Sakura Wars Sega Saturn Fan Translation: Complete!

[Cepp]

It's been a long time coming, but the English fan translation for the first Sakura Wars game on Sega Saturn just released. It's a meaty patch at 455MB but it's been easy enough to apply it to an ISO I grabbed from emuparadise.

I've only played it for a few minutes in Mednafen but it ran great and should be fine on a real Saturn as well I imagine.

I am so psyched for this, gonna jump straight into it.

[briareos_kerensky]

That's cool, just in time for the new Sakura Wars.

[wakka]

Oh wow! That’s amazing news!

[Asura]

That's cool, just in time for the new Sakura Wars.

... which looks good, but I can't help but be disappointed as it's an action game, not an SRPG as the prior ones have been.

I'm still thinking of tracking down a copy of the Wii game.

I'd love to play this fan translation but coming from a standing start with no Saturn hardware, it's a looong way off.

[Cepp]

I'd love to play this fan translation but coming from a standing start with no Saturn hardware, it's a looong way off.

I'm playing it on Retroarch using the Mednafen core and it's running perfectly. I'd say play it that way unless you're set on original hardware.

I'm about 5 hours in so far; I like the way it treats each chapter as an episode, complete with a "Next time, on Sakura Wars" segment at the end. Battles haven't been too difficult yet but they have been fun. It feels like a mid 90s anime with choices to make in the visual novel areas, mixed in with battles and anime cutscenes. It all comes together quite nicely.

I do find the UI a little cumbersome but it's nothing major for an SRPG from 1996.

[briareos_kerensky]

I'm still thinking of tracking down a copy of the Wii game.

It's not bad, but it suffers from a shaky translation and English voice acting from the late PS2/Wii period, so it can be a huge it and miss...especially if you don't like actors faking accents.

I do find the UI a little cumbersome but it's nothing major for an SRPG from 1996

Oh, that's like a tradition for Sakura Wars games

I've got the new one today, I'll start it when I'm done with 13 Sentinels.

[Hirst]

Anyone tried this on real hardware yet? What's the preferred option for that - is it CD-Rs combined with a flashed Action Replay cart?

[Cepp]

I've got the new one today, I'll start it when I'm done with 13 Sentinels.

I hope it's good, everytime I see Sakura's character design I want to facepalm though... Let us know how you get on with it.

Anyone tried this on real hardware yet? What's the preferred option for that - is it CD-Rs combined with a flashed Action Replay cart?

That or a CD-R on a modded system. I tried the fan translation of Dragon Force II on real hardware back when I had a modded console and it worked without issue.

I'm up to Episode 6 now. I'd say each chapter/episode takes about an hour to complete with plenty of opportunities to save inbetween, so I'll likely do an episode or two a night now until the weekend.

[Arashikage]

Any chance this works on a Phoebe? I had a dabble last night but to no avail.

[Cepp]

Any chance this works on a Phoebe? I had a dabble last night but to no avail.

Just to confirm, does the patched ISO work in an emulator?

If it does, then the patch must do something to the ISO to make it incompatible with Phoebe

[Cepp]

Just beat it at 17 1/2 hours. The final chapter and ending goes places I was not expecting! Certainly on brand for a 90s JRPG though.

Hats off the the fan translation team that made this possible, I've had a blast playing through it

[Kotatsu Neko]

Anyone tried this on real hardware yet? What's the preferred option for that - is it CD-Rs combined with a flashed Action Replay cart?

I've been playing it on my Japanese This is Cool Saturn on a CDR with a Psuedo cart. Works great.