Summary
I'll miss you, Honglan!
The Good
"Sakura Taisen 2" is one of those sequels that simply repeats a formula found in the previous game, without adding anything really new. And there is nothing wrong with that when the formula in question works. "Sakura Taisen" offered to the player a unique combination of Japanese dating adventure, animé series, and strategic combat, set in 1920-ies in Japan. What does "Sakura Taisen 2" offers? More dating, more animé, and more combat, obviously!
If you liked the first Sakura Taisen, you will surely also like the second. It is just like the first one, only more so. Small improvements were made to virtually every aspect of the game, even though as a whole, "Sakura Taisen 2" is just the continuation of the story told in the first game, and not much more.
You play such a game mostly for its characters. "Sakura Taisen 2" features the same character cast as in the first game, adding a couple of not very significant newcomers. Only the villains are totally new. I was very glad to see those characters again, and I realized I missed them. Oh, those girls are wonderful! They are so different from the Japanese female stereotypes we encounter over and over again. There can be no comparison between the girls of the Hanagumi Brigade and a cast of a hentai game. No other game I know managed to create six (even eight, in the second game) female characters who would be so different and so appealing, each one in her own way.
Every girl has a world of her own, has not only a distinct appearance, speech style, etc., but an own way of thinking, own problems, own weak and strong sides. Heck, you'll want to re-play this game seven times only to see what happens during the different endings, each one being achieved after successfully courting the appropriate girl. I really can't stress enough the appeal of those girls. Sure, they are sexy, but this is not achieved by cheap means - on the contrary, the game is very innocent and shy, avoiding anything vulgar, strong innuendos or anything explicit; yet the girls attract not only by their physical beauty, but also by their personalities. I'm sure every man will find a girl here who would correspond to, or at least come close to his ideal. For me, the cute little Chinese scientist Honglan is one of the most appealing female characters in any game ever.
In this review I shall only point out the differences between the two games, and mention the things that "Sakura Taisen 2" does particularly well. If you want a more detailed description of Sakura Taisen gameplay and setting, please refer to my review for the first "Sakura Taisen".
In general, "Sakura Taisen 2" follows the principle of converting quantity into quality. It is "Sakura Taisen" with everything doubled and tripled. It is longer (I needed more than 20 hours to complete it), it has more characters, more conversations, more cut-scenes, more battles. The animé-style cut-scenes, that were already excellent in the first game, became even more impressive now. The 3D pre-rendered cut-scenes (mostly showing robots and other advanced machinery) are spectacular. In-game locations (overview of the theater, battle areas) certainly look better; the special techniques have now really cool 3D animations, and there are three kinds of techniques for each character (two in the first game). Enemies look more intimidating, and the last boss was much more impressive than the chief villain of the predecessor.
The battles also became trickier. They were still easy, but much less straightforward. You became more powerful in the second game, but so did your foes. The coolest battle feature of the second game was the addition of general battle strategy: you could increase your attack power or speed at the cost of defense, or increase your defense at the cost of speed. This feature was pretty useful: you could always choose the speedy "Wind" strategy if the way to the target was too long, or play the defensive "Mountain" whenever the boss gathered enough energy to perform a devastating area attack.
In dating part, there were two new answer modes. One was a special green text box that displayed only two of the possible three answers: if you waited too long, a third one could be added, or one of the answers could be replaced by another; but sometimes nothing happened, or the best answer became unavailable because of your hesitation. There were also a couple of places where you had limited time for conversation, and had to achieve the best result by repeatedly talking to the character and choosing answers.
A very nice addition to the interesting role-playing system of Sakura Taisen (girls gain better stats if you make them happy) was a special meter for Oogami. In "Sakura Taisen 2", not only the girls, but also Oogami himself could become more powerful in battles. What influenced that were some decisions you took in the game. You had to be decent, confident, and prove you were worthy of leadership. Peeping at girls taking a shower (oh, my favorite part of the series!), being too irresponsible, too lazy, too horny - in short, being everything that makes life enjoyable - resulted in reduction of this special meter, which led to lower attack and defense power in battles. I finished the game with the meter being slightly below the half - only because, like any normal young man, I preferred spying near the shower room rather than listen to boring instructions by the ever-drunk chief Yoneda.
There are many more characters in the game - two new fighters join the Hanagumi Brigade: the arrogant half-Italian, half-Japanese Orihime and the somewhat mysterious German boy (!) Reni. I personally didn't like them as much as the other girls, but the side-plot with Orihime and her father was in my opinion the best of the game, and Reni was involved in the only scene of the game where you see a naked girl (from a side view, which doesn't allow to see much, but still...). The villains are decidedly better than in the first game, except the main one: the first game had a cooler guy who, by the way, undeniably influenced such famous game villains as Sephiroth from
Final Fantasy VII. Among minor villains, I liked Water Fox most - I wonder why the sexiest girls in games are always the bad ones! And of course, the best part about the game's villains was the secret behind the identity of one of them. A plot twist that was quite strong even though you could see it coming at some point.
Beside those improvements, there is still plenty of usual Sakura Taisen quality - great animé artwork, excellent music, and
fantastic voice acting (everyone should learn from Red Company:
this is how voice acting should be done!).
And I don't know about the other endings, but the ending with Honglan was sooooo sweet!
The Bad
Well, despite the improvement in storytelling, this is still not the pinnacle of console RPG plots. Lots of things are just too predictable. For example, early in the game it becomes clear that one of the theater co-workers is a traitor. Instead of creating some suspense, making the player guess who that might be, they threw in the most obvious solution, obvious to the point of wondering whether this solution is just a "smoke screen". But no, there was nothing else except something even a 7-year old would immediately understand.
There are still too many straightforward situations and cliché paroles: at some point, it becomes annoying to hear all the girls and Oogami shout together before every battle. The game's lively, natural dialogues often give place to schematic, uninspired conversations, whenever there is an enemy confrontation. Especially towards the end there was too much of that unbearable "Let's fight! We are fighting for our future! We'll defeat you because we are all buddies!" stuff.
The "dating role-playing" is cool, but it is still the same system as in the original, without the improvements I wanted to see (more drastic changes in girls' behavior in battles depending on your previous conversation choices). And it seemed to me that there were a bit too many battles in this one. Some of them could have been easily thrown out without any harm done to the game. Since the battles are still very easy, this becomes more tedious than truly challenging. I didn't quite liked the fact you had to fight every one of the Demon King's buddies at least two times. And the endless battles against hordes of minor demons in the last two chapters were also unnecessary.
The Bottom Line
"Sakura Taisen 2" is very similar to the first game. In a certain way, I enjoyed it more than the original one. I had a great time meeting the wonderful characters again, learning more about them, and conquering Honglan's heart for the second time (yes, I chose the same girl I ended together with in the first game!). "Sakura Taisen 2" is just as sweet, as warm, as stylish as its predecessor, improving mostly in small gameplay additions, and perhaps a more focused, intriguing story. This is classic Japanese adventuring at its best. Playing Sakura Taisen games is like watching an excellent animé. And there is something very positive about the series, something that just makes your mood better...
Well, it seems Oogami is going to Paris now. He'll probably miss the girls of the Hanagumi Brigade. And even if he won't, I surely will...
