Nutaku asked us to take a look at this game, and here's our opinion.
You have to be fucking kidding me. I finally find time to finish this review and end the Sakura series marathon, only to learn that the last installment of the Sakura MMO games got released on Nutaku a few days ago. I’ll be frank friends, I don’t think I can do it. I was fully prepared to end the marathon before even playing the game, and after playing it, I’m even more ready to move on. I’ll ask in the comments for your opinion at the end, but I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll be a free man after this review.
Sakura MMO 2 is a short visual novel game that’s a direct sequel to Sakura MMO. The game was published and developed by Winged Cloud and released on Nutaku on April 17, 2019. It contains exclusively yuri. You can pick it up for $9.99.
Art/Music
To put it bluntly this section is absolutely more of the same. A lot of the character portraits and a couple of the backgrounds are the exact same assets, which I think is fine for a sequel. The new art that’s added matches the old style beautifully so there’s no worrying about whether or not the second game looks anything like the first. I mean, look at it. I could have switched these images with ones from the first Sakura MMO review and it wouldn’t of made much of a difference. Some of the music tracks are reused as well so it really feels like a seamless transition between the two titles. These aspects continue to do their job for the experience, nothing more nothing less.
Writing
The writing definitely takes a step back from the adventurous tone of the first title in order to set up a mystery. This was an unexpected turn for me, but a welcome one. You follow Viola and friends as they uncover the truth behind a recent robbery in the video game world. Spoilers aside, the mystery is fairly interesting, and you even get to see a fight scene at the climax! Here’s my problem. The fight scene itself was… okay? As someone who loves animated fight scenes I think the visual novel medium just can’t compare to watching 2D, 3D, or real life fighters duke it out. I mean, who cracks open a literature-focused medium because they want to read some sick action descriptions? My point is that I’m scared how much time and effort went into the fight and its assests as opposed to the sex because (Spoilers for my own review) I wasn’t very happy with it. I like to keep these reviews segmented and not cross the streams, but fuck me I would of preferred to skip the fight entirely and put all of those resources into improving the sex scenes. That way there would be a clear betterment of a crucial aspect of this series, thus creating an incentive to buy this sequel. There’s certainly no incentive in the ending as there’s still no clear answer as to how the story will end, and you’ll need to play the finale game to find out.
Don't we all act like NPCs sometimes?.... Bruh...
The Sex
“More of the same” continues to plague this review. I really thought this sequel might add something to the sex. English voice acting was a pipe dream but I hoped a little anyway, and I wound myself up thinking we might see some Japanese voice acting since Sakura Swim Club had it. Alas, it was exactly the same as the first installment. The descriptions and dialogue during the scenes remain solid, but without something unique or additional to mention they feel almost painfully average. If you were encapsulated by the characters or from being a girl in control in the first game then by all means, you should find nothing but satisfaction here. However, for those of us not that impressed by the sex of Sakura MMO, I can safely say no changes are really made to the formula here.
How are you gonna give me this art and not voice it baby?
I’ll admit it, I’m disappointed. I’m a yuri man so I thought this would be heaven for me, but I’ve learned that production value in sex scenes far outweighs love for a particular genre.
TL;DR The sex here is just a carbon copy expansion of the first title, so I’ll give it a carbonized copied score of 3/5
Okay, so we’re over this shit right? Even though Sakura MMO 3 just came out on Nutaku we’re ready to wrap this up and move on? Please, I don’t want to play this series anymore. T-tell me your thoughts in the comments below...
