Captain Obvious Reveal: President G being the main bad guy could be seen coming a mile away.
Catharsis Factor: After all of the crap the Shanghai and London revues put Kamiyama and the Flower Division through in the first half of the game, their defeats were both hilarious and satisfying to say the least.
Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: While the story is one of the most lauded aspects of the game, the action segments have often been considered the game's weakest point in reviews.
Epileptic Trees: After Sega's event panel for the game at the 2019 Tokyo Game Show, fans have been left wondering how Yaksha is related to the Imperial Combat Revue as well as the character's similarities to Sakura Shinguji.
Fanfic Fuel: The fact that there are now Combat Revues stationed throughout the world, one wonders how their own battles and performances might be.
Kizuna AI for Sakura Amamiya due to their similar character designs.
Xiaolong gets called Duo Maxwell due to being his spitting image.
By the time the official English title was announced in February, fans have often called the game Sakura Wars 2019 to differentiate from the original 1996 game.
Game-Breaker: The dodge mechanic is simple, dodge at the right time to slow down time for a short duration and if you are using Kamiyama, you can finish off a low health enemy. The thing is, the dodge time is VERY lenient, you don't really notice it either until you start fighting enemies that have a long attack sequence with multiple hits, like the Berlin Combat Revue, where you can dodge into the attack and it triggers the slow down. What also helps is that while you are in slow down, you take no further damage.
Harsher in Hindsight: Claris's Heroic BSoD after she used her magic in public to rescue Kamiyama and a girl from falling to their deaths in chapter 2 becomes even more disturbing in the Hizakura no Koro light novel, where her involvement in the tunnel collapse back in Luxembourg inadvertently caused her brother Édouard to get fatally wounded.
A few people guessed that the game would be released on the PlayStation 4 the moment Sega's job listings for the game were posted in June 2018.
Many fans predicted that Sumire Kanzaki was going to return as the Flower Division's commander. They were right.
When Yohei Azakami commented that Kamiyama was one of his biggest voice-over roles, many predicted that he would be a fully-voiced character, which was later confirmed in a Famitsu article containing the extended interview with the developers at Sega Fes 2019.
Given the nature of the international Combat Revues in the story, many were speculating that the Berlin Combat Revue was to appear in the game. Sega officially confirmed their appearance at the 2019 Tokyo Game Show.
Some fans correctly guessed that Noizi Ito would design some characters in the game, namely Itsuki Saijo and Hiromi Hongo.
When the game was rated 18+ by the Game Rating and Administration Committee in South Korea on September 26, 2019, some fans suspected that the Koi-Koi card game featured in previous Sakura Wars titles would make an appearance in the game itself. Sure enough, they were proven right.
A few players also guessed that Sakura Wars would have a Christmas storyline when Koch Media released the first French trailer.
After the Australian Classification Board posted the game's rating on their website in January 2020, many accurately predicted that the official international title was going to be Sakura Wars.
Quite a few people were drawn to the game purely due to the news of Tite Kubo being the character designer.
Conversely, fans of Sakura Wars bought the issue of Weekly Shonen Jump that followed the reveal of the game at SEGA Fes just to get the poster Kubo made for the issue.
Fans were also drawn to the game because of Sumire Kanzaki's return to the mainline series.
Promotional materials implied that the main characters from all five of the previous games were killed. Fans were doubtful that was the case, and they were ultimately proven right.
Fans knew that the Flower Division wouldn't stay dead after Yaksha curb-stomps them; sure enough, they're revived when Sakura and Kamiyama return from 1930 in the final chapter.
One-Scene Wonder: Sakura Shinguji briefly appears in the Action Prologue as well as the final chapter of the game, but it's a memorable one, given she's once again voiced by Chisa Yokoyama.
Scrappy Mechanic: For those going for 100% Completion will be annoyed having to go through each combat stage with each character. That's playing each stage a minimum of five times, more if you aren't getting S-ranks on each time. Fortunately, if you are playing a dungeon mission where you are using the unintended partner, you do not have to go through any cutscenes.
Sidetracked By The Golden Saucer: Koi-Koi returns and is as addictive as it's ever been, especially since you can now play against nearly the entire named cast, including the villains!
There's nothing really wrong with the gameplay of the action segments, but when you compare it to its contemporaries like the Warriors games or even Sega's own Like a Dragon and Phantasy Star Online series, it just falls flat. Dungeon missions are all about basic platforming to get to the next room of enemies, rinse and repeat until you get to the boss. The World Games are better in this regard as you're constantly fighting so you're not saddled by large segments of awkward platforming. What's worse is that the action segments only allow you to directly control two to three members at a time which is antithetical to the team dynamic of Sakura Wars.
For any player that has some experience in action games, this can quickly devolve into It's Easy, So It Sucks! territory as once you figure out good mob and boss strategies, you can easily S-Rank the entire game in one go. What helps is that Kamiyama, who is on every mission, has incredibly strong combos to deal with almost every situation, adding on to the fact that each partner has at least one thing against waves and the bosses are almost always designed with the designated partner in mind.
Spiritual Successor: Given the combat mechanics similar to Border Break with the similar gameplay revolving partner mechas in some missions, Sakura Wars would be seen as one to Cyber-Troopers Virtual-ON MARZ in steampunk setting.
That One Boss: Yaksha is the only boss in the game that provides any sort of resistance. She moves fast and her attacks come out damn near instantly, making them hard to dodge. She also has attacks that cover a wide array of the field.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The mysterious third pilots seen fighting alongside the other international Combat Revues during the World Games are never formally introduced and aren't even seen outside of the games, leaving their identities a complete mystery. Having each team become a trio outside of the Games instead of just a duo has the potential to be interesting, which makes it sad to see this third character exclusively exist just to give them a third partner for the 3v3 matches. It's also rather odd design-wise since dungeons use two characters while the World Games use three.
Given Sumire Kanzaki has been absent since Sakura Wars 4: Fall in Love, Maidens and her titular OVA announcing her retirement, her role as commander of the Flower Division as shown in the announcement trailer is fairly surprising.
Sakura Shinguji makes a brief but surprising return in the game's final chapter.
Tite Kubo's character designs were translated beautifully into 3D, with models that are smoothly animated.
The environments are also rather nicely detailed. Bonus points for using Hedgehog Engine 2, which is the same engine used in Sonic Forces, although improving on some aspects of the engine.
article containing the extended interview with the developers at Sega Fes 2019.