![]() This is a truly terrible “erotic” game that needed to remove the one “quality” it had going for it so it could have a console release. The Nintendo Switch port of Sakura Dungeon has also been released this past week, and while it too has its most adult excesses curbed to get a console berth, this one has much more going for it as an actual video game, and remains a good time. Sakura Dungeon is, as the name suggests, a first-person dungeon crawler, in the vein of Wizardry, or the recently-released Etrian Odyssey HD collection. The difference is that the “monsters” in this game are actually very fanservicey women, and your job isn’t just to defeat them, but also to capture them, Pokémon-style, and add them to your growing army. It does look more like a harem, really.Ĭapturing “monsters” works just like it does in Pokémon. You want to reduce the character’s health to almost nothing via the turn-based combat system, and then use a special “capture” special ability. Do that and the monster girl turns herself over to you. Then you can add her to your party and continue to explore with the new ally. In most ways, Sakura Dungeon is incredibly efficient as a dungeon crawler. Map designs are hardly of the intricate, puzzle-and-trap-filled variety as in Etrian Odyssey. They also don’t have smooth scrolling from step to step as you explore, which is initially disorientating. Most modern dungeon crawlers have a “head bob” effect to give you a visual cue that you’ve moved from space to space. With Sakura Dungeon, a long passageway can be a little disorientating because you can’t be entirely sure if you’re actually moving through it as you press the buttons.Ĭombat, meanwhile, is also very minimalist, with very basic visual effects representing sword strikes or the use of magic. What makes up for it is, of course, the monster designs, because this developer really goes all-out with the fan service, and unlike in Demon Sword Incubus, the designs here are, overall, actually quite good. Not particularly intricate or innovative. Just effective at delivering a good range of attractive characters in clothing that have lots of bits missing and lots of skin exposed. Sakura Dungeon’s systems are so simple that there’s no healing magic. ![]() Instead, characters recover health with each turn in combat and step with in the dungeon. With that resource management system out of the way, exploration becomes much more straightforward. You want to delve as deep as you can before your characters get too beaten up, and then you just warp back to town for an instant recovery. Rinse and repeat, and you’ll slowly and steadily make progress through the adventure. I know all of this sounds basic to the point of inferiority. The Etrian Odyssey is right there for truly high-quality dungeon crawling, after all, but Sakura Dungeon does have a very appealing “easy playing” quality going for it. You can sit down for a session, make some progress, and do so largely switched off, simply enjoying the character art as you go. The dungeon crawler genre is so timelessly enjoyable that a no-frills but well-made take, with that one aesthetic quality to boost it, means that it is still a perfectly good time. One final mechanic of note is the clothes-ripping feature.
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