News: Sakura Wars Browser Game (At Least It Has Mecha)
Posted on : 24-01-2011 | By : Tollmaster | In : News
Hardware: PC
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In a world driven mad by a hunger for browser games, only one can claim to be based on Sakura Wars, and that game is Sakura Taisen Taishou Roman Gakuentan.
Sakura Wars is a popular series of strategy RPGs mixed with elements of dating sims and visual novels, and the jump to Web 2.0 is all the more inexplicable considering how story- and character-driven the original games were. Sakura Wars was defined by its pioneering use of character relationships affected by the player’s choices, as the main character attempted to woo one (or more) of the female actors/mecha pilots he was leading into battle against demons, and any attempt to scale what was a personal experience into a multiplayer one is going to be an uphill battle, if it wants to stay true to the series.
Luckily for us mecha nerds then that we care far more about making robots slice bloody swathes through the Enemy than we do about making cute girls blush, because the mecha for the browser game are looking just fine. The mecha of Sakura Wars have an interesting aesthetic, combining the extremely realistic elements of the VOTOMS series with the characteristic boilerplate feel of steampunk, and as what little we know of the game suggests it will be battle focused, this could turn out to be an utterly superb multiplayer mecha strategy RPG, albeit one that is likely to cause purists to tear their hair out.
Of course, with the reportedly poor sales of Sakura Wars in the West, the chance of this being localized for English speakers is astronomically small. However, the language barrier hasn’t always stopped us foreigners from trying to play Asian multiplayer games before, and really: those mecha have different production versions, with all sorts of different tubes and doohickeys going every which way: how can you not be excited for that?
The official site for the game has a very short but also very Super Robot Wars-looking video on it, teasing us yet more with a fruit us Westerners might never taste (those of you having trouble with that link, try this one).
What true fans are wondering is: will this one have lots and lots of songs/musicals/dancing? Because, come on.
toll for the love of god, could you stop posting wikipedia links?
I don’t go looking for Wikipedia links, so much as I Google a term and try to find a source that can define it without it being stuck in some fanbase’s lingo. I’m assuming that most of the reader base don’t need the links, but for the person who gets linked here from somewhere else, or is relatively new to the world of the ubergeeks, being able to link someone to a site that gives them a hint of what I’m talking about without overloading them is important.
I’ll talk to Cacophanus about this and get his feel for the issue, but it’s my personal opinion that a community should try its best to be inclusive. I didn’t play the Armored Core games until Silent Line because mainstream US gaming magazines told me all of the AC games were terrible, and the Armored Core fanbase would write about how great the Armored Core games were, but in a way that only Armored Core fans could understand. It took 20 minutes on AIM with Cacophanus to convince me that Armored Core was something my body always needed but didn’t know it, and I try to write my own humble posts on the site with that in mind–explain why mecha games are great, but also make sure that people who have been told by the mainstream press that these games are “too complex” or “too slow” or “too gimmicky” understand that they have been told that by people who didn’t understand what they were talking about.
So the Wikipedia links are there when I could probably substitute them with something else, like a review of the Votoms series by a trusted blogger, but would someone new to mecha games really understand it? Or would it further reinforce the idea that mecha gaming is some odd asylum run by the frothing-at-the-mouth inmates? I try to play it safe, and gently welcome them into the arms of our frothing masses.
right, i understand what you are trying to do, it’s not a matter of inclusion. reference links are nice.
linking to wikipedia seems patronising because if i was wanting more information on a paticular series or whatever, it is pretty god damn trivial for me to type it into wikipedia myself. i mean, multiple links there per post is ridiculous. i always assume the redirect is to useful information on this site or another, since most of the wikipedia articles are either devoid of useful information, or overabundant in the kind of entrenched ubergeek nonsense you are claiming to be wary of.
not sure if ollie links there but i certainly haven’t noticed to the point that it annoys me.
i don’t mean to be antagonistic, i only complain because i care, etc.
I’m not sure I agree that linking to Wikipedia is patronising, as most sites could be as easily found with a suitable search in Google. The links in our posts are purely meant for reader convenience after all.
Whilst I don’t use Wiki links that often, there are times when it is unavoidable – as some topics simply don’t have a comprehensive reference online (bar Wikipedia).
In any case, out of 10 links in the above post only 4 were Wikipedia. I’d hardly call that excessive.