Time to talk about one of my favorite games on the Wii, one that I don't hear too many people talk about: Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love. For those of you who haven't heard of it, Sakura Wars is a series of "dating" sim/SRPG games created by Sega that started life on the Saturn in 1996. It became one of Sega's hottest sellers in Japan, spawning four sequels and anime spin-offs. However, despite it's success in Japan, over here we only got one game in the series, the fifth and final game "So Long, My Love". It came out in Japan for the PS2 in 2005, but we didn't get it over here until 2010, during which time it was also ported over to the Wii. It did receive very positive reviews, but I'm not sure how it sold.

The way Sakura Wars works is a bit unusual since we don't have many games of its type over here. While Sakura Wars features SRPG combat, it does not have random battles or leveling up. Instead, you start off each of the game's chapters in the “dating” sim style parts where you walk around the city and converse with your teammates in a bunch of dialogue scenes, or sometimes perform little QTE mini-games where you have to push buttons to fill a gauge. At certain points during conversations, you must select one of three dialogue choices for you character to say, which either gets positive or negative reactions from your teammates, which either increase or decrease your team’s trust in you. This affects what their stats will be when you reach the SRPG combat segments at the end of the chapter; lots of positive reactions will increase your team’s stats, but if you get mostly negative responses they’ll receive no stat boosts. (Though the negative responses are sometimes funny).

It's a little more complicated in the fact that if you play it blind, you'll have no clue which responses will get positive or negative reactions, and in some cases none of the choices are correct and you have to let time run out to get the positive reaction. Also, during the parts when you can walk around the city, you are given a time limit. A clock is displayed in the corner of the screen and you lose five minutes for every location visited. While you are free to visit any of the available locations in the city, you do not have enough time to go to all of them within this time limit. Some of the locations are dead ends and will not have any dialogue choices so you could miss out on boosting your team mate's trust.

Getting high trust and reactions is crucial for doing well in the combat segments. Not only does it affect your teammate's stats, but there are also team attacks you can do with two of your party members and obviously how much damage they do depends how high their trust is.

To understand the game further, here’s scans of the manual:

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v135/J.E.Smith/Sakura%20Wars/

I guess part of the reason I like Sakura Wars so much is for most of its characters and all the interactions you do with them throughout the game, plus the game has plenty of cute bits and funny bits. It also contains plenty of replayability if you really get into it; there’s six different endings (One of which can’t be seen on your first playthrough) and all the different dialogue choices to make. It’s not possible to see everything on the first try, and will take you several playthroughs to see it all.

Some videos:

Running around the city example (During this part of the game, you're collecting evidence for a trial to prevent a part of Harlem from undergoing urban redevelopment. Favorite bit is at 7:08 with some Asian stereotype jokes):



SRPG Combat example (Did I mention the game takes place in an alternate 1928 steampunk New York where you fight in steam powered robots?)




Only showing this next one because of the dialogue choice at the 1:56 mark. Don't see that often in a video game now do ya?

Drew Linky wrote:

It sounds like a good game, but I have to admit; I'm not a great fan of dating sims. They all seem kind of boring.

Well I forgot to say it in my above post, but did you notice how when I said dating sim I put in parentheses? Well that's because while you do end up going out with one of the girls near the end of the game and you do end up with one at the end of the game, it's not the whole focus of the relations with your teammates for the entire game. At the start of the game, you're just been sent to New York to become part of the new combat team and you're just trying to settle in and make a good impression with the team.