Sakura Wars (2019 video game)

An example of how the LIPS system is used in the game. In this shot, Kamiyama is being consulted by the rest of the Flower Division on how they can improve their acting.

Sakura Wars is a cross-genre video game set in Tokyo during a fictionalized version of the Taishō period. The player controls the main protagonist Seijuro Kamiyama and the all-female members of the Imperial Combat Revue's Flower Division, who must fight demons while participating in the Combat Revue World Games. Dubbed a "dramatic 3D action adventure" game, the player explores a fully 3-D version of Ginza, Tokyo usually through a third-person perspective on foot and talks to various characters to trigger main story events and side objectives.[1][2][3] As in Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, the world of Sakura Wars is rendered to scale relative to the characters in it; instead of a caricature of the character roaming around miniature maps, as found in the earlier Sakura Wars games, every area is represented proportionally. A variant of the Kinematron, called the Teletron, is a smartphone that allows Kamiyama to see a map of Ginza and speak with other characters.[3]

As with previous entries, the gameplay is split between adventure segments where Kamiyama explores Ginza and talks to the characters; and battle segments.[2] A returning gameplay element is the traditional "Live & Interactive Picture System" (LIPS); during conversations, the player is presented with multiple choices to select within a time limit. What response the player selects directly affects Kamiyama's relationship with the protagonists and impacts their later performance in battle segments; Kamiyama's responses also affect supporting non-playable characters (NPCs). The version introduced in this game is "Analog LIPS", in which the player can move the camera around and highlight objects or people to trigger more dialogue.[1][3][4] In one-on-one conversation segments, the player can move the cursor over background elements or the characters to trigger internal monologues and varying responses from the characters.[5] Players may save their game automatically at the start of the adventure and battle parts of each chapter and manually during intermissions and while exploring, which also includes the statuses of the main heroines as well as supporting NPCs.[6]

Sakura Wars is the first entry in the main Sakura Wars series to use an action-based battle system.[7] Instead of using a menu interface, the player selects commands directly mapped to the buttons on the controller. The Combat Revue World Games can be played for up to a maximum of three rounds. The player can select up to two characters to assist Kamiyama in the matches.[8] During battle, each character has health points (HP) and magic points (MP). HP is depleted whenever a character is attacked. The game ends when all of the characters' HP levels reach zero, although the player can continue from the beginning of the battle or the last checkpoint.[9]

In 1930, two years after the events of So Long, My Love, the Great Demon War results in the annihilation of the Imperial and Paris Combat Revue's Flower Divisions and the New York Combat Revue's Star Division. With Earth at peace and the revues' actions becoming public, the World Luxury Operatic Federation (WLOF) is formed with several international divisions; a biennial Combat Revue World Games tournament has been organized.[10]

Ten years later in 1940,[11][12] the Combat Revue's commander Sumire Kanzaki (Michie Tomizawa) recruits Imperial Japanese Navy ensign Seijuro Kamiyama (Yōhei Azakami) to become the captain of the new Imperial Combat Revue's Flower Division in Tokyo, which consists of: Sakura Amamiya (Ayane Sakura), a swordswoman; Hatsuho Shinonome (Maaya Uchida), a shrine maiden; Anastasia Palma (Ayaka Fukuhara), a newly transferred Greek actress; Azami Mochizuki (Hibiku Yamamura), a ninja prodigy from the Mochizuki clan; and Clarissa "Claris" Snowflake (Saori Hayami), a Luxembourger noblewoman. The division once again faces a new demon invasion and participates in the upcoming tournament with Xiaolong Yang (Yuichiro Umehara) and Yui Huang (Sumire Uesaka) of the Shanghai Combat Revue, Arthur (Nobunaga Shimazaki) and Lancelot (Manami Numakura) of the London Combat Revue, and Elise (Nana Mizuki) and Margarete (Rie Kugimiya) of the Berlin Combat Revue–while trying to keep their home at the Imperial Theater open.[1][2]

However, as the tournament progresses, it is later revealed that the leader of the Federation, President G (Ryotaro Okiayu), is actually the demon Sotetsu Genan in disguise. Using his position, Genan steals the Imperial Sword, which is a special artifact Sakura Amamiya's mother Hinata (Mariko Kouda) sacrificed herself to create, which the previous Combat Revues used to seal themselves and the Archdemon away in Shadow Tokyo to end the Great Demon War. With the Imperial Sword now in his possession, Genan begins to use it to weaken the barrier between Tokyo and Shadow Tokyo so that he may revive the Archdemon and destroy the world. The Imperial, Shanghai, London, and Berlin Combat Revues work together to take back the Imperial Sword. With assistance from Sakura Shinguji (Chisa Yokoyama), Kamiyama is able to kill Genan while Sakura Amamiya uses the Imperial Sword to seal away Shadow Tokyo.

With the threat finally over, the Combat Revues prepare for the World Pageant to celebrate peace.

The Sakura Wars series had been mostly inactive since the last mainline release, Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, in 2005 (2010 internationally).[3][13] Franchise owner Sega had decided to end the series in 2008, following the release of the spin-off title Dramatic Dungeon: Sakura Wars and a final concert performance by the cast of So Long, My Love.[14][15] Scenario director Takaharu Terada would make yearly pitches to Sega, but these were repeatedly declined. At the 2016 Sega Fes in Tokyo, in response to a fan poll about dormant series, Sakura Wars was voted the most requested revival. While actual development had begun shortly before Sega Fes, the positive fan feedback gave the developers the boost they needed to begin full production.[16][17] The staff included producer Tetsu Katano of Sonic the Hedgehog series fame and director Tetsuya Ohtsubo. Katano was a newcomer to the series, but Ohtsubo had previously worked with the series on Sakura Wars 3: Is Paris Burning?.[16] Because much time had passed between So Long, My Love and the production of this new game, and both the platform and most of the team were different, it was decided that Sakura Wars would be a soft reboot.[3][16]

The game was developed by a team within Sega's CS Research & Development No. 2 division, which also includes Sonic Team.[18][19] The basic gameplay was carried over, but extensively reworked and the world built entirely in 3D due to the greater hardware specs of the PlayStation 4.[16][20] The game's engine was based on Hedgehog Engine 2, a proprietary first-party engine created by Sega for the Sonic the Hedgehog series. The cutscenes were crafted using techniques perfected for Sega's Yakuza series. Alongside the 3D conversion, the team worked to make transitions between different areas and between gameplay and cutscenes as seamless as possible. During production, internal staff who were fans of classic Sakura Wars would often be critical of the current team's work, putting pressure on them to create a product worthy of the series.[21] The game features over 40 minutes of CGI cinematics produced by Sanzigen. All other cutscenes were created in real-time using the game's engine.[3]

While there were a new cast and development team, the series' romanticized steampunk setting remained intact. The narrative was described as a "Sakura Wars-esque fantasy".[3] Terada created the basic setting and scenario concept, the scenario draft was written by Jiro Ishii, while the main script was handled by Takaaki Suzuki.[1][3] Ishii was contacted in 2016 by Sega. Ishii was initially sceptical about his adequacy to manage the project due to the Sakura Wars franchise's prestige. He accepted as the one who approached him was 428: Shibuya Scramble producer Koichi Nakamura; Ishii recognized that the challenge of Sakura Wars was equivalent to the relationship between 428: Shibuya Scramble and its predecessor Machi.[2] During his work on the scenario, Suzuki offered suggestions to keep the game as historically accurate as possible.[3]

When devising a new battle system for the game, Sega dispensed with the turn-based battle system used in the previous five Sakura Wars games in favor of an action-based system, as they found it to be "the most compatible with the modern PS4 userbase." On being asked about the switch between battle systems, Ohtsubo said that the action genre was "more accessible" as opposed to the simulation genre in Japan.[17]

A new Sakura Wars title was first announced in April 2018 under the title New Sakura Wars, also known in the west as Project Sakura Wars. The announcement stated that the game would "inherit the DNA" of the series.[13][32] Its first public appearance was at Sega Fes 2019 in March of that year, to a positive fan response.[18] The announcement of a Western release coincided with this, making Sakura Wars only the second Sakura Wars game to be localized at that time.[1][12] Development at the time was placed at between 50% and 60% complete; all the scenario and basic systems were completed and voice recording was nearly finished, with the next phase being bringing together the various elements and polishing them for release.[3] Speaking in a later statement, Sega said that they hoped to continue the series beyond Sakura Wars.[33]

During the localization process, associate producer Andrew Davis said that the game was the "perfect chance to give Western players a fresh launching point" and to "reboot the inconsistent English terms from previous localizations throughout the decades."[17] He felt that the trickiest aspects was "coordinating localization on a moving target" and, at one point, the teams "paused [their] translations (and extended [their] production schedule) in order to give the development team more time to finalize their scripts." The process also gave CS2 R&D the chance to "consult with [Sega of America] and other global offices."[17]

A demo of Sakura Wars was released on November 21, 2019.[34] The English localization was handled by Inbound Games and the French, German and Spanish localizations were handled by Keywords Studio; this was the first time a Sakura Wars title was localized in these languages.[35][36] The game was released in Asia on December 12, 2019, and worldwide on April 28, 2020.[1][36] Additional fixes to the game were made through a patch released on March 18, 2020, in Japan and concurrently with the worldwide release; it also included a tie-in to Sakura Wars the Animation.[37][38] The Japanese release of the game was published in standard and deluxe editions. The deluxe edition included a five-disc CD collection containing songs from the main six Sakura Wars games as well as an artbook.[39]

Famitsu released a companion book: the Sakura Wars Complete Guide on February 21, 2020. It provides profiles of the characters and areas in Ginza, the complete story of Sakura Wars, details on the adventure and battle scenarios, and details on each location.[40] Kadokawa Game Linkage released the Sakura Wars Story Setting Collections on March 30, 2020. It included interviews with the developers, detailed character profiles, storyboards and a collection of artworks and illustrations.[41]

Cosmetic and audio-based downloadable content (DLC) were released from December 2019 to January 2020 in Japan.[42]

Sakura Wars received "mixed or average" reviews from critics, according to Metacritic.[43] Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu gave the game a score of 33 points out of 40.[45]

GameSpot's Heidi Kemps praised the game's episodic format.[47] Josh Torres of RPGFan felt that the tête-à-tête feature was "misplaced or implemented in a slipshod fashion".[50] Chris Moyse of Destructoid called the conversations "almost always a pleasure, rarely a chore" and the writing "very funny".[44] Kimberly Wallace of Game Informer called the plot "outlandish", but praised the cast's performances.[46]

Kemps finds that the story compensates for the gameplay, saying "fun character interactions, and high-stakes melodrama help it overcome mediocre action sequences".[47]

Citations

Notes

• Official website
• Official website (in Japanese)