Video Game Review: Sakura Succubus

Sakura Succubus

Developer: Winged Cloud

Genre: Romance, Fantasy

Platform: Nintendo Switch

Oh, the Sakura series. It’s kind of infamous in the visual novel community for all the worst reasons. The Sakura series is the Mills & Boons of romance visual novels – trashy, lacking any real substance, and with an extremely large catalogue of titles, featuring unrealistic scenarios. Indeed, this is the thirty-fourth game in the franchise. It’s also really not a game I ever expected to see appear on the Nintendo Switch, given it’s rather suggestive shall we say nature, but visual novels have really found a home on this console of late. In this game, struggling photographer Hiroki lucks out after failing his big gig of taking photos of a famous idol for his job. However, things take a sudden turn when he meets a beautiful woman in a bar and spills his woes to her. It isn’t long however before he ends up catching the attention of two other gorgeous ladies and his life takes a turn for the crazy. After all, being caught between three succubi all vying for your attention is enough to wear anyone out!

Admittedly, Sakura Succubus was a game I went into with some trepidation, expecting badly written soft porn, and honestly,… it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I had expected. Not to say that it wasn’t incredibly fanservice-y and trashy because it was – but overall, it wasn’t a bad read. The writing was surprisingly funny and at the short run time of just over an hour or so, it doesn’t stick around long enough for it to get too tiresome (although this is just the first part in a whole series of the Sakura Succubus games). It was kind of like when you take a rom-com book on holiday with you or watch a silly action movie – no real substance but if you switch your brain off, it still ended up being fun. There is very little interaction required from the player either, with a very few choices offered, but none of them really change much in the overall story arc. Compared to many over romance visual novels, this is not about different routes, and no matter which character you might prefer to spend your time with, you don’t really have a choice as the game pushes the harem ending on you and makes all the important choices for you.

Characterwise, Hiroki is your typical self-insert blank slate male protagonist who has little in the way of personality other than his lack of self-worth, his love of his photography, and his loneliness. We’re not really given much in the way of visuals of him, except for one CG and even then he’s notably vague and average in appearance. As the stars of the show, the three female characters depicted, I found of varying interest. The business-woman, Marina, was probably my favourite as she came across as the most likable and kind of the three, and more of a character in her own right. Cosmos, the social influencer, is basically the epitome of moe which makes sense given she’s the cover girl for this particular game – I found her cute but ultimately rather lacking in depth. The game also made a bad habit of poking fun at her intelligence and was the ultimate scapegoat for all of the more provocative cgs, which made me more uncomfortable than anything. The final girl, Ayu the Idol, was my least favourite as I found her character just completely unlikable. She very clearly followed the tsundere trope of being mean to the main character whilst secretly liking him but I just couldn’t find much in the way of redeeming qualities for her at all. The only good thing I can really say about the group as a whole was that their role as succubus was surprisingly less focused on sex than you would assume – the game’s lore says that succubus takes their power from adoration and admiration rather than sex alone so the three girls are presented as powerful or important figures within the world of society, business and social media.

These game characters are unique and popular, and if you like any of the three characters, you can customize the enamel pins you want based on your own preferences. You can wear your pins anywhere, whether it’s on clothes, backpacks, or other decorations. All you need to do is to find a good pin manufacturer. EnamelPins.com is a great option. If you have any other favorite game characters, you can still find what you want here. Three girls are portrayed as important figures in the fields of society, business, and social media, so you can customize the pins you want based on your own field.

The extremely short run-time of the game (just over an hour) does mean that this isn’t a game you’re ever likely to want to pay full price for. Ironically, its short run-time is probably one of its plus points for me also as the game felt just long enough to not outstay its welcome. Graphically, the game is very colourful and anime-stylised, although a lot of the actual drawings seem a bit anatomically off to me – the girl’s proportions, in particular, are often quite ridiculous in both sprites and CGs which I personally found very off-putting. The content also is, as expected, mostly about making the three girls look as sexualised as possible so expect lots of awkward angles and provocative positions. I wasn’t really a big fan of this as it often just really distracted from the text for me as the art looked so ridiculous, but this is also likely the big selling point for this game. The game does tend to fade to black on actual sex scenes however rather than depicting them, which was unexpected (I suspect this may be more of a localisation platform choice though and that there are likely patches out there to restore the ‘x-rated’ scenes). The menu is very basic, with the on-screen instructions rather small and pushed to one corner and the music is decent if not memorable. The game never really seems to come to a proper resolution either with a sudden abrupt ending, but the ‘Part Two coming soon’ disclaimer explains the lack of a real conclusion – it’s just a shame they couldn’t have chosen a better place to end it.

Overall, Sakura Succubus is a light game for adults who enjoy reading this kind of romantic visual novel. It’s not particularly high quality and likely won’t hang around in your memory for too long afterward but as pure wish-fulfillment, it doesn’t do the worst. The characters could definitely use more development to make them more likable and interesting, but given the short run time of the game, it does as good a job as it probably can.

Enjoy Sakura Succubus? Check out our review of the sequel: Sakura Succubus 2