| Sakura Taisen V Episode 0 review |
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Sakura Taisen V-0 is an action prequel to next year's new series of games set in New York some years after the original series. It chronicles the adventures of a 16 year old Texan cowgirl named Gemini Sunrise, American samurai and most irritating person in the universe, as she makes her way from San Francisco to New York. She sets about her task by spouting irritating broken English, dicing giant robots and attempting to protect a young girl named Juanita from the evil forces of Patrick (who sharper fans may remember from the Sakura Taisen movie). So much for the plot, but how does it play?
STV0 has an original and solid premise for its gameplay. Players are waylaid throughout by an army of missile-throwing mecha and have nothing but a horse and a sword to protect themselves. It's classic western/samurai movie material, and when set against the backdrop of a steampunk America it becomes all the more stronger. It translates well into gameplay too; one button controls sword moves, another for jumping, another for special moves and a fourth for using the horse to toss your enemies into the air in order to air-juggle them. The shoulder buttons control the camera angle, L2 makes the horse gallop and R2 makes the horse skid to a halt and drift sideways on its hooves.
Good playing of the game involves balancing avoiding enemy attacks, letting fly with the sword and having the horse kick and toss the enemy robots in order to keep control of the battlefield. This is backed up by a score ranking system which rewards finesse of play with extra stat-boosting experience points. Also featured are a good selection of swords which allow the player to unleash various levels of damage and special attacks such as fireballs, combos and matrix-style slow motion moves, along with a system of saddles, horseshoes and harnesses for the steed (which don't appear to make that much difference at all, but meh).
Of course, the appeal of the Sakura Taisen games has always been the underlying ambience, character interaction and game system. Have they been sacrificed? Yes and no. STV0 is a very linear game which goes from one combat scene to the next interspersed with story scenes. These scenes feature the same LIPS multiple choice system as the other games, made even more accessible for non Japanese speakers by the fact that each choice is accompanied by a face depicting the emotion typified by that response. This ease of play is something of a nicety, though, as without any link to the actual gameplay mechanic (as in the ST wargames), the LIPS system is little more than a fancy bolt-on which does nothing.
This, however, does little to detract from the overall gameplay experience. What really does kneecap the proceedings (compared to the previous instalments of the series, at any rate) is the lack of the illusion of non-linearity. While the ST games are linear by nature and the player cannot affect the plot to any great extent, the sections in which the player is free to wander around to meet the characters, hold conversations and deal with the consequences of these actions created an atmosphere which served as a powerful and immersive backdrop to the plotline and the battle scenes. Robbed of even the pretence of freedom, Sakura Taisen V0 is reduced from the heights of a ST game to just... well, a game. Not a bad game by any means, but anyone who spent months with their head stuck in one of the earlier games with a ferverence usually reserved for classics like Elite, Pokemon, Baldur's Gate or any MMORPG you care to mention will know that this represents one hell of a climbdown.
Another thing which takes away from the package is the visible lack of an animation budget. Anime sequences are criminally thin on the ground, and special move animations are entirely absent. While this is balanced out by the fact that the almost the entire game is voice acted to a high standard, it still gives the whole affair the feel of a shoe-in or a dojin game. Poor quality writing does little to help the game's cause, with barely any of the engaging character interplay which has become the Sakura Taisen hallmark. Admittedly the lack of an ensemble cast is partly to blame for this, but when the characters spend half an hour talking about ham you have to start to take issue.
At the end of the day Episode 0 is a game that you have to decide for yourself whether to like or not. As a standalone product it represents a manically fun and original little action game which is full of the sense of joy and panache which have made RED into rich men and women. The repetition inherent in action games (and indeed any mecha game which is not one-on-one) is well balanced out by varying difficulty levels, a tough score attack system and a host of gameplay and connectivity secrets. Sakura, Oogami, Erika and their mecha are unlockable as secret characters via codes or by your prowess on Mysterious Paris, the ST1 remake or the Sakura Wars Keitai Club games (although this is useless to anyone who doesn't live in Japan and own a Foma 900i contract). The boss designs are excellent and the action set pieces consistently entertaining (the level where the Texas Rangers take the field at Gettysburg against Patrick's mecha army riding steampunk motorbikes deserves special mention here). You just have to keep it in mind that this is a cute little stopgap between REAL Sakura Taisen games, and it will never be comparable to its bigger brothers any more than having The Last Starfighter on in the background while you work will be comparable to sitting down with friends and a case of beer to watch Aliens. |
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System: Sony PlayStation 2
Genre: Action
Developer: RED
Publisher: Sega
Players: 1
Version: Japan
Writer: Simon Dominguez
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Pros:
- Original, cool and fun to play
- Solid game system and replay value
- Cheap
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Cons:
- Short
- Rarely funny
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