While the latest Sakura Wars game for PS4 did get an English localization from Sega, most of the original series remains officially available only in Japanese, but Sakura Wars 2 just received a fan translation.
Specifically, the translation is for the Sega Saturn version of the game released in 1998, as the game was released on a few different platforms over the year, including the Dreamcast. Not only is it available in English, but also in Portuguese.
Work on the translation, helmed by X (formerly Twitter) user @NoahSteam_ has been going on since the summer of 2021, albeit it was publicly announced only in January 2023.
You can download it from the SegaXtreme website, where you’ll also find all the instruction to patch your copy of the game.
If you’re unfamiliar with Sakura Wars 2: Thou Shalt not Die, it’s the second game of the series that debuted in 1996 and holds a special place in the hearts of many fans.
It’s a mix between tactical RPG, visual novel, and dating simulation set in an alternate history version of Japan, where a team of young girl led by our hero fight against demonic enemies while performing as stage stars.
The main series culminated in 2005 with Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love (Sakura Taisen 5), which for some reason was also the only one to receive an official localization from NIS America, before Sega released Shin Sakura Wars in the west in 2020.
At the moment, the series has gone dormant again following an unsurprising and rather public flop of the mobile spin-off Sakura Kakumei: Hana Saku Otome-tachi, which was closed less than a year after it launched.
At the moment, we don’t know whether Sega will invest more in it (albeit I certainly hope so, since Sakura Wars is one of my favorite series ever and Japanese games have been doing quite well for the publisher), but at the very least, we can enjoy this fan translation.
Incidentally, the first game of the series is also avaiable with its own fan translation by the same group. In the meanwhile, you can also enjoy a few “commercials” celebrating the release of the translation.
