[archived from a cohost post, originally made on june 10, 2024]
y'know, I bought this basically sight unseen a day after it came out (april 28th, 2020) and I have genuinely been meaning to play it since then, despite really feeling like it was going to be an earnest coin flip between tiring trash and genuinely good game
it's good! not for everyone but it's pretty fun and I'm gonna 100% it
sakura wars, as a franchise, has been one of those things I was always kind of aware of but never felt strongly enough about to get into. there was the ps2 entry, so long, my love, which was, to my knowledge, not very well received by diehard fans of the series; however, those diehard fans were playing the first four games in japanese back in the day. there's been translation efforts now, and I might go look for them, honestly, because good grief, the character moments in this game are strong.
the move from turn-based tactics to musou-adjacent action game is baffling, frankly, but it's genuinely serviceable and doesn't get in the way of things much. the balance of visual novel/dating sim segments to combat is pretty heavily weighted toward the former, in a way that ends up playing to the game's strengths fairly well while still giving some catharsis and fun combat moments
none of the heroines who you can spend time with feel underwhelming, though obviously I had a ranking of favorites by the end. lots of cute character moments in the plot and side events that really fleshed them out and made them fun to spend time with. it really scratched my itch for some romantic comedy shenanigans, and made me want to get back to reading some more romcom VNs... which. I might. but I have other stuff to play right now.