Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love (Wii) Review

Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love - the whole series, in fact - is very unique, especially for anyone outside of Japan. It is a mix of strategy-RPG, visual novel and dating sim. That said, anyone looking for a 'hardcore' strategy-RPG will almost certainly end up disappointed with Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love because that's not where its strengths and charm lie. It’s a very story driven game, so most of the time you'll simply be following the plot and making choices that will, hopefully positively, affect your relationships with the different girls in the game. The battles are simply a welcome change of pace - they're nothing overly special, but that's not what they're supposed to be. Don't expect Fire Emblem levels of combat.

The game takes place during the year 1928 in an alternate universe which is similar to the real world but far more advanced. You take control of a 19 year old Japanese naval officer, Shinjiro Taiga, who departs to New York to join the New York Combat Revue Star Division; an organisation devoted to protecting the city of New York while simultaneously keeping the spirits of its residents up by performing theatre musicals. Things start out calm, with only occasional attacks on the city from hostile robots that can be easily dealt with, but it slowly becomes apparent that there's something much bigger than that. Without any detail, anyone who is familiar with JRPGs should know just what to expect when the words "ancient evil" are uttered. However, that's not to say that it's yet again a clichéd JRPG story, because the interaction with the characters you meet along the way is what makes up the best part of the story and the game as whole.

Throughout Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love you'll have to get along with the girls you meet by making the right choices and slowly understanding and unveiling their real personalities. These choices are made through timed LIPS - the Live and Interactive Picture System. There exist four forms of LIPS to interact with other characters or deal with situations. First, you have your basic LIPS, where you are presented with one to three choices of what to say or do. Secondly, there are analogue LIPS where you can raise an action gauge, ranging from 0 - 100%, up or down depending on the situation. How high or low you raise it affects how you perform an action, or what you’ll actually do. Then there are Stick LIPS which require you to rotate the analogue sticks in a given way to carry out actions like repairing items, or even simply making coffee, the outcome affecting how well Shinjiro does in the task. There's one very annoying thing about Stick LIPS. The Wii Remote and Nunchuk combo doesn’t have two analogue sticks, so you have to use the D-pad instead; fine for directional input, but when you're required to do circular motion inputs within a time limit then it gets really hard. A Classic Controller Pro is almost required to do well in all of these parts. However, you still need to use the Wii Remote for the fourth type of LIPS, Click LIPS, where you simply need to point and click on things on the screen that you want to interact with or look at. You better watch out where you are clicking when looking at a girl though, as that could have some very unfortunate results for you...

LIPS make up a large part of the game and influence your relationships with the various girls on your team. Doing well on a task set by a girl, or saying the things they want you to say, will net you trust points, indicated by a little tune that plays every time your relationship with that particular girl improves. However, you can also get negative trust points by screwing up, being a jerk or simply not saying what the girl wanted. Don’t worry about messing up your game, though, as there is a handy 'Discontinue' feature that, unlike in most other games, lets you reset and start from that point again as many times as you want. Getting to understand the girls' personalities to earn more trust points is key here because those are ultimately what affect your overall performance in the various battle sequences. These usually occur at the end of each chapter and consist of a couple of sections, facing off against minions before a boss.

Yes, you just read right. You don't to need kill enemies for experience points or anything like that in Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love. The better you get along with the girls, the stronger you'll be in battle. Make the right choices and you'll soon find yourself kicking ass during combat, along with your female team members. You fight inside mechanised two-legged suits called STARS. Everything is turn-based, but it's not quite as simple as selecting your action and your target. You get a set amount of action points every turn (depending on your accumulated trust points) that you can use to move around, piece together normal combos, special attacks or Joint attacks, where you team up with one of your teammates and perform a strong attack. It should be noted that these Joint attacks become stronger each time your relationship level with that particular girl increases, so it’s in your best interest to work on those. Then you have your basic stats such as HP, SP (Special Points), Attack, Defence and Speed; the standard stuff. However, it should be noted that there are no items or anything like that in this game, so to recover HP or SP you have to use up action points to heal or charge your SP.

You can also choose between three strategies for your team to follow: 'Shin', 'Gi' or 'Tai'. Shin is offensive, increasing your attack but removing your ability to heal. Gi is flexible and improves your speed while still allowing healing and special attacks. Tai is defensive, but your special attacks can't be used any more. These strategies can be changed whenever it is your main character’s turn, as much as you like, but have to be stuck with for a round before the opportunity to change comes up again. Using the correct strategy in the correct situation can make battles so much easier and quicker for you but you should never get cocky, even though the fights are generally on the easy side given that you're not a total jerk to the girls. You also have two other commands during combat, "Help Me!" and "Protect!”. Both of these commands improve the relationship with the girl you use them on, so you might want to use them in each battle even if you don't need to.

Graphically, it should be noted that Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love is a port of a PlayStation 2 game, and that's just how it looks. The dialogue scenes consist of animé pictures of the people you are talking to and a little circle in the dialogue box that shows Shinjiro's reactions. This is preferable, as the 3D models aren't overly pretty, though in the midst of battle they do the job while over the top special attacks - some even lasting up to a minute - spiral around, as expected from this genre. These are often insane, with so many effects that it's apparently too much for the game to handle, sometimes causing everything to slow down to an extremely low frame rate. These are really only for some major boss special attacks though and you can skip the entire animation once you've seen it at least once so it's not a game-breaker. There are also a good amount of CG movies that are top notch animé quality and leave you with a desire for more.

The soundtrack of Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love is excellent and perfectly captures the emotion of each scene or the personality of each character that has his/her own theme, even stirring players in certain points of the story. During battles you'll hear some great relatively fast-paced tracks that get you really motivated, while walking around the city is supported by mellow music. About 20 - 25% of the dialogue features brilliant English voice acting, usually the main story conversations or other important moments, while the rest remains unvoiced. The voices fit the characters perfectly, convey lots of different emotions and are just well done in general. It’s exactly how voice acting in video games should sound like. The PS2 release came with two discs, one featuring the original Japanese voices, but with such brilliant English voice work I wasn't longing for the original dubs at all.

Summing up, Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love is a very entertaining experience that combines elements of a strategy RPG, dating sim and visual novel. The characters all have very well put together background stories and character development and combat is a fun change of pace during the usual conversations and watching the story unfold. The graphics are very good and should please any fan of animé/manga, and the English voicework is downright fantastic. This is a game very well worth checking out for any fellow otaku, though if you're not fond of the dating sim and visual novel genres, it's unlikely that the strategy RPG elements alone will make up for the inclusion of these genres' elements.