I'm still struggling to finish Genius of Sappheiros, although this week I did manage to make it through to the end with only the final boss and bonus dungeon remaining. I spent way too much time farming materials for ultimate gear. Hopefully with my moving to a new job, I'll have a little more time to play those Wii games I picked up soon™. I thought about posting my progress here as a sort of textual Let's Play for Sakura Wars V, since I figure it's kind of an obscure game that people would be interested in hearing about more in-depth... and it would help myself remember what the hell I was doing back when I thought I'd only be playing it over weekends.
I am sure people care a lot, but hooray I have finally finished GoS. The expansion final boss was rather anticlimactic compared to the main game final boss. That is to say it was much easier because Phase 3 doesn't push your shit in the instant all your defensive skills are on cooldown and it's basically a tank-and-spank (with Alice) with one party wipe move that is 100% predictable so you can easily block it. Party management is easier since the expansion gives you enough extra characters for three full parties (minus one commander), one for each phase, compared to the OG where you only have two parties and have to figure out how much work you need the first party to put into weakening Phase 2. The beginning of the expansion also sucked because having to recover all your old party members was dumb padding, but at least the middle was interesting as some of the stage bosses had new gimmicks that weren't previously used in the main game.
I started Sakura Wars V and realized trying to do a LP of it would be a pain in the ass and really boring without pictures, and I'm not going to figure out running it on Dolphin to play it on my PC where I can actually screenshot stuff. So it's either potato phone pics or sheer laziness and not doing it, probably the latter although I might as least see what I can do. Nonetheless, I have gone through introductions and completed Chapter 1, the least I can do is give the basics if I'm not going to narrate a playthrough.
So this mug is the protagonist, Shinjiro Taiga. Unlike Shinji, he wants to get in the fucking robot. So he just graduated from whatever military academy in 1920's Tokyo and his uncle, the commander of Tokyo's super secret special forces (and apparently the protagonist of the previous games never localized), has recruited him to his division. HQ is hidden within an ornate theater because the masses need to be placated by banal entertainment or whatever, and our boy gets dragged there by Shampoo from Ranma 1/2. Well, turns out uncle is actually sending us to be the commander of the newest super secret special forces branch in New York City. Here's your ticket, good luck!
Once we arrive, we're picked up by this ratchet ho. What I mean is that her name is literally Ratchet.
She's the captain of the the New York Combat Revue, the name for the super secret special forces here. Pretty generic nice girl personality and stuff. Wait, Captain? Oh, yeah, your uncle lied to you, you're just a flunky LUL. She takes you to meet the commander, this weird-ass motherfucker named Mr. Sunnyside who tries to be hip and cool but really isn't. I do appreciate the effort though. He explains the basics of what the fuck all is going on. For some reason, alien steam-powered robots keep attacking major cities across the world and every super secret special force is hidden within a theater. Don't ask me.
After that, you're basically sent off on your own to find your new apartment with a slip of paper noting the address and told to come back later to finish your introductions. On the way there, you bump into this energetic cutie:
Gemini, for some reason pronounced like Jiminy instead of the constellation, is a country bumpkin from Texas who also just moved to New York and has no damn clue where she is. Of course, it turns out she's trying to find the same general location you are, The Village where your apartment is located, and so tags along. She really likes you because she has this weird obsession with samurai and you're Japanese, so obvious connection right. Oh, look at that, you're actually neighbors too!
BTW, Gemini is also part of the NYCR, or well she's trying to be accepted but they kinda just recruited her as a cleaning lady for the theater while she tries to prove her worth. So she decides to help you get your bearings straight after the trip over, taking you into your new apartment to show you around. But it's not empty, no, it's already occupied.
Looks like you'll be living with Cherry, the blonde, and Anri, the loli. They run the bar and gift shop, respectively, at the Little Lip Theater where your super secret HQ is located. We'll later find out that while they are noncombatants, they play the role of combat scout for the NYCR. Cherry's the stereotypical Miss Kitty and Anri's a skittish babby.
You and Gemini cut out after introducing Shinjiro to the ladies, then get to run around the city for a little bit before heading back to the theater (HQ) to finish meeting the rest of the team. Gameplay consists of running around the city haphazardly in an adventure game-style fashion, visiting people and places of interest and making some choices here and there like a visual novel. Choices are often timed, such that not saying or doing something is also a valid choice and affects the dialogue or story in some fashion, and you've a limited amount of free time to do stuff which I suppose will implore me to replay the game multiple times to see different events (and date different chicks). Being the start of the game, I don't get to do much yet though so meh, but the taste of what I got is kinda interesting. Back to HQ to meet the last two members of our team.
On the left is Cheiron, pronounced Karen, the team's legal muscle in addition to a fully fledged actor-combatant for the NYCR. She's a hardnosed bitch obsessed with THE LAW. On the right is Subaru, an ambiguously gendered (presumed female) fellow Japanese member of the troupe. She's intentionally short with you to maintain the air of mystery surrounding her and presents as a a cold, calculating emotionless assassin type. She's also a bitch. Cheiron isn't very happy with what is going on, apparently you're not who she was expecting to show up in the first place, and drags you to Sunnyside's office to chew him out.
It turns out you're even less than a flunky. The team was actually expecting your uncle to show up in the first place, not his greenhorn nephew, and nobody's happy about it (except Gemini) which is why everyone was so tense around you. Congratulations, you get to be the fucking usher to Gemini's janitor. You don't get to do
SHIT until you prove yourself worthy. So we watch the night's show and go back home pretty dejected. First, Gemini invites us into her place (obaby) and... introduces us to her roommate, Larry (FUCK).
... Yep, that's a horse.
In the morning, we head to Sunnyside's house in Central Park to talk to him about the misunderstanding, unsure of whether we're getting sent home or gonna try to prove ourselves and get in good graces with the NYCR members. Obviously, cuz I ain't no little bitch, they have a plane ticket ready for us but I'm like nah we're gonna be the best god damn usher a theater has ever seen and prove my worth.
On our way back, we bump into this crippled hottie in the park.
Diana's just chillin' in her wheelchair feeding the birds, sorta the super-nice good girl archetype who loves animals. We have a bit of a chat, my boy Shinjiro musters up a renewed vigor for proving his worth like I already did after a brief pep talk, and we're off to the theater to report to HQ. But before we get there, OH SHIT! ALERT CITIZENS, BLOOBERS ARE ATTACK!!!!!!! And so we see some robots flying over our heads and hear explosions in the distance as we rush to the theater. We talk to Ratchet about what's going on as the battle rages, we wanna join in the fun we've gone through training and all dude, but nah we're just gonna
clean the theater with Gemini. Shit needs cleaned up from last night so everyone can perform again tonight on stage.
So we fuckin' cleaned. We cleaned well and I apparently made some good dialogue choices that got everyone on my good side a little bit finally. After the performance on Day 2, well shit BLOOBERS ARE ATTACK AGAIN!!!!!! Some loli witch summoned Walpurgisnacht from Madoka and a bunch of robots to bust up the Statue of Liberty, and Sunnyside says we get to go this time! Ratchet's on board with this and willing to help train you through your first mission, she seems to have a bit of a thing for our protag albeit not as much as Gemini, but Cheiron and Subaru are pretty pissed about it. Also we met the team mechanic and Sunnyside's secretary, a weird and very stereotypical in appearance chinaman. The theater rises above the ground as the streets turn into a sort of runway or launching pad and the mouth of the theater that is its logo spits us out like a crossbow as we fly over to Ellis Island to bust up some bad guys.
The new gameplay is like a free roaming Turn-Based Strategy RPG where everyone's in giant robots. It's a bit of a drag, due to clunky controls and slow animations, but overall it seems like a solid combat system. I'm not sure how customizable each character's gears and skills will be over time, but each character has their own unique attributes nonetheless. Movement and actions are both mapped to the same mechanic, so you have to balance positioning with attack/defense output. There's super moves you can periodically unleash for increased damage (the biggest part of the slowness because you can't skip Super animations, at least I couldn't find out how if you can), and a sort of link attack system that lets you buddy up with nearby partners, their effectiveness determined by how well y'all buddy up socially outside of combat (during the adventure/VN gameplay parts). I like that because it again emphasizes the importance of positioning in combat, in addition to organically tying together the two gameplay styles. Just as in real life, it pays to develop chemistry with your teammates.
Ratchet is apparently very distracted lately for some reason (probably boy troubles), almost gets herself killed by Walpurgisnacht but we save her ass and GUESS WHO GETS TO LEAD THE TROOPS WITH HER OUT? Spoilers, it's ya boi
Guzma Shinjiro! Looks like our gung-ho attitude about ripping tickets and cleaning toilets impressed Ratchet and Sunnyside enough to let us fucking do it, although Cheiron's pissed we got out of our mech in the middle of combat to strike a heroic pose of us carrying Ratchet in our arms like we were dragging a wounded soldier to safety. [If I could find an image of it on the web, without uploading it myself, I would insert it here.] I mean, we kinda were, but really we were just calling Sunnyside in to pick her up rather than the other way around (us taking her there).
Then I wonnered the fight, barely actually, and onto Chapter 2! Maybe I'll see if there's any early bad endings in this game by, say, accepting the plane ride home or not saving Ratchet's ass in the first battle. At any rate, since I probably won't continue to narrate the remainder of my playthrough(s), apparently there's one more major character I've yet to meet, a gun-happy Mexican chick named Rosarita.
So yeah. Initial impressions are mostly positive. The choice system definitely has shown me quite a few interesting mechanics so far during the adventure parts, and combat's kinda clunky but has shown glimpses of enough depth to keep me awaiting more. For better or worse, it's also anime as fuck and has stereotypical bad early 2000's voice acting (released in 2005 despite not being localized until 2010), Shinjiro voiced by none other than JOHNNY YONG BOSCH yo. Now let's see how long it takes me to actually finish, and I better find myself banging either Gemini or Diana at the end.