When I started Sakura Taisen 3 I swore up and down that I would never like the new cast. Never! Never you hear me? Give me back Sakura and Kanna and… hmm, okay I guess Erica isn’t so bad. Okay, Erica can stay but the rest of the new cast…Hoho, resistance is useless, Glycine!…awww, Coquelicot is so cute! …and before I knew it the new cast had grown on me. Okay I like them all so far, on with the game!
“So far” is only 3 chapters and roughly 4 hours into the game, but things are going pretty well. Ichiro “Ladykiller” Ogami from Sakura Taisen 1 and 2 is in Paris to take command of a new group of demon-busting mecha-riding beauties posing as stage dancers. There isn’t much of a story beside that, but the Sakura Taisen series is more about getting to know the girls better and ultimately saving the world than about the finer details of a story. Besides, I already know from experience that the first crop of bad guys are just decoys and the real baddies will show up much later so I’m just coasting right now.
The timed choices and night patrols are largely the same as in previous games, except this time you can roam around the whole Paris instead of just the theater. Either I’ve gotten faster at reading Japanese or the time given for answers is more generous because I have a lot of time to read all the possible answers to a girl’s questions before selecting the best one this time, which helps a lot. Maybe it’s just because I’m playing the game on a TV versus a tiny PSP screen this time. Either way I like that a lot.
Battles are the same old easy fluff… though I probably shouldn’t get cocky after just 3 battles. They did away with the grids and menus in favor of an Action Point system. You start every turn with 8 AP and can move/attack/heal/defend as much as your points allow. IIRC healing takes like 6 AP, charging takes 3, attacking takes 1, etc etc. So you can move forward, attack and move back, or heal and move, or heal and attack, and so on and so forth, whatever combination catches your fancy. It’s not much different in practice from the systems in the previous games, except it feels a lot faster and more streamlined. Almost makes me wish there were more battles in the game instead of only one per chapter.
So I’m off to a good start with Sakura Taisen 3. I like everyone in the new cast so far, I’m not having any trouble with the gameplay and I’m really enjoying the battles, brief as they are. I have a lot of faith in Sega as an RPG publisher – they did produce my beloved Phantasy Star Portable and 7th Dragon games, after all – so unless they do something really stupid with the story I think I’m going to like this game.
“You start every turn with 8 AP and can move/attack/heal/defend as much as your points allow. IIRC healing takes like 6 AP, charging takes 3, attacking takes 1, etc etc”
So, if you’re beside the enemy… Can you attack 8 times?!?
Wow, that’s looks like fun 🙂
That is correct. Depending on the character you don’t need to be right next to them to attack either, so it helps to move as little as possible so the enemy is just in range and then use the rest of your AP to smash them up.
Huh, I was always under the impression that you beat all the ST games already. Guess not.
My own Sakura Taisen 1 playthrough is going really slowly because there’s no “freeform saving” so I always have to find a good solid hour or so to play through the chapters. As expected, the timed choices are way too fast for me so I usually panic and click randomly when it happens.
(I’m also randomly distracted by things like deciding to start up a playthrough of PSP Neosphere again)
Carving out time to play is always an issue with console games. With ST3 I’ve limited myself to one chapter a day and it’s going pretty well. Don’t worry too much about the choices. You can make up for mistakes a bit by choosing to protect (かばう) your chosen maiden in battle. Even if it means you deliberately put her in danger so you can come to her aid, kukukuku…