Sakura Shrine Girls Analysis

Although Toru, the protagonist of Sakura Shrine Girls, comes from a family with a long lineage of priests he is more of a skeptic. Despite generations of his family all dedicating themselves to the understanding of the the spirit world, Toru simply doesn’t believe in gods or spirits at all. However, Toru does believe in keeping old practices alive, despite how silly they seem to him, which is why he goes and lives with his grandfather to receive training in the family tradition. Initially Toru thinks that his grandfathers ramblings about seeing odd things are just due to age and senility, but soon he discovers that there might just be some truth to all the talk of spirits.

Sakura Shrine Girls is another entry in the Sakura series by Winged …show more content…
Overall the visuals are decent and while there aren’t any outright nudity, there is plenty of fan service. This includes a couple of obligatory CGs of Toru accidentally walking in on the girls in various stages of undress. In total there are about twenty CGs, all of which can be viewed from the main menu of the game after you’ve unlocked them. The background art is quite nice as well although there aren’t a lot of locations. Most of the story takes place at the house where Toru resides with his grandfather or at the shrines. In addition, there are a couple of scenes at the school Toru attends with the two shrine maidens and even a brief trip to a hot-spring. The girls are clearly the focus of the story as they are the only ones who are graced with sprites and CGs. Toru’s grandfather, as funny as he is, is never shown and neither are any other characters. It is worth nothing that unlike other Winged Cloud titles, Sakura Shrine Girls does not have any patches that can be downloaded to accessed any censored content. With this visual novel what you see is what you …show more content…
There are no major plot twists or turns and the story is one that has been done many times before. While both Nayoko and Kayo are cute there is very little character development in the game. The girls simply adhere to their respective stereotypes and quickly fall for Toru even though there is nothing particularly remarkable about him. This can be a little disappointing for players who actually play these types of games for the story while the lack of hentai scenes will obviously be a drawback for those who don’t really care about the story. There is nothing about the game that can be described as outright bad, but at the same time there is very little to set it apart from other titles in the genre. This is a pity as the setting is quite nice and had a lot of potential, but ultimately this is a title that is fun while it lasts, but quickly forgotten afterwards.

In Sakura Shrine Girls you step into the shoes of Toru, a young priest-in-training, who gets more than he bargained for when following in the footsteps of his grandfather. Toru has always been a skeptic, but when he encounters two guardian sprits at the shrines he is supposed to maintain his whole world is turned upside down. Sakura Shrine Girls features decent art, but the story is fairly predictable and the characters not that memorable. It is still an entertaining read and you