Sakura Wars (2019)



Sakura Wars (2019), otherwise known as New Sakura Wars is the sixth installment in the Sakura Wars franchise, acting as a soft reboot for the series.

Plot
It has been ten years after the events of Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, and the great demon war has ended up in the annihilation of the former combat revues of Tokyo, Paris and New York. The reveal of the Revues actions becoming public has ushered in a new era of peace and Combat Revue teams becoming international celebrities, allowing for Olympic style games to take place between competing divisions for the entertainment of the masses.

Former Imperial Combat Revue member, Sumire Kanzaki has become the commander for the new Imperial Combat Revue, and scraped together a new team after the disappearance of her former teammates. The new Imperial Combat Revue's Flower Division consists of Sakura Amamiya, a girl who was saved by Sakura Shinguji as a child and wishes to become a wonderful actress and demon slayer following her footsteps, Hatsuho Shinonome, Sakura Amamiya's best friend and a shrine maiden who tends to the spiricle stone in the theatres gardens, Clarissa Snowflake, a noblewoman from Luxembourg who comes from a family of Libromancers and an inpsiring author and Azami Mochizuki, a young girl who was raised as a ninja.

Unfortunately, the Imperial Theatre is in steep decline due to missing their former big stars and the new girls being unexprienced as actors. As such the Imperial Combat Revue has fallen out of general publics favour, and their kobu are old fashioned and barely maintained as a result of a lack of funds to the point that Demon cleanups are now the responsibility of the Shanghai Combat Revue. To combat this, Sumire hires former navy captain Seijuro Kamiyama, who is placed as the Captain of the new Flower Division and hiring rising starlet Anastasia Palma, whose well revered acting skills were hoped to improve theatre turn out and improve their status within the Combat Revue world.

Seijuro is tasked with reviving this once great Combat Revue, and he sets about trying to help both the girls improve their confidence and skills, market the Imperial Theatre to the general public in order to increase the Combat Revue's funds and raise their reputation via success at the Combat Revue World Games.

Gameplay
The gameplay is split between several genres, with players playing an adventure game as Seijuro Kamiyama, speaking to the girls, answering questions and raising his affinity with them, as well as running errands and tasks for Sumire and her staff. This section will involve Seijuro being asked a question and having to pick an answer within a time limit. This can improve morale, affection for Seijuro from the main cast leading to dating elements and also impact their performance during the battle stage.

The other half of the gameplay consists of fighting demons in the teams mecha suits; the Kobu. Unlike previous entries in the Sakura Wars series, combat in New Sakura Wars is action based rather than turned based tactical. The player can take control of a girl of their choice and Seijuro, freely swapping between the two and using imput strings to defeat demons. Players have a MP bar that they can boost up through defeating smaller demons in order to unleash a devastating special attack.

Alongside the two main gameplay aspects, there's also Bromides to collect which feature artwork from previous Sakura Wars games, a Koi-Koi minigame which has the player play hanafuda cards against the girls, and the ability to take the girls on date sections which vastly improve their mood and skill.

Trivia

 * The various different factions have all been designed by famous Japanese creators:
 * The main cast were and their weaponry were designed by Tite Kubo, the Mangaka behind Bleach.
 * The Shanghai Combat Revue were designed by Yukiko Horiguchi, famous for the anime designs used in K-On! and Lucky Star.
 * The London Combat Revue characters were designed by BUNBUN, known for their work in Sword Art Online.
 * The Berlin Combat Revue characters were designed by Fumikane Shimada, known for their character design in Girls Und Panzer.
 * The Combat Revue's Elephant mascot character was designed by Ken Sugimori, the man behind Pokemon's art.
 * Much like previous entries in the Sakura Wars franchise, Sakura Wars (2019) recieved an anime adaption, a manga adaption, a light novel adaption and a stage play adaption in Japan.