- Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure (GEN)
- The Revenge of Shinobi (GEN)
- Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi (GEN)
- Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master (GEN)
- Go Go Ackman (SFC)
- Super Wagyan Land (SFC)
- Super Mario RPG (SFC)
- Shin Megami Tensei if... (SFC)
- Front Mission: Gun Hazard (SFC)
- Steep Slope Sliders (SAT)
- Valkyrie Profile (PS1)
- Sakura Taisen (SAT)
- Shenmue Chapter 1: Yokosuka (DC)
- Shinobi (PS2)
- Gungrave (PS2)
- Assault Suit Leynos 2 (SAT)
- Sakura Taisen 2: Kimi, Shinitamoukoto Nakare (SAT)
- Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World (PS2)
- Ganbare Goemon! Karakuri Douchuu (FC)
- Ganbare Goemon 2 (FC)
- Sakura Taisen 3 ~Paris wa Moeteiru ka~ (DC)
Normally I wouldn't be updating this so soon, but I kind of wanted to talk about Sakura Taisen 3.
First things first, though, I beat the sequel to the original Ganbare Goemon on the Famicom, Ganbare Goemon 2. It was released about three years after the original, so the uptick in visuals, and presentation is quite noticeable. Unfortunately, while the sprites, and backgrounds are a bit more detailed, and the levels are a bit more refined, the feel of the game is very different, and not for the better, generally. The hit detection is way worse, and you have to get right up next to objects that can be jumped over, before you can actually jump over them. This means that you can't just jump diagonally through the stages as much to try to find the hidden staircases, like you could in the original. There are far fewer hidden staircases in each stage this time, but that's both a boon, and a detriment. It might normally mean that candles become more important, but while you can actually see the timer for the candles in Ganbare Goemon 2, they don't appear to last any longer, so hoping to find a staircase while holding the candle is a bit of a crap shoot. This is also partly because the stages are probably a bit bigger, on average, than the previous game. There are fewer stages in total, however.
I did enjoy Ganbare Goemon 2, even though it was probably a bit more frustrating than the first game. I had initially started playing it, had to continue a couple times, and then got a bit tired of it by stage 5, so I thought I would come back to it another day, but I found out that where I stopped was almost halfway through. So I decided to jump back in, and made it through the game without even needing to continue, on that second attempt. Two kind of unpleasant points in the game though were: 1) I don't recall which stage, but one of them seems to require actually buying the checkpoint passes, which was never required in the first game; 2) The final stage has this weird maze that I stumbled into, without knowing about, and I got super stuck, because there doesn't seem to be a way to go back to the point before entering it. I tried following the "correct" path that I looked up in someone else's playthrough, but it didn't really seem to work, until I just ended up out of the maze. I have no idea how.
If one knew nothing about the first two games in the series, and just went straight into Ganbare Goemon 2, it would probably seem pretty great. I find the original game to be just a smidge more playable, after figuring out a lot of the mechanics, so I ultimately prefer that one a little bit more, I think. They're both pretty good games, though.
So the real point of my post is Sakura Taisen 3. I've been really looking forward to playing this game for years now, but put it off because I had wanted to play the first two games in the series beforehand. I had done just that earlier this year, and I really did appreciate having that perspective on the series as a whole, up to the point of Sakura Taisen 3. I do think it enhanced the experience, even though ST3 tries to fill in some of the background information. ST 1 and 2 follow Oogami Ichiro's professional, and romantic exploits, in Taisho Era (1921-1924, specifically) Japan, as he commands the Imperial City's special task force, the Teikoku Kagekidan: Hanagumi. After two successful campaigns, protecting the city from certain doom, there's been interest in Europe of replicating the Hanagumi model in defending against the supernatural invaders that may be popping up outside of Tokyo. A test program is set to launch in Paris at just about the time Oogami is ordered to leave for Paris to "study." Eventually Oogami finds himself leading the Paris Kagekidan: Hanagumi, which comes to comprise of Oogami, and five young women: Erica Fontaine, Glycine Bleumer, Coquelicot, Lobelia Carlini, Kitaouji Hanabi. Erica is an extremely ditzy nun in training, is constantly falling down, running into things, and just messing things up, but she's charming, anyway. Glycine is a Parisian noble, who's very prickly, and serves as the Sumire of this game. Coquelicot is an eleven-year-old Vietnamese girl, who's part of the traveling circus, Cirque du Europe. Lobelia is supposedly (according to the manual) a Transylvanian, but anyway, she's essentially a convict paying down her debt to society by working as a member of the Hanagumi. Hanabi is a half Japanese Parisian, who lives in the Bleumer estate due to her father's connections with the Bleumer family.
One of the most immediately apparent things about Sakura Taisen 3 is the quality. Hiroi Ouji (Wataru, Gulliver Boy, etc), with RED Company, enlists the help of Production I.G. again (as was the case with Sakura Taisen 2), but this time Overworks is also helping out. What results is a pretty fantastic game experience, although not a whole lot has actually changed in terms of game functions, outside of the battles. Most of the VN/Adventure portions of the game are about as they were in the previous two games, but particularly Sakura Taisen 2. The really big change is the adaptation of combat to the ARMS system (which was used in ST 4, 5, and the PS2 remake of the original, as well). The ARMS system is almost like a prototype for the combat in Valkyria Chronicles. The Elemental Gimmick Gear adjacent Koubu F (I assume it's "F" for "France") all have a set amount of action points to move in relatively continuous paths around a 3D environment, as well as take actions like attack, defend, heal, etc. It actually functions almost exactly like Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter's combat, just with a lot more Sakura Taisen-ness to it. Oogami's cover, and tactics options return, as well, although the tactics work a little bit differently by changing how much of the action bar a charge, defend, or heal action consumes, rather than giving as much of a direct stat adjustment. The maps are all very nicely rendered 3D, and I found myself thinking that the team was probably really proud of their modeling of a lot of the land marks in Paris, because they often showed up again as rotating models in faux-computer screens during mission briefings. (A fair amount of the end of the game takes place in and around Notre Dame Cathedral, so it was kind of surreal feeling to hear the news about the fire last night.) The visuals with the combination attacks are nice, but sadly the special attacks aren't quite as nice, because they chose to render them as FMV, which all have some visible compression artifacts.
One of the things about Sakura Taisen 3 that I was just sort of blown away by was the use of the VMU during gameplay. Early on in the game, you're given a handheld kinematron (kinematrons are like steam powered video phones--), which happened to be a VMU that looks exactly like the special VMU I was using while playing the game. You're told to keep it on your person for emergency contact, and it basically ends up working just like a pager, but the first time it actually rang on the VMU, and I could look down at the screen to read a message scrolling along it, I was kind of floored. I've seen some creative in-game uses of the VMU screen before, but this one in particular was just incredible to me--in a way that WiiU gamepad implementation in something like Pikmin 3 just isn't; I found that to be much more gimmicky, and intrusive.
The story, overall, is a little bit mixed, again. There are some things that seem like they aren't really given their due, but I probably enjoyed it more than either of the first two games. One thing I'm a little sad to have potentially missed out on is whatever happens when you load completed save files from the DC versions of the first two games into Sakura Taisen 3, but I don't even know what it would do, so--. I both like, and dislike the Paris Kagekidan members more than their Teikoku counterparts. It feels a bit like I missed out on a lot of backstory for all five of the girls, that I only really saw in the eye-catch intro movie on Disc 1. Maybe I just missed all of those triggers, even though I felt like I had gotten about as many of the event triggers as in the first two games. I ended up picking Hanabi for the heroine of this game, even though she was in my third spot in the trust list. Erica seems like she would just be locked into the first spot, no matter what, unless you actually tried to be a dick to her throughout the game, and Coquelicot is kind of similar. Hanabi was probably my favorite character, of the five, and hits most of my visual trigger buttons, anyway. She ended up having a lot of nice character growth, as the heroine, too. She starts out being this really submissive girl, who is basically trying to emulate like Heian period Japanese women, which is initially a little off putting. I thought Erica was a pretty endearing character, but I just have a hard time interacting with someone who is regularly professing her love for God. Not to denounce anyone's faith at all, it's just rare that I ever want to talk with anyone about her faith. The only real downside is that while the "love" aspect of the relationship between Oogami and the heroine felt like it was amplified in ST 3--making the end of the game kind of brutal, and forcing me into reminiscing--she's also mostly absent from a lot of the final chapter, which is really different from first two games, and especially the original.
So, that's basically Sakura Taisen 3. I still don't know that I could recommend it to people who would just be put off by semi-dating sim/VN gameplay, even though it's quite a good game, just because the ratio of combat sections, to everything else, is still pretty low. I'm a little surprised that I've been able to not just tolerate, but actually enjoy these games, though, so maybe they would work for a wider audience than I'm giving them credit for. Would still be a bit of a hesitant recommendation, though.
I'm probably going to head right into Sakura Taisen 4, because it's only one disc, and I believe it's only supposed to be a few chapters long. I think it ends up being more like a fan disc/expansion, but at this point, I may as well finish out what I have for the series.
