Plk_Lesiak’s Shovelware Adventures: fanservice Sakura games, part 2

Wondering what this series is about? What's with the "crappy" rating system? Find out all about it here​​​​​​​!

While two weeks ago we’ve mostly covered the beginnings of Winged Cloud’s presence on the EVN market (well, ignoring the "otome period", but Pyrite Heart might be worth a separate look, along with The Guardian’s Spell crowdfunding debacle), this time we’re taking look at a transitional period – one in which Inma still didn’t make explicit art, acting as the sole “all-ages” artist for the company, while Wanaca was already focusing exclusively on hentai titles, including the 100+ CG behemoth that is Sakura Dungeon. It’s also a time that brought something we could describe as a pretty obvious drop in quality – the new non-porn titles definitely looked like low-effort cash-ins, with mostly linear storytelling, no voice-acting and underwhelming CG counts. Sakura Beach 2, put together in only a few months and obviously reusing a lot of visual assets from the first game, was especially emblematic, foreshadowing the switch to mass-production of cheaper, shorter titles, that fully dominated the studios output a year later, after the release of Sakura Nova, the last arguably ambitious Sakura game. But, ignoring for a moment our knowledge of what the future held for the franchise, how these late Sakura ecchi VNs hold out today?

 

Sakura Beach 1 & Sakura Beach 2

It might be just my personal taste, but I can somewhat accept a harem scenario if the protagonist earns it in some way – by being a really good person that helps the heroines in a substantial manner, or even being a shitty one but defying expectations and doing something exceptional when it truly mattered. Starting with a harem, however, feels like the laziest setup imaginable and I pretty much abhorred every instance when it showed up its ugly head in the Sakura series (of course, in short nukige such as Sakura Christmas Party the only thing that mattered was giving a justification for inserting a variety of porn scenes, so complaining about dumb plot is a bit of superficial – thankfully, I’m also making a series all about pointless nit-picking :3). Inma’s debut as a Winged Cloud’s character artist, Sakura Beach and its sequel, Sakura Beach 2 already had a pretty rough start with me because of this "storytelling technique", while the apparently short development cycle for both games also did little to encourage any kind of optimist from me when U decided to approach them.

            The reality, at least in the first game, was pretty close to what you’d expect from the generic premise – we follow the story of two over-the-top trope heroines trying to earn the affection of our infinitely dense protagonist during a summer trip to a beach resort. Semi-random, dumb writing and minimal character development do little to make the whole scenario actually enjoyable, even if the rather mild fanservice is as always nice to watch. The sequel, however, includes some slight adjustments that make the whole formula much more fun – after the confessions at the end of Sakura Beach and protagonist’s clunky attempts to adapt to being an owner of a harem, the third girl is introduced, threatening to destabilize the already delicate setup even further and giving fuel for some amusing bickering between the heroines. The now less-clueless protagonist, toned-down tsundere persona of one of the original girls and the quirky new addition to the cast makes for a much better read – while still trashy to no end, it at least catches the basic appeal of the slice-of-life harem stories. Also, to my genuine surprise, it broke the harem scenario's typical inconclusiveness at the very end, featuring the possibility to give up on polygamy and chose to romance only one of the girls, with a pretty satisfying romantic epilogue after that. Despite my low expectations, Sakura Beach 2 proved to be a reasonably enjoyable VN, although its still debatable whether experiencing it is worth getting through its snoozefest of a prequel.

 

Final rating: Rabbit Poo 

Sakura Shrine Girls

The second game in the Shovelware Adventures, after A Wild Catgirl Appears, that somehow managed to make nekomimi dull, Sakura Shrine Girls is not the worst or most offensive among Winged Cloud’s VNs, but might still be the least memorable of them all. With no real stakes or any twist to the story, this tale of a sceptic discovering the world of spirits and his calling as a priest simply does not deliver on the fun slice-of-life moments or even the little bits of compelling romance you would hope for in a fanservice VN. The few actually intriguing moments, such as interactions between the protagonist and his retired-Shinto-priest grandfather and or somewhat colourful descriptions of his confrontations with the supernatural, can’t make up for paper-thin drama between the two heroines and their poor characterization (describing one of them as strict and formal and the second as relaxed and rebellious pretty much covers all their discernable traits). 
            As much as I wanted to like this game (among other reasons, because of a few quite gorgeous illustrations by Inma, even if her sprite art has seen better iterations), I can describe it properly only with one word: empty. And while its inability to create any kind of compelling narrative could probably be forgiven, the fact it couldn't even make the heroines appealing and the fanservice connected to them interesting is a total failure, basically making the game's whole existence utterly pointless. Although, I guess it did make becoming a Shinto priest look like an attractive career choice. Truly full of possibilities…

 

Final rating: Smelly Poo

Unlike all the other variants of Sakura shovelware that I've covered in this series, the non-explicit fanservice games seem to be a thing of the past – one of those strange products of Steam censorship that was doomed as soon as developers found a stable way of smuggling actual porn onto the platform (and especially now, when most varieties of porn are openly welcomed on Valve's platform). But as strange as it might sounds, I will miss them at least a little bit – as I find most hentai extremely dull, and Winged Cloud’s version of it especially so, to me those ecchi VNs had a kind of trashy charm that is quite often lost in "real" nukige. On the other hand, when this formula didn’t work, like it was the case in Shrine Girls, it must have made for an especially bad investment on the WC’s part, qualifying neither as a serviceable VN nor as a proper source of fapping material – something that really no one would be interested in buying, if they knew what they were getting. For all these reasons, the non-eroge Sakura games are nearly for sure not coming back.

            And this way, we've reached the end of this long (and sometimes painful) journey through the world of Sakura games – or to be more specific, through the retrospective part of it. While Winged Cloud definitely lost much of its creative energy and fan support over the last two years, it didn't give up on putting out new games completely, as evident through the two Sakura MMO releases. And honestly, the appearance of a brand new yuri Sakura series is not something I can easily ignore... We'll get there Soon™.

 

PS Once more, my special thanks go to Noble, whose videos brought a lot of joy into the process of making this post (without them, it could've been quite painful indeed).