Sakura Wars

About Sakura Wars

Sakura Wars (1996) is Sega and Red Company's "dramatic adventure" mixing tactical RPG, dating sim and visual novel, in which Ensign Ichiro Ogami leads a theatre troupe of steam-armoured heroines defending 1920s Tokyo.

Sakura Wars in Depth

In a fictionalised Taishō-era 1923, the Imperial Combat Revue is a military unit that fights supernatural threats to Tokyo while posing as a theatre troupe. Imperial Japanese Navy Ensign Ichiro Ogami is made leader of its all-female Flower Division, women with magical abilities who defend the city against demons in steam-powered armour called Kobus, and he becomes caught up in its conflict with the Hive of Darkness and in the personal lives of its members.

Dubbed a "dramatic adventure" game by Sega and told across ten episodes, it combines tactical role-playing, dating sim and visual novel elements in two modes. In adventure mode Ogami explores the Grand Imperial Theater and talks with its characters, and in battle mode the Flower Division fights on a turn-based grid. Creator Oji Hiroi conceived it in 1990, and his small team in Red Company's planning department developed the idea from 1993, with full production beginning a year later after Sega's approval. Writer Satoru Akahori, composer Kohei Tanaka and character designer Kōsuke Fujishima joined the project.

Making Sakura Wars

Sega and Red Company developed it and Sega published it for the Sega Saturn in 1996. It was a critical and commercial success, one of the Saturn's best-selling games, and launched the Sakura Wars series of sequels and spin-offs. Famitsu and Sega Saturn Magazine reviewed the original Saturn release, and a 2000 English-language review rated the later Dreamcast port highly.