Seasons of the Sakura

"Not perfect, but a great example of its kind"

Season of the Sakura starts off pretty evenly. You're Shuji Yamagami, teenage Japanese schoolboy who gets bad grades, doesn't know what he wants to do with his life, and who the ladies just can't stay away from. You begin thinking about your days in junior college when the cherry blossoms were in bloom with your lover by your side, and the game plays out as you meet and eventually decide on who that lover will be.

This was the third anime adult game I played, and after the strict plotting of Three Sisters Story and Runaway City, where I was either stuck doing what the game wanted or getting a bad ending for stepping out of line, I was aching for some amount of control in my character's fate. Boy did I get it. In Season of the Sakura you can pursue and end up with any of eight girls modeled after the heroines of various anime series.

The graphics were very nice, and with a cursory knowledge of anime one can pick out what different shows the various secondary characters come from. In fact, other than a name and occasional hair color change you'd often swear they're the same people (although I don't remember Fuu EVER getting mad about ANYTHING). You'll get to know them all well at the numerous drinking parties your teacher throws.

The menu-driven gameplay, with having to perform actions over and over again until a conversation or scene ends I found a little irritating, and after playing Tokimeki Check-In I began to wish all games of its kind came with fast-forward buttons to skip to the next relevant juncture. This is partially made up for by the interesting characters, but I will admit that certain parts feel overlong and unnecessary. Like hanging out at the culture festival, which had me almost drowning in my own boredom.

Let me warn you that if you're the kind of person who plays these games just to have simu-sex with lots of virtual women, which is probably a lot, you won't like this game. It's remarkably subdued about that until the very end when you and your girl of choice confess your feelings. There's a lot more focus on romance than on sex as compared to other games of its kind.

Overall I give this game a solid eight. There are things that would have made it better, but it's head and shoulders above a lot of games where you end up with a certain girl because the game says so and, in my case, it was never the girl I wanted. Though getting where you want to be can be a bit tedious sometimes, the girls are great and I wish more games like this had fems modeled after anime heroines. We could use more games like Season of the Sakura.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/29/03, Updated 04/14/04