This 18th title of the Sakura series from Winged Cloud with yuri fanservice and an all-female cast of characters features a lawyer Kotone currently residing in Tokyo. Kotone has a maxed out dark witch avatar Viola in a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game Asaph Online. After a typical day where Kotone worked at her 9-5 job, played Asaph Online for several hours and went to bed, she woke up in her castle in the medieval fantasy world of Asaph as the dark witch Viola herself with her darkling maid Neve attending to her. Feeling adventurous, Viola decides to take a tour of the fantasy world with Neve and they would get to know a thief Fion and a knight Eleri. Viola decides to make use of her new powers as a legendary dark witch to capture and add Fion and Eleri to her harem of cute girls in her castle.
The story and plot is written as a romantic comedy with parody, yuri fan service and has 3 endings. The game comes with great background music by Zack Parrish and great artwork by Inma and Fatelinealpha in the game cover, backgrounds, character sprites, CGs, Steam emoticons, profile backgrounds and achievement icons. An uncensored patch for the game which will add additional H CGs, text and dialogue to the game can be downloaded from the developer's Patreon page. Having played Winged Cloud's earlier games Sakura Fantasy and Sakura Dungeon which also feature a romantic comedy with yuri fan service in a medieval fantasy setting, the plot is similar to these two visual novels in having an endearing female protagonist (alphas rock!) once again where it has been a while since I've seen any endearing protagonists among Winged Cloud's games besides Sakura Fantasy and Sakura Dungeon. The scriptwriter Waffle is also imaginative in adding comical elements to the story as a parody to the usual fare in MMOs to make this game stand out. I hope this game will also be considered for a sequel similar to Sakura Beach as one of the three possible endings feel unfinished similar to Sakura Fantasy. The medieval fantasy settings also somehow tend to bring out some of Zack Parrish's better musical compositions with a mix of pleasant and stirring piano and horn music.
On the minus side, the price of this visual novel is a bit high even at a 25% discount on Steam store. It only takes around a couple of hours to read through the visual novel, get all endings, and unlock all CGs and achievements. The game also hasn't released any trading cards to this date. Overall, this game is recommended when at an attractive discount or bundle offer for fans of Winged Cloud who might be interested in collecting the titles in the Sakura series and like medieval fantasy settings that are similar to Winged Cloud's earlier titles Sakura Fantasy and Sakura Dungeon. Sakura MMO is one of those few fantasy visual novels that are comparable to Sakura Fantasy and Sakura Dungeon by having great artwork and yuri content. The game didn't disappoint me although I paid a bit higher for it during the store launch sale at 25% discount with its parody on an MMO and great background music which is also one of the few more outstanding ones. Keep it up, Zack Parrish, Inma, Fatelinealpha and Waffle!
Initial gameplay video on YouTube by Ross Senpai
Nutaku game page (Contain NSFW content)