The ‘gotta catch ’em all’ aspect from the Capture spell/mechanic does help keep things fresh for longer, whenever you meet a monster you don’t ‘own’ yet. If you’ve fought one sexy catgirl, you’ve fight them all. Sakura Dungeon suffers from this just as badly as any other game. Obviously, not even the most nudity-filled battle party is going to keep low-intensity JRPG combat fresh for too long. Each character class starts with a few of these other slots can be filled out by using skill scrolls, to your own best judgment. Sakura Dungeon tries to compensate for this a little by giving each character access to a maximum of six skills. It’s a fairly simple system, hence ‘hit-fest’. You do have items, but those can only be used outside of combat. But hits can be dodged or parried, for obviously no effect.įor any individual character, using skills is the only thing they can do on their turn. If the hit is critical, you also tear up their clothes. If attacks land, they reduce the enemy’s Vitality Points (VP).

AP regenerates slowly over time, and regenerates more quickly if you use the ‘guard’ command - the one non-attack skill. The cost is measured in AP, each character’s blue ‘mana’ bar. And they have a cost, a power rating, and hit and critical changes. Nearly all skills are some variant of attack: these can be Melee or Ranged, Physical or Magical, and possibly of some elemental charge. Characters take turns - in some vaguely specified order that may or may not change depending on your actions, I honestly can’t tell - using one of their up-to-six skills. The fact that all the combatants are sexy monster girls is *like* a twist, but it’s not what I was meaning.Ĭombat is essentially a turn-based hit-fest. But it’s engaging enough that I actually enjoyed looking through new floors, instead of dreading it. In short, dungeon exploration is… pretty fun! It’s not incredibly complicated (so far), so don’t expect Legend of Grimrock-style serious exploration. One level even has honest-to-goodness secret walls, that don’t show up as such on the map until you’re run into them face-first. Sometimes the exit is guarded by a strong boss. Sometimes a McGuffin is needed to proceed. Sometimes there’s a locked door, and you’ll have to scour the level - or different levels! - for keys. And while each level shares a common end goal - get to the exit - the complications and obstacles are pleasingly varied. The first level is essentially a straight shot with one or two dead ends, but later levels becomes large sprawling mazes.

On the exploration side, I was surprised to find that the dungeon levels are more often than not actually challenging to explore. Sakura Dungeon presents both fairly well. The two side of any good dungeon crawler are exploring the dungeon, and fighting the dungeon’s denizens. This involves fighting their way to the bottom of the dungeon, populated by a variety of (sexy) monster girls, as well as various puzzles, dead ends, and traps (decidedly unsexy). As explained, Sakura Dungeon‘s core conceit is that immortal (sexy) fox spirit Yomi and human (sexy) adventurer Ceri are trying to unseat the wicked (and presumably sexy) Dungeon Lord.

Sakura dungeon floor maps