Sakura Melody Review – Once More, With Feeling

Returning to publisher Gamuzumi’s archive of quirky ecchi titles and short visual novels, this time we take a look at a brand new entry. A spin-off of the publisher’s ongoing ‘Sakura’ pretty anime girl stories, newcomer Sakura Melody fuses together Winged Cloud’s traditional cute girls and visual novels with ‘match 3+’ puzzle gameplay and more intricate dating mechanics.

Introduction

Sakura Melody is a hybrid visual novel and match 3+ arcade puzzle game. The game was developed by Winged Cloud and published by Gamuzumi for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on 13th December, 2024. The game is a cross-buy title, meaning purchasing one version unlocks the alternate version at no extra cost, allowing players to earn an additional set of trophies.

Melody is clearly one of Winged Cloud’s more ambitious titles. The uninitiated may miss that, but the gameplay fusion (or perhaps that should be gameplay addition) is something very new to the Sakura saga. While it doesn’t make much sense from a narrative standpoint, it does at least give us something to do that resembles actual gameplay.

Story

Young Ren is a junior at a production company, and has always dreamed of managing his own idol group. One day, Ren finally gets his wish, and is placed in charge of a ragtag group of undisciplined new idols. Ren has been given just a month to whip the bumbling group into shape and unleash their underlying potential.

The three girls will need to find some common ground and build their chemistry, as while each girl is exceptionally beautiful, they also each come from very different backgrounds. As such, the trio have very different personalities. Akko is humble and cheerful, while Ibuki can be quiet and introverted, with final girl Chiyoko being a proud eccentric.

At the end of the month, a competition awaits them, and only the most talented idol group will be crowned victorious. However, young Ren’s time spent with these three gorgeous girls might just earn him their affections too. Maybe, if Ren makes a good enough impression, they might just fall in love with him.

Gameplay

As a group of pop idols, performances (either full or in training) are performed as a matching game within a strict time limit, similar to a ‘match 3’ type. You can technically get away with matching just two identical joined icons on the game grid, but higher matching numbers above three will unlock upgraded icons, allowing additional nearby icons to be cleared simultaneously which will save extra time.

In the traditional visual novel story scenes, the game drops the usual button assignments of the previous Sakura games and instead opts for a mini menu in the bottom right corner of the screen. The usual single-button interface remains, allowing you to advance the text at your leisure, or let the scene auto-play by toggling on the relevant menu option.

The text menu also allows the usual features to be activated here, such as rewinding text to the previous line if you missed something. If you’d prefer to skip the story to quickly jump to the gameplay sections or grab the trophies faster, then the fast-forward feature allows you to skip full cutscenes if you wish. The additional start/pause menu features additional options, such as altering the text display speed.

Graphics/Sound

Sakura Melody features some of Winged Cloud’s prettiest artwork to date. Characters are bright, colourful, and expressive from scene to scene. As per usual for the ecchi-themed developer, focus is placed on the female cast-members, with the featured ladies always being nothing less than gorgeous. Characters aren’t animated and will only move or gesture as their sprites are regenerated after each line of dialogue advances.

Sadly, there are no independent blinking or lip-syncing attempts, not that the characters are voiced anyway. This is another lower-budget visual novel-style game (albeit with the puzzle twist this time) and so it’s fully text-based. Fortunately, there is a beautifully atmospheric soundtrack throughout to accompany the brilliantly detailed backdrop images and sexy anime girls.

Conclusion

Visual novels aren’t exactly the majority’s ‘go-to’ genre, and so adding identifiable gameplay gives the game a significant immersion boost… until it doesn’t. Visual novel aficionados will be surprised to find the very probable possibility of a ‘game over’ if you run out of time during the puzzle sections, and this can cost a lot of progress if you neglect to make manual saves.

What the uninitiated will also be unaware of is just how much bigger the game was in its first edition. The console editions of Gamuzumi’s titles have been heavily censored to meet undesirable content restrictions, and so we’re not seeing a lot of what we should. The Steam release of the game with its hentai patch upgrade unlocked a hefty amount of hardcore content, including multiple scenes of polyamorous and bi-curious sex.

What we’re left with is a significantly smaller sample of what the game should be, and this will leave many feeling short-changed, though the mild stripping mechanics do offer some minor titillation. Sadly, this muddling of match 3+ puzzling, visual novel storytelling, and dating simulation doesn’t really show off the best bits of each component, with none feeling particularly refined or even complete in places.