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Sakura MMO Trilogy (Yuri VN Review)


Plk_Lesiak

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Sakura-MMO-Free-Download.jpg

Winged Cloud, creators of the infamous Sakura series, are visibly past their prime, which shows not only in their diminishing Patreon support and smaller interest in their games in general, but also the lack of marketing effort and innovation. For two and a half year now their VNs are only becoming shorter, simpler and more iterative, making the already not-particularly-impressive projects from the peak of studio’s popularity, such as Sakura Nova or Sakura Fantasy, look like absolute heights of quality and ambition. At the same time, the company seems heavily disinterested in actively promoting their work or opening new niches, even nearly dropping the production of straight eroge for the sake of pushing out more yuri games, feeding of this niche's popularity with Western audience. And few things symbolise this sorry state of affairs quite like the Sakura MMO trilogy, the latest three entries in the mainline Sakura franchise, this time tackling the grossly overused theme of gameworld isekai.

            Coming out between October 2018 and June 2019, with little fanfare (the second and third game pretty much appeared out of nowhere, with no communication from Winged Cloud’s social media accounts before the releases) and to a rather lukewarm reception from players, Sakura MMO games still stand out in some ways from Winged Clouds usual output. Particularly, it was the first time since Sakura Beach that a game in the series received a direct sequel, and the only instance one received two. This, at first glance, makes it look like one of most ambitious projects Winged Cloud ever attempted, but one thing should be said in advance: all three Sakura MMO games are very short (3-4 hours) and heavily overpriced, with each costing $10. For the amount of content you’d usually find in one 10-15 dollars VN, you’re asked to pay 30, while also having to deal with issues that wouldn’t be there if it was all released as a single product or a well-constructed episodic game, like your choices not transferring between parts and somewhat shoddy continuity. But aside from it being a shameless cash-grab, is there something worthwhile within this trashy sub-franchise?

Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

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48 minutes ago, Dergonu said:

Lmao the summary. They ripped off Overlord so hard haha. 

The premise reminded me a bit of A Wild Last Boss Appeared!

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11 hours ago, Ranzo said:

Not up to Wing Clouds standards, is there a standard below zero?

There's no such thing as rock bottom when it goes to shitty games. The moment you think you found the ultimate stinker, an even bigger atrocity waits for you just behind the corner... Plus some Winged Cloud's games were actually somewhat fun in their trashiness, but not this one.

3 hours ago, Dergonu said:

Lmao the summary. They ripped off Overlord so hard haha. 

2 hours ago, Dreamysyu said:

The premise reminded me a bit of A Wild Last Boss Appeared!

It reminds me the most of that Demon Lord anime from last year, with the protagonist being an OP player roleplaying a villain (rather than actually being one). But even that makes it sound way more fun than it actually is – it does nothing interesting with the premise, nor does it know how to implement the tropes in a fun way. :wafuu:

Edited by Plk_Lesiak
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11 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

It reminds me the most of that Demon Lord anime from last year, with the protagonist being an OP player roleplaying a villain (rather than actually being one). But even that makes it sound way more fun than it actually is – it does nothing interesting with the premise, nor does it know how to implement the tropes in a fun way. :wafuu:

It does what it needs to. Show them lesbian tiddies! 

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3 minutes ago, Dergonu said:

It does what it needs to. Show them lesbian tiddies! 

True, but it seems even many long-time Winged Cloud fans are somewhat disgusted by what they put out by this point. You can only cynically milk your fanbase for so long before people see through it and lose all interest...

Edited by Plk_Lesiak
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I agree that the third part of the release is quite sudden, so maybe you have a point about Winged Cloud being cynical here and possibly run out of idea (You can only go so far if they can only make their usual thing, although they wouldn't run out of the idea for the title for a very obvious reason). I can say that the idea here is actually very refreshing in that it deal with 'Trapped in the MMORPG', which to say is still very rare in the VN so I'm kind of hoping that this kind of VNs will increased and receive the translation (Hopefully I'm not jinxed it so much that isekai VNs became as saturated as isekai manga and LN). Oh and almost forget to say that I guess it's actually good that Winged Cloud did remove male MC presence, seeing that at most it didn't affect the story.

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6 hours ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

It reminds me the most of that Demon Lord anime from last year, with the protagonist being an OP player roleplaying a villain (rather than actually being one). But even that makes it sound way more fun than it actually is – it does nothing interesting with the premise, nor does it know how to implement the tropes in a fun way. :wafuu:

Well, the LN/manga I mentioned is the only one with a somewhat similar premise that I'm aware of, but I'm not surprised if this is really a pretty common trope. Isekais quite often rely on reusing ideas from the earlier works over and over again, to the point that often nobody even knows who came up with that idea originally. On the other hand, many authors still manage to make creative and/or genuinely well written works using these tropes. This game is most likely neither of these. :meguface:

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