Played through the first chapter yesterday up to the point where you unlock the card game and I have to say that my feelings on this are really mixed.
While I enjoyed the demo, the big group of flying enemies in the first battle stage reminded me how undercooked the fighting part feels.
As for the story, everyone loves an underdog, but so far it's not really clicking with me. Maybe it's because how exaggerated it all feels, even by anime standards.
My biggest problem so far is that sometimes dialogue choices don't play out at all like what you'd expect.
Trying to be nice? Tough luck, characters will read it as sarcasm. This is my first Sakura Wars game, so maybe you need to be in a certain mindset, but so far I'm surprised that some conversations have gone south, despite choosing what has felt like the best answer.
Of course there are good things about the game too. The general atmosphere, the expressiveness of the characters during dialogues, Sakura in general, but I'm curious how I'll feel after a few more hours with this title.
Oh, one more thing. I assume they wanted to reuse the Sumire voice actress since it's the same character and all, but wow, she sounds old. The character looks like she's around 30, but sounds like 60+ year old (the VA is only 5X, so that's extra weird). I usually don't care much for voices, but in this one case the dissonance is pretty huge.
