Two Cute Girls and a Monster Threat: Sakura Agent Review

Platform(s): PC (via Steam)
Player(s): 1

Visual Novels are an odd duck. Sometimes they have fantastic stories and are phenomenal and sometimes they are merely tools for delivering fan service to the readers. Sakura Agent is somewhere in the middle, being one of Winged Cloud’s better visual novels that I’ve gone through.

WARNING: This review is based on the complete version of Sakura Agent, and as such will contain some nudity in the screenshots and I will openly talk about these scenes. For your convenience, I’ve hidden these images behind buttons and have clearly marked the section where I talk about it. You have been warned.

No chill with those tentacle monsters, eh?

The story starts off already a little more exciting than the VNs I’ve had experience with. Rather than having the main character be a helpless plain person who gets thrust into the thick of things, Akira is an agent of a secret organization who is the best of his kind. The organization fights off alien threats and makes sure the public doesn’t know about the threats, something akin to the Men In Black. The organization’s agents are mostly made up of people with special powers who help fight off these monsters. The thing that makes Akira special is that he has no powers. He’s just really skilled with a gun and can be crafty, which has helped him climb the ladder as an agent. The problem is that he can be a bit lazy and sometimes unreliable, which has resulted in him having a ‘caretaker’ who is essentially there to babysit him and shadow him to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.

Just because she's a good agent doesn't mean she's a good cook.

Enter Kimiko. A gorgeous partner to Akira who essentially acts like a playful partner more than a watcher. Her power is the ability to make objects with her mind, essentially allowing her to make any weapon she needs at any time if she concentrates hard enough. Their relationship with each other is amusing and fun and gave me many good laughs throughout the VN. It never felt forced and was quite well-written, which is a lot of praise for a company who tends to pump out mediocre writing in favor of pretty art. That’s not to say the art isn’t pretty. The backgrounds, while lacking in variety a little, are overall designed well and the two characters you meet are unique and well-drawn.

That's one way to get noticed I suppose...

Speaking of two characters, as you continue in the story you’ll also meet Masumi. While Kimiko is the calm, collected and efficient model agent, Masumi is the opposite. She’s a fresh recruit who comes from a small town, doesn’t know how to interact with people in a big city and has some odd behaviors (such as getting naked and painting her body). Her power is super strength, and her untrained skill shows as she tends to have a lot of collateral and has poor form. The agency doesn’t trust Akira yet, and decides the best way to test him is to give him Masumi as his apprentice.

One of the naturally flowing scenes.

NSFW CONTENT

With that story setup, the plot progresses as these three fight to figure out what is causing the breaches that these monsters are coming through, with some relationship development along the way. As you continue, there is no real gameplay. That being said, you are given some decisions along the way, with the only benefit being that you’ll unlock some extra scenes, all of which are suggestive and add almost nothing to the plot. Sometimes the scenes are silly, and despite the suggestiveness of them you’ll still get amusement out of them, while others are obviously there for the purpose of having an excuse to give the reader some nude art of the two characters.

One of the more awkward scenes.

NSFW CONTENT

- NSFW SECTION STARTS HERE -



This is a common problem I have noticed as a whole in many visual novels, where nudity and sex scenes are forced in merely for the sake of giving people something to gawk at. It’s unfortunate that Sakura Agent is no different. Most of the scenes feel completely out of place. For example, there is a scene where you have to go rescue Kimiko after being captured. She’s tied up with a rope that is suppressing her power, and thus she’s naked. The explanation for this is that she doesn’t actually wear clothes, but that they’re conjured. So the rope is preventing her from having clothes. Ok, this explanation I can deal with and is perfectly fine. The problem is that in the middle of the rescue, completely out of the blue and out of character, she says she’s thinking about a fantasy and asks Akira to masturbate in front of her and release his load all over her. If her character was being developed in this way, this wouldn’t be a problem, but it isn’t. Throughout the VN she’s made out as being romantically interested in Akira but never willing to rush into things, so this sudden change of heart makes no sense in the context of the rest of the story. This is how most of the sex scenes play out, and it’s really jarring to the narrative as a whole. There are maybe one or two scenes max that actually make sense and work out well, but the rest are all misplaced and odd. It makes sense for Akira, since he’s always thinking dirty thoughts internally, but it makes little sense for the two girls.



​- NSFW SECTION ENDS HERE -

Guess which choice leads to a naughty scene.

On the flip side, most of these scenes can be skipped. As I mentioned, they carry little to no relevance to the plot, so you don’t miss anything by skipping them. To make the situation even more acceptable, the scenes aren’t even in the VN to begin with, nor is any nudity. You actually have to download the 18+ patch from here in order to be able to enable that content. So on the one hand, none of that content is forced, and the visual novel flows well in the censored version. On the other hand, if you’re a completionist and want to see every piece of dialogue and get all the gallery unlocks then you’ll have to download the patch. If you’re into that and want the scenes for your viewing pleasure, then you’re a winner. I do appreciate that it’s not forced on the reader though, which definitely makes the integrity of the narrative stronger. Think of the explicit scenes as ‘bonus’ scenes that are only there for people who care about it. I give Winged Cloud props on that.

One of the most adorable shots in the game.

The narrative progresses along quite nicely and has a pretty satisfying conclusion. The bigger problems I have with the VN are two-fold. There is no voice acting at all. Winged Cloud had made over a dozen VNs by the time Sakura Agent was released, so there’s hardly excuse for that. The other issue I have with it has two sides. The first, is that there are only three characters. The other people you have slight interactions with are generic with generic names and really takes away from the experience. The writers did a reasonable job of keeping the story engaging with a focus on the three, but there are times when they interact with others and these ‘characters’ feel like empty shells. Something as simple as giving them names to make them feel more real would have made a world of difference, but alas this isn’t done. The second is that Akira, who is similar to most VN male mains, has no face. If you’re going to try and make the main character be a reflection of the reader to be more engaging, then the reader should be given more choices throughout the story in order to make it more personal. This isn’t the case. Akira has a decent amount of personality and feels like a unique character, and as such should have been given character art, but wasn’t.

The scene where Kimiko opens up emotionally is one of the best.

Besides these issues, Sakura Agent is a pretty solid story. It took me 5-6 hours to get through the whole thing and unlock all the achievements, which isn’t too bad at the $9.99 asking price. It’s a good sign that Winged Cloud has been learning how to make a compelling visual novel. It’s nowhere near perfect, and there are definitely better visual novels out there, but if you like the Sakura series’ artwork and would like a more satisfying narrative than their earlier works, Sakura Agent is not a bad way to go.

- Teepu

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Gameplay/Story: GREAT
Sound: GOOD
Graphics: GREAT
Value: AMAZING

OVERALL: GREAT

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