Sakura Space – Visual Novel Review

Length: Short (2-3 hours)

Lewdness: 3/3 (Lewd – Lots of Lesbian Sex)

Price: 9.99 USD

Summary: Captain Shika and her two loyal crew members are famous throughout the galaxy as mercenaries who always get the job done. When Shika learns about a bounty job that’s offering an incredible amount of money, however, she doesn’t hesitate to drop all her current jobs in order to chase after this once-in-a-lifetime chance. Will Shika and her crew manage to bring their mark, an elusive criminal mastermind, to justice?Review: This is, to my knowledge, the latest yuri game (from the Sakura franchise) developed by Winged Cloud and published by Sekai Project. The game was released on Steam in Oct 10, 2016, but it was available in Nutaku a month prior.

The characters in this yuri space adventure are as follows:

• Shika is the captain of her crew. Logical like a detective and a crackshot with her pistol, she tries to guide her crewmates while maintaining an air of professionalism most of the time.
• Nami is the crew’s pilot. While she is a hardworking and responsible girl who is deadly with the sword, she is easily flustered when work is not involved.
• To be honest, I can’t exactly recall what Kotori does for the crew besides lounging around the pool she personally financed. But while she is ditzy, playful, and a bit of a tease, she skillfully wields her twin blades and can be sharp when the occassion calls for it.
• Akane is their target.

I really like all the girls, to be honest. If fanfics and fanart popped up for these gals, I would not be surprised at all (and it would be very welcome). But why am I keeping information about Akane minimalistic?

Well, one of the primary features for Sakura Space is the choices you make which determine your detective capabilities! You control Captain Shika, who tries to reason out exactly who Akane is and why the bounty is so ridiculously high. At the end of the adventure, your detective skills is graded and ranked (aka you get to see how many questions you got wrong). I personally had to play the game four times to get every question right, haha…

As a result, Sakura Space, especially compared to Sakura Fantasy (Chapter 1), the first yuri visual novel released by Winged Cloud and Sekai Project, comes across as a very short game since every selection point only consists of two choices. Furtheremore, the game is also a linear visual novel where selecting the wrong choice doesn’t affect the story’s outcome. It just makes you feel stupid when you find out your future as a detective is not as bright as you thought.

The game does get slightly longer when you install the adult patch, but several things, including my impressions of the character relationships, changed. I guess seeing the girls getting frisky with one another allowed me to have a better understanding of them. It certainly helped me when it came to pairing up the girls in my mind. I don’t think long-time Sakura fans will be surprised with bondage, ooze/gel, and phallic scenes.

I do want to complain that the adult patch goes too far in my opinion. Even non-erotic CG suddenly has Shika (or Nami or Kotori or Akane) wearing see-through clothes that lets the player (and other characters) see their nipples. That kind of arousing clothing should stay in the bedroom. There is no way professional mercenaries walk around in towns and meet clients dressed like that. I just think it would have been great if there were options that allowed the player to find a balance between the two extremes.

The amount of typos is minimal, but there were several instances of inconsistent dialogue. For example, Shika talks about how resourceful Akane is for sending an army of drones to attack her…but this is before Shika and Akane actually meet. Nami also talks about Akane later on, but the two have yet to interact at that particular point in time.

The soundtrack is not bad, but it doesn’t blow me away by any means. I didn’t get bored of the music while I played through the game four times, at least.

I found Sakura Space to be a fun, short game. Fans who have played Sakura games before will not be surprised at the raunchy nudity and sex scenes that happen in this linear visual novel. To access such racy scenes, however, players must install a patch, which is also standard fare for Sakura games. While the patch adds more content, I feel like they went overboard since nipples become visible in all CGs.

Still, I found myself sad when I finished the game because I wanted to see more of Shika, Nami, Kotori, and Akane. The detective skill assessment feature encourages replays, which at least prolonged the bitter realization that their story is very likely finished. It’s not a bad buy for 10 USD, but it is, I must stress again, short.