Hi, I am in a secret Santa gift exchange, and the person I got mentioned they like this series. I can't really figure out what would be a decent gift related to this series from my own research and would love some suggestions.
More information:
Price range ideally 20 USD but maximum of 50
They mentioned merch or the collector edition games for Saturn and Dreamcast
For the games they only want the first 4

Thank you in advance any suggestions are appreciated!

I'm a big fan of the games and have played 1-3 many times (not 4 yet). I love them very much. I went into the TV anime with high expectations, considering the series should really translate just fine to the format given its subject matter and even the episodic structure, and was not pleased. I'm happy that some people enjoy it but I couldn't stomach it and stopped watching.

I thought it was dreary and miserable. The constant animosity between the characters was uncomfortable and only works because half of them are absurdly mean. They keep screwing up over and over, in a way that makes them look like dumbasses who have no idea what they are doing. Almost everybody constantly acts out of character and they are not likeable in my opinion. Backstories and plot elements are mangled in ways that don't make sense and didn't need to be changed. I thought that the animation was neat at first but it never switches tone, which adds to the dreary and unpleasant atmosphere. It's also pretty cheap and bland. I thought it was generally just very, very boring.

The point in all of this is that it is not representative of the game at all, which makes me upset because this was what most Westerners would think Sakura Wars is all along. I think that really hurt the series' reputation in the West.

I wanted to write this after seeing a video called Anime Dissection - Sakura Wars by ProfessorOtakuD2. It has some weird statements and factual errors (especially a bizarre statement regarding Maria in the first game) but I found it interesting to hear from someone whose main exposure to Sakura Wars is Sakura Wars TV. He hated the characters and the story, and that makes a lot of sense when this is your only context for them. It kind of hurts to hear someone say those things about something I care a lot about, but based on this show it is completely justified. And I feel like a lot of people probably had a similar experience with it.

I guess I just wanted to give my opinion on that. I'm curious what other people's experience is, and if anyone prefers it to the games and why.

I discovered about Sakura Wars games, and I want to play them, but I see there are multiple games for multiple platforms so I don't know in what order I should play them in. Any help?

I see there are games for Wii, GBC, Saturn, PS2, and Dreamcast. There might be more, but that's what I discovered, maybe some are a port or a remaster or remake, and I don't want to replay the same story over again by deciding to get them all if that make sense.

Otsuka Pharmaceutical released an ad campaign for its Body Mainte drink featuring a familiar tune.

https://youtu.be/0rV8-H_PqCM?si=OnTKCl3hOYEw9VDw

I got Kohran's ending and I don't think the story is going to be different if I pick other girls.

I just finished the series and I have been obsessionly listening to the soundtrack (especially this album). I am completely in love with the enka style soundtrack and I want to branch out to non Sakura wars songs. Anyone have any recommendations for song or artists of similar style?

Thanks!

The Sakura Wars Steam Gramophone album contains a lot of the in-game music from Sakura Wars. It is not to be confused with the previously released Sakura Wars Song Collection which contained the vocal songs.

I was looking through the liner notes and noticed something weird in the background of the first few pages. It looks like an excerpt from an interview. I'm not sure what this is about, if anyone knows something about this please say so.

Apologies for the poor quality images, I couldn't find a scan of the liner notes online.

edit: added some additional images to show the case and stuff to verify its authenticity. I don't think that it's fake.

https://preview.redd.it/61sx37fdjtyd1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7e62f617532e7ce563e721825db68d1b3d08e155

https://preview.redd.it/ggvgfrjcjtyd1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4e30738cb74877356e08b826a86c2f6fedde5234

https://preview.redd.it/rjmpsgj8jtyd1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d5e623ede873d0189ea7690531c686a91cf7eaf3

https://preview.redd.it/o67evxf1jtyd1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4e9ae730a7abd122fe49b075f3493574d0c1c63c

https://preview.redd.it/irpklkd5jryd1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e0555c46088a5241d33523f60ccbb2b1036580cb

https://preview.redd.it/6hvbekd5jryd1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=03f2a3f267effcf3203aa042433c97ad7183f968

https://preview.redd.it/01twt8e5jryd1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d111717c96b781f2919bcab11bc8e9961c35cb20

https://preview.redd.it/clk2vmd5jryd1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a6871fa1672062ec5dd1e453edd57252aa582c4b

https://preview.redd.it/zkgn7ld5jryd1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=625efc44b717538763e12b79f091980e8ef94a6a

https://preview.redd.it/mojp0kd5jryd1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7571da4e7d0c5cfdf0e799d50670f710d1524bb0

Hey everyone just wanted to ask a question about the pocket Sakura. From my understanding it communicates with the Gameboy color through IR to interact with Sakura Wars GBC game. I’ve always wanted to give this series a try and have a thing for small handheld games. Now my question is would this be able to communicate with the game after it is English patched?

Also I’d be trying it out on an analogue pocket

I can’t find the game on steam, are there any official PC versions of Sakura Wars around that you guys know of?

Hello!! I want to buy Sakura wars OST but i don't know if in the Sakura wars Limited edition (The 6 CD with the game and artbook), this is just OST or Vocal song. Like, is it a great collection of song? Thanks in advance:)

Hey guys! Yesterday i finished my first playthrough of Sakura Wars (PS4) and it was honestly a masterpiece. What can i do now? Is there any sort of post game content, NG+ or anything i need to know about?

I still have Koi Koi battles and virtual training battles to complete, but aside from that and collecting all the the chromes/photo cards, is there anything to look foward to on a new playthrough aside from getting different ending/routes?

Thanks in advance!

Any game recommendations similar to the series, particularly the first game? I really like the mix of visual novel and TRPG elements

After playing (and absolutely loving) the English patch of the first game, my main goal in learning Japanese is to be able to play the second. But if I had a digital version of the script, and was able to copy/paste and use tools like Yomi-chan, I’m fairly confident I’d be able to have a go at is as I am, and probably learn a lot more Japanese that way. I’ve tried to find one on the internet, but sadly haven’t had any luck. Does anyone know if something like that exists? It would be a massive help to me and probably many others.

I don't know whether it's the old art style but this is my first time playing any Sakura wars game but it just felt nostalgic.

I do enjoy it tho , there's a lot of things I can be nitpicky about the game but overall a really good experience for me.

I play this game with a guide to not miss out on anything and man , there's a lot of things you can miss , like in the first day, I think I miss a lot of things that then and I realised,I quickly load back and repeat the day cycle, while nowadays is easy with guide, I realized that I should give a huge respect to people who play this game during the early days, This game is hard!, i mean not the mecha fight,but the mini game is HARD, if anyone got till the end in sakura mini games, that person probably playing mario kaizo rn XD.

The story is nothing new , but man the song, the seiyu ,just the overall atmosphere just felt really great. Kudos to every single Seiyuu, I like Sakura,Kanna,Maria,Satan seiyuu, this people just screams and Sakura screams is something I haven't hear many other seiyuu does, Satan laugh is just brilliant too. Kanna is Luffy....so yeah very great VA as you expect.

Now I think I gonna try the anime and see what would happen, Thanks for reading my rant !

Hey all hope you are doing fine I recently finished sakura (2019) and I grew to love the game and reading posts here i was kinda hoping for news on it possibly getting a sequel so has there been any updates on that or anything really I want to get in to the series thanks. ( I also chose Anastasia for the romance she really stuck with me )

Has anyone here got a list of the possible ways to get a game over in the game? So far the only one i was able to get is if i get too competitive with kanna in an eating contest.

There's already guides for install that involve using secdrv and putting that in your System32 drivers folder and then disabling "driver signature enforcement" which is annoying and opens you up to security vulnerabilities. There's a good reason why Microsoft depreciated and deleted that off of Windows.

But you don't have to do that anymore since SafeDiscShim is now a thing. Just install that and it bypasses the need for secdrv. I've verified all four games work on my machine using this install method.

What you still need to do is follow most of the install, NoDVD, and compatibility instructions from the old Powerpoints (linked below). Just ignore anything related to secdrv.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SakuraWars/comments/lkliur/guide_on_how_to_get_sakura_wars_1_pc_to_work_on/

https://www.reddit.com/r/SakuraWars/comments/llkrov/a_guide_on_how_to_get_sakura_wars_24_pc_work_on/

Some of the disc download links are broken in the Powerpoint but you can just get them from Nyaa instead by searching for "Sakura Taisen" and filtering by software. What you're looking for are the torrents "Sakura Taisen 1-4 (PC) (JP)" and the NoDVD cracks. The hashes you're looking for are:

f5428fabb56a2ac8865e12a9a9f07a43e803bc29

and

c1b436e46be8909759e8683a8d0d940a51cc8780

#Specific fix for 1, you need to delete 'drvmgt.dll'. 1 wouldn't launch while the file was there, 2-4 are fine though.

#Specific fix for 2, you need to download 'd3drm.dll' (from somewhere reputable) and put that in the same folder as SAKURA2_2003.exe.

Also if anyone has gotten any of the Sakura Wars PC versions to work with DxWnd so you can play them in windowed mode, let me know. I'm having a hard time trying to get them to work nice with the program.

I recently got the GBC game/Pocket Sakura and I'm obsessed! I did a deep dive into the games and I'm wondering what's the best/easiest way to play the series. Are their PC versions of all the games or will I have to buy the OG consoles and games?

Also what order do you recommend I play them in? Not sure if this is a chronological game or if it's like the Star Wars movies and there are alternate orders to play them in lol.