McCheese
Member
Finished the first three chapters now - Loving it so far!
it's definitely exceeded my (albeit low) initial expectations. I went in almost blind, as the only knowledge I had about sakura wars was it was some sort of anime front mission game, so here are impressions from someone who literally had no idea what they were getting into and hadn't even seen a screenshot.
Great stuff
Story -
I heard it had visual novel elements but I was surprised by how heavy they lean into it during the story segments, there is an hour or so of pure narrative before any action even begins. But the VN stuff is just really well done and already has me thinking about a second play-through to see how things can pan out.
And boy, that fucking Chinese duo picking on my girl - they are fucking getting wrecked later in the game, legit raging!
The biggest surprise is how nuanced some of the dialogue choices are, generally when you are presented with 3 options in a VN you have a blatant good, bad and stupid choice. I thought I was picking all the "well that's obviously good" choices, so was pretty shocked when I got negative reactions calling me out on it. It's only once you learn more about the characters that you grasp that some of them want brutal honesty rather than meaningless praise. Some have a sense of humour, some don't etc. It feels like it rewards you for figuring the personality types out more than say, Fire Emblem, where I rarely made any wrong choices as the characters were so one dimensional.
Also, I like all the flavour text, interacting with the mirror and having him say he's lost weight due to stress etc. There is a lot of 'off the beaten track' dialogue that is quite clever and amusing and rewards you for exploring.
Visuals -
The game looks great, maybe I'm too use to vita and switch up-ports for these sorts of games, but this is definitely one of the best-looking anime games on PS4. The art style is really colourful and clean, it has that SEGA blue-skies colour pallete that just makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. The characters are well animated and there is just a lot of neat little touches. I loved how they do a full-on anime 'Coming Next' segment between each chapter, it's pure undiluted anime weeb shit and I'm lapping it up.
Average Stuff
Localisation -
I won't moan about the lack of a dub, as I wouldn't ever have used it. But it's clear they've done the bare minimum to release this outside of Japan. The English dialogue is fine by and of itself except for a few typos here and there, but they've done a "pokemon" job of it where the English translation barely aligns with the Japanese dialogue, so if you do speak Japanese you'll constantly be aware that what the sub-titles are saying, isn't quite what they are actually saying.
English will be like "WOW YOU SAVED ME YOU ARE AWESOME!!" and Japanese will be playing it chill with "I guess you were pretty cool" etc.
Combat -
Yer I'm on chapter 3 so probably don't even have half the shit available yet, but my initial take on the combat is it's quite simplistic. Basic dodge parry timing stuff, and a light and heavy attack that can be stacked in some simple light-light-hard style combos. Really hope later on I can unlock some sort of skill-tree or customise the mechs. They do a good job of carrying the story into the combat mode though, with all the voice work and pilot animations etc.
Bad Stuff
Voices-
The Japanese voice acting is great, but it's a shame only around half of the dialogue is voiced. Especially when you have some really emotive animations in the cutscenes then just pure silence, they even have the mouths animated as if it was intended to be voiced at some point; oh well, at least the music is baller to listen to.
Waifus -
The feisty redhead is so much better than all the other possible waifus it's not even up for debate. But if it turns out you can somehow date the mummy teacher character I'll retract this statement immediately.
Would definately recommend the game (so far) to people on the fence.
it's definitely exceeded my (albeit low) initial expectations. I went in almost blind, as the only knowledge I had about sakura wars was it was some sort of anime front mission game, so here are impressions from someone who literally had no idea what they were getting into and hadn't even seen a screenshot.
Great stuff
Story -
I heard it had visual novel elements but I was surprised by how heavy they lean into it during the story segments, there is an hour or so of pure narrative before any action even begins. But the VN stuff is just really well done and already has me thinking about a second play-through to see how things can pan out.
And boy, that fucking Chinese duo picking on my girl - they are fucking getting wrecked later in the game, legit raging!
The biggest surprise is how nuanced some of the dialogue choices are, generally when you are presented with 3 options in a VN you have a blatant good, bad and stupid choice. I thought I was picking all the "well that's obviously good" choices, so was pretty shocked when I got negative reactions calling me out on it. It's only once you learn more about the characters that you grasp that some of them want brutal honesty rather than meaningless praise. Some have a sense of humour, some don't etc. It feels like it rewards you for figuring the personality types out more than say, Fire Emblem, where I rarely made any wrong choices as the characters were so one dimensional.
Also, I like all the flavour text, interacting with the mirror and having him say he's lost weight due to stress etc. There is a lot of 'off the beaten track' dialogue that is quite clever and amusing and rewards you for exploring.
Visuals -
The game looks great, maybe I'm too use to vita and switch up-ports for these sorts of games, but this is definitely one of the best-looking anime games on PS4. The art style is really colourful and clean, it has that SEGA blue-skies colour pallete that just makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. The characters are well animated and there is just a lot of neat little touches. I loved how they do a full-on anime 'Coming Next' segment between each chapter, it's pure undiluted anime weeb shit and I'm lapping it up.
Average Stuff
Localisation -
I won't moan about the lack of a dub, as I wouldn't ever have used it. But it's clear they've done the bare minimum to release this outside of Japan. The English dialogue is fine by and of itself except for a few typos here and there, but they've done a "pokemon" job of it where the English translation barely aligns with the Japanese dialogue, so if you do speak Japanese you'll constantly be aware that what the sub-titles are saying, isn't quite what they are actually saying.
English will be like "WOW YOU SAVED ME YOU ARE AWESOME!!" and Japanese will be playing it chill with "I guess you were pretty cool" etc.
Combat -
Yer I'm on chapter 3 so probably don't even have half the shit available yet, but my initial take on the combat is it's quite simplistic. Basic dodge parry timing stuff, and a light and heavy attack that can be stacked in some simple light-light-hard style combos. Really hope later on I can unlock some sort of skill-tree or customise the mechs. They do a good job of carrying the story into the combat mode though, with all the voice work and pilot animations etc.
Bad Stuff
Voices-
The Japanese voice acting is great, but it's a shame only around half of the dialogue is voiced. Especially when you have some really emotive animations in the cutscenes then just pure silence, they even have the mouths animated as if it was intended to be voiced at some point; oh well, at least the music is baller to listen to.
Waifus -
The feisty redhead is so much better than all the other possible waifus it's not even up for debate. But if it turns out you can somehow date the mummy teacher character I'll retract this statement immediately.
Would definately recommend the game (so far) to people on the fence.
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