the smaller moments are going to stick with you the most.
Choice in Sakura Wars falls inbetween the two pillars of "nothing you do matters" and "every route is a different story entirely", there's more than a few moments in which you make a choice only for it to essentially be erased in order for the narrative to proceed as planned. Your choices will never matter in the grander scheme of things but i found myself making plenty of decisions that felt like they actually affected my enjoyement of the game, again, some of the best parts of this game are entirely optional.
The one thing i genuinely HATED about this game are the technical aspects, the atrocious audio mixing that makes the (often bad) voice acting borderline inaudible at times, the slow-ass UI, unintuitive button assigments, etc. Most of this is probably just the fact that it's an old game.
Overall, i can't name a batter japanese game about america, nor can i name a better dating sim/strategy hybrid video game. Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love left a fairly large impression on me by the end, to the point where i was thinking about going back to it several different times over the 6 years it took me to complete it. It's the black sheep of the series, and the game that some might say put the franchise on hiatus for nearly 15 years, but i never once felt that this game was anything other than stellar.
The foreign idea of the USA has only ever been critical from my experience. Games like Wolfenstein criticize the torrid history of racism and oppression, while games like Dead Rising are simply extended hitpieces on the for-profit medical and general media calousness.
One would then consider Japanese developers when it comes to making American games. The seemingly apolitical hyper-reality action game that's fueled by nothing but pure adreneline and admiration for the American-made tales of military might and superheroism in ordinary soldiers.
Sakura Wars V falls somewhere outside all of them. A game released in 2005 that attempts to romanticize The Big Apple in the way the previous games had done for the settings of Tokyo and Paris. So Long, My Love is a game about New York created through the perspective of a Japanese developer writing a story about a japanese immigrant living life in the city. It's a simple game about learning to live with the hustle and bustle of the greatest in the city in the world.
What strikes me so hard about the game is just how positive it is about the USA, in all aspects, and how it attempts to blend american cultural values and rhetoric together with the usual themes associated with this kind of story. At a certain point in the second half of the game, The Revolutionary War, The Civil War, and the two-party system are cited as examples of americans putting aside their differences to work for the greater good, the typical "power of freindship" story being compared to these concepts. There is a certain knee-jerk reaction when to be had when the game beats you over the head with narrative of New York being a city of hard-work and dreams, a cultural melting pot of people that accept each other. Since stories usually have this little thing called "conflict" things aren't peaceful and just 100% of time, the game delves into the topics of racism, organized crime, class divide, gentrification, poverty, and homelessness with only slightly more intricacy than you would expect from a game about a theater troupe fighting demons with giant robots.
As for things like gameplay i felt somewhat lukewarm while playing it, but was ultimately satisfied by the unique semi-real time strategy combat, and the heavily unique usage of setpieces. No two levels in this game felt the same, but that could also be a flaw since it means that you have to spend your first attempt at basically every map just figuring out what you were doing. I find the concept of trial and error to be antithecial to a good strategy game, a strategic victory should be brought by proper thinking, not brute force. I did strongly admire the overwhelmingly variaty between the 6 playable characters, all having their own types of attack, move range, super attacks, even their animations have so personality in them, it's the kind of attention to meaningful detail that is rarely seen in modern games.
Not being able to skip animations is always a bummer, and it's not any different in this game. I was playing this on an emulator and making frequemt use of the speed-up function, but even then the tedium was palpable by the end. It's a thorough mixed bag in terms of combat.
As for the VN elements, Sakura Wars has always been the series that i felt accomplished this sort of non-gameplay the best, the high points of this game are all the dialogue and QTE segmants, due in no small part to the genuinely excellent character writing. Even when certain characters aren't the focus in the story they still really stand out, this is one of those stories where the smaller moments are going to stick with you the most.
Choice in Sakura Wars falls inbetween the two pillars of "nothing you do matters" and "every route is a different story entirely", there's more than a few moments in which you make a choice only for it to essentially be erased in order for the narrative to proceed as planned. Your choices will never matter in the grander scheme of things but i found myself making plenty of decisions that felt like they actually affected my enjoyement of the game, again, some of the best parts of this game are entirely optional.
The one thing i genuinely HATED about this game are the technical aspects, the atrocious audio mixing that makes the (often bad) voice acting borderline inaudible at times, the slow-ass UI, unintuitive button assigments, etc. Most of this is probably just the fact that it's an old game.
Overall, i can't name a batter japanese game about america, nor can i name a better dating sim/strategy hybrid video game. Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love left a fairly large impression on me by the end, to the point where i was thinking about going back to it several different times over the 6 years it took me to complete it. It's the black sheep of the series, and the game that some might say put the franchise on hiatus for nearly 15 years, but i never once felt that this game was anything other than stellar.
The story is such a fever dream but this was such a formative game for me in so many ways and introduced me to one of the best series of all time. I get why it's a black sheep in the series, but it still means a ton to me.