RPGM - Completed - Sakura Gozen [v1.10] [kaniheadcrab]

One of the best games I've played on this site.
Often, H games end up losing their way by trying to offer too many different situations, which leads to sloppy gameplay or characters. Here, it's clearly the opposite.

One of the game's greatest strengths, in my opinion, is the writing of the story and characters. Even without the H elements, I would have enjoyed discovering their story, their interactions, etc. The story is divided into several chapters, and the game's authors have made some interesting choices in terms of storytelling. You become genuinely interested in the characters and want to know more about them and where the story will take them.

In terms of gameplay, it consists of a city phase with many elements to unlock, an exploration phase in the form of a path, and a combat phase against monsters or bosses. The game isn't too grindy but offers enough content on that side to make you want to move forward and unlock new weapons, new costumes, etc.

As for the H elements, they are accessible enough not to be restrictive, are very well animated, and the illustrations are truly sublime. There are lots of scenes, including different costumes and characters, which is really great.

A truly excellent game, I recommend everyone play it. 10/10.

one of the few games that made me let go of my dihh to get invested in the story.
amazing h content, beautifully designed characters with plenty of outfits (for mc) to wear and every single one of them has a unique h scene. focuses more on having a variety of fetishes than only on one but tentacle seems to be the main.
very time friendly combat loop, you only need to kill a few to get an insta kill, then a few more to get auto clear its goated.

Sakura Gozen is a unique game: excellent graphics, original combat style, interesting setting, but nothing that really sets it apart from the rest.
But then, the first chapter ends. And that's when I realized I was looking at a masterpiece.
I could go on and on about the plot and characters, but I won't: this erotic game deserves to be experienced, so I'll let you discover it for yourself. Don't worry: gameplay, story, erotic scenes: nothing will disappoint you.

Is this the sexiest with most various of H-content I ever played? Nope
Is this the most mind breaking story I ever read? Neither

But after finish every ending in the game, I still don't know why I give this 5 stars

But if you wonder should you play it or not, give it a try at least finish chapter 1. Because in the end, this ride was something

Taking straight from my trello review

Although I’ve finished this game a while ago, I still remember the twist that happened at the end of chapter 1 changing my view on this game completely, from then on I knew I was in for a ride. The story delivered, I loved it, its funny and light hearted most of the time but serious when needed, especially during the main story beats. The game art is amazing, I still can’t get over how cool some of the fighting sprites are, the lack of actual erotic CG kinda bumps me out but hey, the art is still pretty sick tho. Usually I turn based gameplay kinda turns me off, but honestly, this game handling of the turn based system through time prompts, weapon attributes and combos were pretty damn fun, I dig it.

It's a great experience, pretty good story, great artwork and good music

Main emphasis is on art, all CGs looks good and pretty rewarding, Sakura herself is realy hot in looks and in terms of personality but i have a thing for big boobs so i have a natural gravition towards her. Not enough loli unfortunately

I didn't come here to feel out of ten.
The main draw of the game is its story. Starts out silly but quickly turns serious nearing the end of first chapter. After seeing the words "Chapter 1 End" I stopped caring about it being an H-game. This games doesn't really need it to draw you in and more frequently perversion used as comic relief.
The combat gameplay is simple enough, a turn based RPG with a rhythm on top for bonus damage. It doesn't get annoying because developer included grind skips. You'd likely about the same time reading NPC dialogues and watching H-scenes as participating in combat.
Brothel is used to make easy money but, again, knowing you don't really need to watch a lengthy cutscene every time developer included a short animation after the first time.
Developer also allowed you to skip any H-scene and prefaces every one of them with tags in case you're allergic to one of them.
Spent few evenings playing it, would recommend if you want to experience the story.

im not even into ridiculous portions like these, but it is a fantastic story and has great art, and an oddly fun gameplay loop. Not overly grindy, tons of scenes, likeable characters. Definitely worth checking out

This is one of my favorite games of all times, i cannot do too much emphasis to how much you should play this. If you have doubts, just do it.

Firstly i was not into testing it cause didn't gave me the best vibe, but oh my god this game is not what you expect in any sense.

Just give it a try, you will enjoy it. I'm not giving any spoilers, a thing that i really don't like about these kind o games was losing CG in one playthrough, this game has an alternative way to unlock them by grinding, so be not afraid of passing onto anything.

Did not expect myself to get this much into the story, also the characters are genuinely fun and their interactions are a treat to read through. My only complaint is that the game is too easy, you actually cannot lose unless you really try, which makes some climactic fights a lot less climactic. There's also some loli content which I wasn't the biggest fan of but thankfully you can skip it if you want.

A surprisingly good game. I thought this would be just another one off game i would never think about, but i was wrong. Story is very interesting. Combat is pretty fun, but way too easy. CG is fantastic and i love that there's a choice if you want to watch it or not and it tells you what kind of fetish it is. Characters also has personality, shame i cant fully understand most of the jokes.

Overall, pretty good
This game wont leave my mind for quite a while

Okay that was really good! I thought its just a story that im gonna keep skipping but the plot-twist of the fact that the entire settings of the world is not built on lewdity but also in violence and era of japanese shogunate.

Digital footprint be damned, this game far exceeded expectations. Some h-content is questionable but I learned midway to skip things I thought could be suspicious (So to say, some characters look like minors and that is kinda gross.)
I dunno what I was expecting, but a story I genuinely cared about was not one of them. Furthermore, I even got a little teary-eyed, which not even regular games normally do. Is this normal when you sort tags on DLsite and then sort by top rated/selling? Have I been consuming slop and have found fine dining?

There’s legitimate “hype moments and aura” as they say. The kind that really makes ya do fist pumps and go “hell yeah.” Seriously, I cannot state how my expectations were blown out the water. Came for the main character, stayed to get the true TRUE (seriously they seem to fake you out like 1-2 times with what a “good ending” is) 100%. Even then it was a little bitter sweet, it was along the kind of “All good things come to an end” scenario. Truly, I hope there’s a sequel some day that I will play for the love of the game.

As of now though, the dude responsible for this game seems to be making another setting. I do not have high hopes for that one as the characters shown seem to be a bit young if you catch my drift. Same goes for his previous work, shit, even this one has questionable characters. At least in this one though, the characters seem to call out “Hey they’re pretty child like” and it doesn’t play out the “old deity but looks like kid.” Well, there is a certain glaring character like that, but the child-like appearance is appropriately pointed out methinks. If you are against any and all kinds of **, even a little, I would avoid this game. The scenes are semi-avoidable via skips, but there are sprites with the MC and her “disciple” that are unavoidable. Not really in the lewd sense but I wanna say more in a… fan service-y way? I dunno, I guess this paragraph‘s just a disclaimer for this game and the dude who made it.

Overall, amazing game. I usually only reserve big reviews for things I truly think shine, and this is no exception. If your doubting at first, just play passed the 1st chapter. The fight mechanics are neat for what RPGMs usually are. A lot of assets are uniquely made (even most of the music.) I would even go as far as to purchase it for real if the creator didn’t make questionable art. Seriously hoping for a sequel, with MC and the grown-up version of her “disciple” you see in the super true ending.

4 star instead of 5, only because there is nothing to do with the normal ennemies, no small h-scenes when getting it or loosing, nada. Otherwise, story quite good, gameplay more interesting than others, and the art is quite amazing. Oh, lot of fetishes as well.

Overall a great game.
The combat is good, but a little easy. That said, the added rhythm element is unique (you can speed it up or slow it down to adjust the difficulty).
The art and animation are good, and there is some voice acting, which is always nice.
If I were to mention a complaint, it would be that I didn't understand what some of the quest rewards were until much later into the game (the ones that unlock sub-areas). It would've been nice if the game had somehow explained that a little better (maybe via a cutscene that shows the sub-areas being opened or something?).

Interesting wild story, good, unusual and funny characters, a lot of humor, plenty of h-scenes, good cgs and pixel graphics, combat looks cool but balance is way off so most fights are cleared effortlesly

Despite the fact that the h-content doesn't really align with my preferences, I can't give this anything less than five stars. The story and characters are too compelling, so the game's shortcomings are effectively balanced out in my opinion. The game will need time to pull players in, but once they're in...they're going to want to keep going.

Combat is...not terrible, and the game itself tries to give players ways to circumvent the grind, but it screwed up when it tried to balance the anti-grind measures. Auto-killing enemies reduces the rewards so badly that it's still more time-efficient to actually fight enemies than run back and forth popping them like balloons.

The sex scenes...don't really do it for me, even though the characters are plenty hot. That's a personal issue though: the art is good, the animations are...uh...animated...and the player has the option to skip whatever they don't want when it comes up in the main storyline.

The...hm. The "main story" is fairly compelling. The EX content is dumb. The pacing for all of the plot twists and reveals felt pretty well-measured. The interpersonal conflict between humans and yokai made sense, even if the game just glossed over the legitimately fucking awful things Mama Leech had done, kept doing, and seemingly never even apologized for. Seriously, Ball-less Piss-Samurai got done unbelievably dirty and simped hard enough to just...accept it.

The primary justification for my review is that I couldn't fucking stop playing. Collecting weapons, uncovering the story, trivializing bosses with overpowered gear and stats, and then unlocking almost everything...it was fun. And more than anything, that's what I use to guide my reviews. This was a lot of fun. I don't think I jerked off once, but I had so much fun that I don't even care about that.

...actually, I remembered: I downloaded the game and a full gallery over a year ago months ago, wasn't impressed by anything in there, and deleted it without playing. Ironic--the content most people find rewarding after "working" through the game felt more like work to me than the game itself.

I'll be honest, I don't vibe with this game on so much of the adult content in it, and it don't even matter. This is a spoiler free review, but the end of chapter 1 had me like "I did NOT sign up for this...but what happens next?"

By the end of the game, I had absolutely no interest in any of the H-scenes, but I pushed through because this game is insanity incarnate and I HAD to see the end, only reason I don't give it 5 stars, is that combat can be trivialized for every single encounter in the game by the end of chapter 1 or early in chapter 2 (whenever you get the ability to replay boss fights), and yes, because there's so much adult content and fetishes that I have no interest in seeing in this game.

If you took out all the H-scenes in this game, it'd be much less popular most likely, but you'd still be left with a surprisingly dark but not grimdark samurai story about how to move forward into the future, and also the plot would still be god damn loco for cocopuffs in the best way possible in my opinion.

This is about as far away from my taste as possible in some ways, and yet it's damn amazing purely by just being whatever the hell it wants to be.

Which I can't quite describe what that is without heavy spoilers, and I'm also still not sure I fully understand it because it throws A LOT at you all at once, but the basis for combat is solid, the story is great even if you toss out all the sexual themes, the art is perfect even down to the pixel for sprites, the soundtrack goes WAY harder than it has any right to at certain parts of the game, and even though yes it's definitely got stuff in it that's way too niche for me personally, it's got H-scenes for just about every kind of person on this site.

Plus I'm pretty sure there's no mandatory H-scenes in the entire game, everything is tagged, and every scene gives you the option to skip I'm pretty sure if any of the content isn't your cup of tea. (But I will also say I could be wrong, since my brain is fried after playing this game, and there may be some scenes you only get the option to skip on a replay, but I don't think so, but take this with a grain of salt and just know that there's options to get around anything you don't wanna see, and I know for certain all the prostitution and failure scenes are skippable, again, at least according to memory.

8/10, never playing again, not because it's bad, but because it's A LOT.

Curious what the dev may do in the future but I damn sure need a break after this game.

Great non-standard RPGM game with a ton of quality of life features and lots of H scenes.

Gameplay
The game is very unusual for an RPGM game. That begins with the side-view perspective instead of the standard top-down one. This makes the maps smaller and removes bloat.
The fights have several small gimicks that make them more entertaining than standard RPGM fare. More importantly: you can skip most of them. You only have to beat a few mobs in each area to unlock the ability to insta-kill them. That leaves the boss fights and even those are usually over within a few turns. That leaves the fights as a nice distraction instead of the main focus like it is in a lot of other games.
Instead you are mostly doing odd jobs for the townsfolk. Those are usually pretty simple and include a lot of banter with the characters. The characters are all very silly and charming in their own right. The main story even has some trule epic or touching moments.
All this is somewhat diminished by the writing. I don't know if it is the translation at fault or if it is the original writing but there are a lot of situations where characters will just talk and talk without saying anything. Oftentime it feels like they talk past each other or just bring up random crap that has nothing to do with what they are actually talking about.

H
There are a lot of scenes here. There is brothel work, each outfit has a unique scene to it, most side-quests have scenes, bosses have loss scenes. The boss scenes are very comfortable to get. You can insta-lose with an item, get the scene and respwand right before the boss and skip all pre-fight dialog. No annoying walk-backs here.
Most of the scenes are with the MC but there are also a lot with the supporting girls or side characters. They all come with a list of tags right before a scene that lets you skip what you don't want to see.

It scratches my fetish, amazing story, good gameplay, I love every character on my screen, nothing else I can ask for.

After finishing the first chapter, I'm determined to find the happy ending. If you don't mind selling your body (for collecting CG anyway), you can accumulate money extremely quickly, but you can also avoid it and grind a little bit longer.