Printable View
What's the deal? I've been hearing about this series from various sources over the past few months, and have finally let my curiosity get the better of me. What the Hell is it all about? Is it worth importing? What one should I start with, 1-4? Any info of links to screenshots or videos would be helpful. Thanks.
Premise:
You take the role of Oogami Ichirou, a just-graduated naval ensign. When you begin Sakura Taisen, you are transferred to be the commander of the Teikokukagekidan Hanagumi. That phrase can be translated in two ways, depending on the characters used: Imperial Floral Assault Team, Flower Division, or Imperial Opera Team, Flower Division. This pun is the subject of the game in the beginning, but I'll just leave it at that. It turns out that the Hanagumi is full of females, which is a bit of a disappointment to you, since you're a soldier type of person. But alas, throughout the game, you bond with them, making friendships and earning their respect, and you may even develop feelings for them. Of course, what's a Dramatic Adventure without an enemy trying to destroy Japan?
Gameplay:
There are basically 3 elements of any Sakura Taisen game: Adventure, Battles, Minigames.
The adventure mode is basically you walking around and talking to people. And usually there are only so many opportunities to do so. For instance, you may have one hour to walk around, and every location you go to takes 10 minutes. The unique thing about ST is the LIPS system, where basically some of your responses are timed. That is, if someone is asking you an urgent question, you need to pick your answer within a specified time frame. Not picking a choice is also a choice. There are elements from dating sims in this game, because if you answer a question "correctly", your teammate's opinion of you rises and consequently, they are more powerful in battle. Conversely, say the wrong thing, and they may be weak in battle. You will also get a different ending (well, part of the ending) depending on which character has the highest opinion of you by the end of the game.
When you have to fight enemies, usually once or twice per episode, it becomes like an SRPG, where you fight enemies on an isometric 3/4 overhead view, not unlike games like Final Fantasy Tactics or Ogre Battle. There's no experience points, and there's some things unique to ST. You will generally have the option of Attack, Hissatsu(it's like a "super" that can be performed when your "super" meter is filled), Defend, and Heal. You as commander, also have a limited amount of "Protects" where you will take the hit for one of your teammates causing neither of you to take any damage. There is a limited # of these. The battles tend to be on the easy side, and depending on which game you're talking about, the specifics of the battles are different.
Finally, there's minigames. Generally there are minigames for each teammate of yours that you have to "find" in the main game in order to play. There is also generally a main minigame in each game. The character specific minigames tend to be very simple and focused games. For instance, Sakura's minigame in ST has forced vertical scrolling where you must dodge all obstacles and reach the end. So shooter skills pay off here. But the "main minigame" of ST is Koi Koi Taisen, a variant of the Japanese card game, Hanafuda. Not that the main minigames are necessarily better than the character ones. I've spent countless hours on most of the minigames.
For a full account of how the first game is really like (and consequently what the game series is in general), I recommend you read something I wrote years ago at:
http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~hueyt/sak.txt
For a beginner, I recommend starting at the first game. The graphics may be a bit dated (It came out in 1996), but it's among my top 3 games of all time. Sakura Taisen 3 is another decent starting point, revamps the graphics and the game engine, and is the best game in the series. Also among my top 3 of all time ^^;. ST3 is a decent starting point because it takes place in France, so most of it is a new cast anyway. However, it would help if you knew about the events of the previous two games.
If you're a graphic whore though, and want to check out the series, perhaps ST3 is the best place to start. ST4 is the worst place to start out and I would heavily recommend not bothering with it at all unless you've played ST 1-3.
ST 1-2 are available on Sega Saturn, Dreamcast and Windows. ST 3-4 are Dreamcast only. And of course, all of these are import only. I would definitely recommend the DC versions of ST1-2 over the SS because they added a few small things that I can't live without anymore... such as a fast-forward feature for future play throughs, less load time, and for ST2, improved polygon models. For the most part, the graphics have not changed a bit aside from being in higher res.
The Sakura games are pretty deep though... I've played Sakura Taisen 3 almost 4 times through now and I don't think I've seen 70% of what the game has to offer yet. There's so many events, so many extras and details, and of course different endings, that you can play it again and again and find new things each time.
Awesome post Tsubaki! You've pretty much summed up the series nicely.
For some screens of the games feel free to search for Sakura Taisen at JVGFanatic. There aren't any gameplay shots of Sakura Taisen 4, but that is because JVGFanatic doesn't want to take gameplay shots of it until he beats the other three games in the series.
I would assume there are shots of the games at http://dc.ign.com/ too.
For game translations, check out Kayama's incredible work at his site. He has a lovely image of Sakura on his home page too, wow :eek:
I would recommend you start the series off on the first game btw, I still love the opening scenes to it.
Awesome!!
I just scored the pink Dreamcast and all of the Sakura Taisen games!!
Looks like I'll get to put my prized DC to great use!:D
The only reason why I found this game was mostly on accident.
I barely heard about it from someone I knew online, and I tried to order the Einhänder Soundtrack from Game Cave but things got screwed up... so I ended up having $50 credit there and Sakura Taisen 2 happened to be on sale for $25. I said what the hell and got it.
Little did I know...
I have yet to get one of the ST games for DC... I've been meaning to, just to try it out...
And the artwork is great...
According to most ST fans I've talked to, the latest one(part 4) sucks. They mostly preferred part 3 over all of them, so you may want to check that out.