Winged Cloud has released another title of the Sakura series as the 19th title and a sequel to its earlier title Sakura MMO. In this fantasy visual novel, the story continues with Kotone as the dark witch Viola in the world of Asaph. Viola has her darkling maid Neve, a thief Fion, and a knight Eleri who are part of her harem of cute girls she took in to stay with her at her castle.
After the events of Sakura MMO, Viola decides to bring Neve, Fion, and Eleri along as adventurers taking on quests for an adventurers guild. Viola plans to find out why she and Eleri woke up in Asaph after playing Asaph Online, and whether they could return to where they live in modern Japan.
This Sakura MMO sequel continues to be a romantic comedy with parody, yuri fan service, and has 3 different endings with each member of Viola's harem. The game uses the same background music by Zack Parrish and artwork style by Inma and Fatelinealpha in the game cover, backgrounds, character sprites, CGs, and Steam 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.
Again, 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. It has an unfinished ending at the end of this game, together with fewer instances of any romance between the protagonist and any of the female characters. This is because the visual novel attempts to add mystery and fight scenes to the storyline as mentioned in the game's store page description, both of which could have been expanded further to make the characters more memorable, keep the reader interested in the visual novel and to make the reader feel they are getting their money's worth. Sadly, there is only one quest involving a mystery, and only one actual fight scene, and they were over too quickly to have any impact on recognizing this visual novel as something more than just a comedy visual novel with fan service. Furthermore, the game lacks any feature to import saves from Sakura MMO or choose one ending from the prequel unlike Winged Cloud's earlier title Sakura Beach 2 makes it less likely for players to get invested in any character.
Overall, I find the price of this visual novel to be a bit high due to the short length, unfinished ending and less rewarding ending with any of the female characters. At the same time, the great artwork and background music in this game and a few laughs in the story mean I don't mind paying this amount if a sequel for this series will be released with a far more satisfying ending (harem ending please!(✿◠‿◠).
For those who are prepared to wait, go ahead and wait until the entire Sakura MMO series has been released in an attractive bundle offer or all titles are discounted to around a couple of dollars each to be proportional to the playtime of each title.
Initial gameplay video on YouTube by Ross Senpai
Nutaku game page (Contain NSFW content)