That took much long than I’d thought it would, roughly 50 hours for a first playthrough. Halfway through I realized there was no way I could play Sakura Taisen again for a while, so I cut my losses and focused exclusively on getting Kanna. Why Kanna? First of all, she’s my best fighter so I want to reward her. Secondly she has the fewest “issues” of the girls in the bunch. Finally, macho chicks don’t get enough love and I wanted to change that.

I don’t know why, but I just haven’t been in the mood to write long posts lately. I wanted to go into a little more detail about the battle system and the story, but… After 50 hours… I think I’m a little burnt out. The fact that Kanna’s ending was more “Best Friends Forever” than the romantic ending I’d hoped for did nothing to prop up my enthusiasm. No hugging, no kissing, no hand holding, not even a decent confession. Seriously, the CG on the right is as romantic as it gets.

There’s also the fact that IMO the game dragged on about 25 hours too long. Sakura Taisen made the same “mistake” Dragon Quest 6 did: they spent an inordinate amount of time setting up one bad guy for you to defeat only to pull out several others and needlessly prolong the game after you did so.

So first they told me to beat Lord Tenkai and his four generals and stop him from taking over the capital. Okay. I did all that. Beat the guy, peace returns, I go on a date with Kanna, everything’s hunky-dory. IMO the game should have ended there, saving all the other BS for the sequel. I wish they had consulted me before making another bad guy show up (technically not a new baddie but still) with three more henchmen to beat up. More fighting, more confusion, more betrayal. And then in the end… Angel Michael vs. Satan. …what. Where the heck did that come from?! Just… seriously… the hell? And what was the whole deal with Ayame being possessed and then being possessed even further under that? The last half of the game was just urrggggghhhh…

So yeah. I enjoyed the first half of Sakura Taisen more than the last half and I’m just glad it’s over. The graphics were great, I really liked the characters, the voice acting was really good, it probably has the best sung opening theme of all time, etc etc but you throw a messy storyline in there on top of everything and it’s like urrrrrrggghhhh…

In closing, I should probably say a few words about Sakura Taisen as an SRPG. Certainly the only good thing about the latter half was all the battling I got to do. However it’s such a simple, straightforward tactical system that there really isn’t much to say about it. You don’t have to mess with weapons and equipment, there are no items, there is no EXP and growths are strictly story-based, so basically you just go out there and fight. There were one or two slightly sticky battles, but in general the AI is pretty poor. The last boss was actually kind of tough, but by using Oogami’s “Cover” ability (shield a girl from an attack while taking no damage yourself, very handy for boosting affection), I managed to keep Kanna alive and plugging away at his HP turn after turn.

I’d like to try the other games someday soon. I hope they added a little more complexity to the battle system. I hope they made the enemies move faster and attack more cleverly. I hope the others don’t drag on as long as this one did. I hope the game stories got better as the series went along. I hope a lot of things, because I actually liked Sakura Taisen, all things considered. It was a good first try.

Related posts:

Sakura Taisen (1) Sakura Taisen 2 – Hmm, who to pick this time Sakura Taisen 2 – Kanna GET again! Sakura Taisen 3 – Erica sorta GET!