Sakura Wars is not an RPG, turns out. I guess I shouldn’t have assumed. With Fire Emblem, Persona 5, Trails of Cold Steel, and the other Persona 5, I thought this would be another social sim/JRPG hybrid. But Sakura Wars bucks the trend by being part dating sim, part action-platformer. The parts are deliberately uneven; battles only make up 20-30% of your total playtime. Most of the game involves running around a steampunk reimagining of 1940s Tokyo, having conversations, doing small quests, and above all else, checking out teenage anime girls. One of whom is 13 years old.

Sakura Wars is a soft reboot of the long-running series. In a world overrun with demons, the only ones who can save Tokyo are the Flower Division. These five colour-coded young women and their handsome captain are the only people who can pilot mechsuits and fight the demon horde. And when the Flower Division aren’t fighting, they’re on stage! They rehearse and perform plays so the fledgling theatre they call home can stay financially secure. 

The game’s eight chapters are structured like a TV show, down to cute “Coming Up Next Time” montages at the end. Each chapter consists of a standalone tale and ends with a big battle sequence. This title takes place more than a decade after the previous Sakura Wars games, with an all-new cast. Not having played the previous games, I was able to understand everything, even when references to previous games are made later on in the story.

The most frustrating conversation type is the Tête-à-Tête, only unlocked once each girl’s Trust (a statistic increased by responding positively in conversations) reaches a certain threshold. These are presented as first-person private conversations with the members of the Flower Division. You move a cursor around the screen to select various elements of the girl’s bedroom, face or body, that Kamiyama will either talk about, think about, or in certain cases, touch. The girls, over time, start to open up and enjoy being treated like that. Once a Tête-à-Tête starts, there’s no option to explore platonic friendship, or even leave the room. You need to objectify these girls or reload your save. Nothing explicitly sexual or romantic happens in these scenes, but they carry a constant, uncomfortable sexual tension. I understand a lot of this stuff is part and parcel with being a dating sim.

But then you get to Azami, the 13-year-old ninja of the team (the other girls are 17+). Her Tête-à-Têtes are far less sexualised than the others, but revolve around developing an older brother/little sister-esque relationship using the exact same gameplay mechanics. You can help her open up about her insecurities. It reads like gross softcore erotica. I started avoiding Tête-à-Têtes completely after a certain point, because the sight of them genuinely made me anxious. I could say more about the lecherous aspects of Sakura Wars (there’s a female-only bathhouse in the theatre that exists solely for Kamiyama to watch the girls bathe because he “can’t help himself”, unless the player chooses not to) but let’s get to the combat. 

Sakura Wars eschews the turn-based battle system of the previous games for a simple, if sloppy, action-platformer vibe. It’s all in real time, with light attacks and heavy attacks. Battles are the most fun when you’re mowing down dozens of enemies at once with your various combos. A Bayonetta-style last minute dodge mechanic lets you slow time and continue your onslaught. Fighting builds up each character’s ultimate attack meter, letting you destroy big health bars with ease.

A Morale mechanic increases your strength and defence the more you kill, and reduces it the more you take damage. Lock-on is a bit choppy, as your regular attacks will sometimes miss or collide past the enemy you’re trying to hit for seemingly no good reason. It felt like I was playing a PS2 platformer for the first time. Fun, but dated. But fun!