Of which I am not one, mind you. But the reason why I’ve tried many rogue-likes and finished none is that I quickly get tired of starting over from level 1 every time I die or warp out. Despite that, I’d always accepted that as a standard feature of the genre and never really considered alternative ways of playing. In fact I was even insulted when Zettai Hero Project let you keep scraps of the stats you’d earned so far. But now I know that ZHP’s real problem was that it didn’t go far enough. If you’re going to nerf a roguelike, either go all the way and nerf it good and proper or don’t even bother. That’s what Sega is trying to teach the world through Dramatic Dungeon Sakura Taisen.

The five main nerfs are as follows:
1. You keep your level between dungeons – most other roguelikes start you over from level 1
2. You keep your level even if you die – most other roguelikes start you over from level 1
3. You keep whatever items have equipped when you die – most other roguelikes take everything from you, though they may give you a courtesy weak weapon when you revive
4. Warp-home scrolls are sold in stores for only 300g a piece, and money is plentiful – Other games may have similar items, but they are rarely as common or as affordable.
5. You’re accompanied by up to three highly competent companions – Shiren 4 does this, but that’s about it. In other games either you’re alone or your companies just exist to get killed so they can power monsters up.

If you think these changes might make the game too easy, bingo, you’re right. Even a regular JRPG would be greatly simplified by these additions, and this is supposed to be a roguelike i.e. stupidly hard. The first few stages are quite challenging while you try to build your character’s levels and equipment up. Once you have that sorted, though, it’s all easy street. The most important thing is to pick a set of equipment early and maintain a death grip on it. The most fearsome enemies and traps in this game are not the ones that hurt you but the ones that de-equip you and/or steal your equipment. That, and hunger. As long as you can keep those twin beasts at bay it’s almost impossible to fail at this game.

Which isn’t to say the game is bad because it’s easy. On the contrary, not only is it not bad but rather I’m starting to acquire quite a taste for nerfed rogue-likes. I hear the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games aren’t too hard either, so I might take a look at those one of these days. That said, Dramatic Dungeon Sakura Taisen did go a little too far to the easy side on the difficulty scale. They should at least have made it so you lose everything you’re holding when you die, in order to add some much-needed tension to the game. A roguelike without any fear of death… can it even be called a roguelike any more? It was fun, no question about it, but it would have been even spicier with a dash more challenge added.

Still, it’s not like Sakura Taisen is a series known for its hair-ripping difficulty anyway. And Dramatic Dungeon seems like an attempt to get all three Kagekidan teams together outside canon so as to please the fans, so the real charm of the game is mixing and matching teams and watching all the different characters interact. There are points in the game where you can introduce the Tokyo team to the New York team or the NY team to the Paris team and watch them have little snippets of conversation. I thought the game fell slightly short in this regard though, because once the introductions are through, the girls just stick to their own bases and hang out in their own teams and don’t have much to do with each other outside the story. I’m not sure what else could have been done to increase interaction while still keeping the game a roguelike, but whatever it is Dramatic Dungeon didn’t do it.

The story was pretty good, albeit predictable to a fault. Jeanne d’Arc has revived after 500 years. Turns out she was immortal because she drank some potion or the other, but now it’s wearing off so she’s looking for ingredients to make a Philosopher’s Stone so she can become a god. As in the Jeanne d’Arc SRPG on the PSP, this Jeanne is more than a little unstable mentally (I’m guessing 1928 was still too early for lithium to be invented).

Likewise this Jeanne is also accompanied by beastmen companions, which makes me wonder if Dramatic Dungeon copied the SRPG or if there’s a common source they both derived this Jeanne-was-nuts-and-traveled-with-animals concept from. Maybe a Jeanne d’Arc anime or something. But that’s neither here nor there. Long story short, we fail to stop her from becoming a god (but at least we never say “Mankind needs no gods!” so hurray!), but then we defeat her. Lady-killer Oogami works his charms on her, she makes her peace with ‘God’ and she and her companions ascend to heaven. And they all lived happily ever after, the end. It was really rather sweet, and nobody died who wasn’t already dead.

To cap it all off, I also got a sorta-romantic sorta-ending with Kouran. Throughout the game you can earn friendship points with girls by picking the right choices, going on their character quests and healing them in battle because nothing says love like tossing glass bottles at a lady’s head. Unfortunately I don’t know whether I didn’t get enough points with Kouran or if the ‘romantic’ endings in this game are meant to be lukewarm (probably the latter), but the ending was a bit on the meh side. Kouran puts her life on the line to rescue Oogami from a falling icicle, then she’s like “Leave me! Save yourself!” and he’s like “Never! I won’t let anyone die!” then he saves her and she thanks him and says she’s sure everyone will be fine as long as he is there to protect them all. And then they escape the dungeon and that’s it. She blushes a little too, but you can’t really call it romantic without a major stretch of the imagination. Nevertheless, all’s well that ends well and the main story ending was nice, so all is forgiven.

tl;dr, fun game, a little too easy but fun nevertheless. Worth a playthrough for fans of the series who want to see all the teams together. If the difficulty of regular roguelikes puts you off and you understand at least a little Japanese, check this out and see how you feel about it.

Related posts:

Sakura Taisen (2) – Kanna GET (spoilers) Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja – Hurray for easy rogue-likes! Sakura Taisen 2 – Hmm, who to pick this time Sakura Taisen 2 – Kanna GET again!