Of course I blame the western press, and with reason. You shouldn't need a "big reach in the west" for a series to report about its reboot, especially considering the stellar production values and staff Sega has hired for this one. If media reporting is limited to what everyone already knows, what exactly do we have press for?
The bare minimum due diligence for a western journalist should be at the very least to keep an eye on what the Japanese press is reporting about and follow suit.
What I'm saying is that it's very hard for them to know the significance of the series.
I, my self had to watch
a 1 hour video to know what the fuz was about. Otherwise, the only other reference I have was seeing the OVA DVD lying around in some video store shelfs and the 5th game sitting around in a friend's Wii's hard drive as "backup" that even he didn't know what that was.
Gaming Journalism is mostly crap, but I can't blame them for not knowing this one.
Then be very surprised, because it's confirmed to be coming west next year, and it has been officially confirmed for months. You may not be aware thanks to that inept western press that ignored the press release and trailer about it, and that you're so funnily defending. You're welcome.
Cool!
Trust me, I get as sour as you do when we miss out on games. And I live in Europe where we where constantly left out on JRPGs on those days.
But let's be realistic.
The series's release in the west was abysmal after all...
They'll have to start from Zero here... The series's reboot was the right idea, but they can't rely on it's history. They'll have to do some actual marketing and push it.
After all, we are talking about a dating Sim here... The Nishe of the Nishe!
Oh, it has one very relevant and logical reason to exist: The Sakura Wars games have always been awesome.
Not here...
Beyond the 5th I can't even find an unofficial translation patch for the old games, and lets not forget that even that one wasn't received as well. I doubt that even you have played the old 4 games that you just claimed to be "awesome", and even if you did, then you should know how hard it is to actually do so.
So... the only fans of the series in the west could be:
- People who know Japanese.
- People who emulated, then and had gone through the tediousness of reading a translation through some text.
- People who's life changed by the OVAs and that particular single much delayed 5th installment with low sales and mediocre reviews.
- People who extensively researched the series's significance in Japan, and become hyped without even having played most (or all) of them.
- Russians, who for some reason got a few extra installments apparently.
That's a very niche number of people.