I spent a little more time after the last post deciding who to pair Ichiro “Ladykiller” Ogami with in Sakura Taisen 2. Ultimately I decided not to encourage his philandering ways and paired him up with Kanna again. It’s unfortunate that Sakura Taisen 3 features a harem of new girls in Paris (the city of l’amour) but if I ever play ST4 you can be darned sure Ogami will be teaming up with Kanna yet again. Just because you’re the only guy in a group of girls doesn’t mean you can have your way with whomever you please. All in-game evidence to the contrary, that is.

Actually the one thing I learned from coupling Ogami x Kanna in both this game and the first one is that Ogami just isn’t into Kanna. At. All. They’re on very friendly terms and he clearly sees her as “one of the guys,” but romantic feelings? Zero on his part. The most blatant crush he had was on Ayame in game one, but this time he seems to keep most of the girls at arms’ length, including Ayame’s inferior younger sister Kaede.

In general he’s remarkably restrained this time compared to the leering, lecherous Ogami that we were treated to last time. Maybe he’s more secure in his position as master of his personal harem, or maybe he’s just grown a little. Either way he acts like a monk 99% of the time, as opposed to 0.99% in the previous game.

That said he does have some encouragingly romantic moments with Maria, Sumire, Orihime and even (call the police) Iris, but when it comes to Kanna it’s like zilch. And it’s not like the poor girl doesn’t try. She asks him out on dates, takes him on trips, acts all blushy around him and still Ogami resolutely refuses to notice how she feels.

Seriously, it’s so obvious. When he’s dealing with the other girls he seems far more in tune with their feelings but with Kanna it’s just like “I see where you’re going and I don’t like it so I’m just going to pretend I don’t see it.” Well you’re stuck with her for the rest of the series, so you’d better start seeing it!

Now that we’ve dealt with the romance sim aspects, let’s talk about the gameplay a little more. I’m happy to report that the game did offer slightly more challenging battles towards the end. The girls and their mechas remained pretty much unassailable, but instead we were given several targets to protect, e.g. parts of an engine that the enemy is trying to destroy. Some of them are so far away you can’t get to them in time, plus you can’t heal them or use auto-defend on them, so those end-game missions definitely kept me on my toes. I didn’t get Game Over’ed even once or lose a single girl, but I came close once or twice.

Eventually I cleared all the challenges and reached the boss, who was… ehh. What’s a pithy word for “pathetic wuss who talked a big game but couldn’t deliver?” The final boss lasted 2 battles and had 4 different forms, but I was never in danger at any time. His first form had just one attack, which it used every other turn and which was easy to avoid. His other forms were a little more mobile but didn’t hit very hard. I just parked everyone near him including Iris, who kept her special gauge filled as much as possible. When the boss used something painful she just healed the whole party back to full and the beatdown continued. Not to mention the boss’s painful attacks actually filled my own team’s special gauges, so he was only hastening his demise.

Having said all that, I must say that I’m a little impressed that I was able to get so much enjoyment out of such a barebones SRPG system. No levels, no weapons, no equipment, only HP and MP. And on top of that there are no accuracy or damage calculations (all attacks are 100% accurate) so there isn’t much “strategy” involved.

At the same time your party isn’t so tough that you can deploy them all over the field without backup. Each girl except Iris only gets 2 healing spells so you have to watch that HP. Especially since there are no levels so you can’t really grind your way to stronger party members. As per the theme of the game, it’s a system designed to encourage teamwork, keeping your party together and watching each other’s backs. The enemy AI isn’t completely terrible either. At the very least they usually have the sense to position themselves so you can’t hit more than two with your special attacks.

You’re also limited to only two moves per turn, so for example you can Move and Attack or Attack and Defend, but you can’t Move, Attack and Defend. And there are action combinations you can’t do, so you can Heal and Attack, but you can’t Heal and Defend, or Heal and Move, etc etc. You have to weigh the cost of each action against the condition your character is in and what the enemy is likely to do in the next turn.  It’s not a no-brainer battle system by any means, but it’s not exactly Advance Wars either. I generally like my SRPG systems with a little more ‘bite’ to them, but since Sakura Taisen 2 is a dating sim which just happens to have battles, I suppose I should be grateful I got anything at all.

Lastly a few words about the story. It sucks a bit. In fact, more than a bit. But less than the original’s, so that’s something to be grateful for. The problem with the original is not only that the second half was nonsensical, though it was, but also that all the twists and turns came completely out of left field. Since I’d been through that before, I was able to anticipate that Sakura Taisen 2, too, would go to hell in a hand basket in the second half.

Therefore unlike the first time, when the false happy ending showed up halfway through I didn’t go “Hell yeah!” I was just like yeah yeah, I know, I know, just bring on the last boss already. And it all happened just as expected.

I’m not going to spoil the story, but if you get round to playing one of the Sakura Taisen games and you think “Man, this story stinks!” just know it’s not just you. It’s not a story game, it’s not an SRPG, and in fact it’s not even that romantic. It’s a game that lets you hang out with a bunch of anime girls in a pure, innocent manner. It just does so very, very well, as the 4 million copies the series has sold so far in Japan attest to.

I had a great time with Sakura Taisen 2 general, and even the meh story and the bland battles haven’t diminished my fondness for the series. The only thing I can really complain about is the terrible loading times on the PSP port of Sakura Taisen 1&2. Maybe they shouldn’t have tried cramming two games on one UMD. Either way there are always several seconds of loading before every event no matter how minor. The game tries to disguise it with flowery screens sometimes, but I know a loading screen when I see one.

And I guess I was a little disappointed that there were no bonuses for having a clear file from Sakura Taisen on the PSP. I’d been hanging on to that save file for 2 years, hoping I’d get maybe a little continuity, or some stat bonuses or something, but the game doesn’t even let you load up the old save file, much less acknowledge your completion in any way. Bummer.

And that’s it for Sakura Taisen 2. Bad story, okay gameplay, but who cares when I have so many waifus to choose from? I think I have Sakura Taisen 3 for the PS2 (I think. Will have to check) so in a couple of months once PS2-chan gets back on its feet I’ll probably play that as well. In the meantime I’ll close with a bunch of other screenshots I took.

Adios!