by Stephen DeckAlso available on Steam
Review written by Stephen Deck; originally published 04/28/2022 on Teacher by Day, Gamer by Night
When it comes to visual novels starring scantily clad and well-endowed anime women, I’m easy to please. Sakura Angels checks all of those requirements for me. As part of the long-running Sakura series (not to be confused with Sakura Wars), you pretty much know what to expect from Sakura Angels if you’ve played anything else in the series – big tiddy waifu characters, a short and fairly shallow story, and character tropes for days. For the sake of transparency, I’ll state upfront that Gamuzumi sent me a Switch code for Sakura Angels for review. Thanks so much, Gamuzumi!
The premise of the game is pretty typical. A high school boy finds himself thrust into a bizarre magical-girl scenario where large-breasted magical girls end up enrolling in his school, get put in his class, and end up being his new BFFs to protect him from the mysterious evil forces that want him for some reason. It’s basically the plot of every other anime on Crunchyroll, so if you’re looking for an original or especially compelling story, look elsewhere; the story is just an excuse for the boobs here. The main characters are both straight-up tropes; there’s a bubbly girl with brown hair with a seemingly-aloof-but-actually-commanding personality and a tsundere girl with pink hair. Again, not deep or unique characters, but they’re not supposed to be. Tropes provide a comfortable context for characters, and this game is the epitome of comfort food for degenerate weebs like me.
The game is super short (although I prefer the phrase “bite-sized”) with my play clocking in at about three hours. As I said, it’s comfort food; if you have a bad day at work, you can come home and enjoy a mindless bite-sized lewd game on your Switch. For a lot of people, the length would be the biggest turn-off, and for $10, I do think it’s a bit too short; I think $5 would be a more appropriate price for the game. Still, though, I enjoyed my brief time with it. It’s cute and entertaining enough that I would definitely recommend it for fans of the genre if you see it on sale for 50% or more off. I can’t recommend it at full price, though; it’s just not long, original, or compelling enough to justify a $10 price tag.
