Ravensburger Sakura Heroes – A Fast-Paced Dice Game for Anime Fans Ages 7 and Up

This is such a fun game to play with your kids! Instructions are simple and easy to read and to use to teach kiddos how to play.

Got this as a gift for a family member who does game night a lot with friends. They loved it, and it’s perfect to play inbetween bigger games.

This dice game is very fast paced and pretty fun! We first played it with three adults and a 12-year-old. The instructions, which are written in many different languages, seemed very wordy and overly complicated; it took us a few minutes to fully understand the setup. Which is kind of crazy because this is a very simple game.I do feel that the 7+ age range is accurate. My daughter, 12, really liked this one because it was much easier for her to compete against adults than some other games we’ve played in the past.The game design is very adorable. The game board is a two piece puzzle that you can assemble in various different ways based on the number of players or if you just want to make it a little bit more difficult.Game storage is a two piece box, typical of most gains, feels fairly sturdy and is no bigger than it needs to be to store the game.It’s a super fast paced game, the four of us played maybe five games that first try, and from deciphering the instructions to gameplay, it took maybe an hour.We all had a blast and will definitely keep this in our game rotation.

I'm surprisingly happy with how this board game turned out. It makes for a great fast paced board game that takes ~10-15 minutes to complete. My tabletop group has been using this as sort of a buffer game while everyone is either setting up another game or just trying to figure out what's next to play. The pieces are all well made and printed and the dice all feel great in hand. I would definitely either watch the video on how to play or fully read and understand the rules because once the dice start rolling it gets pretty hectic. The anime aesthetic is pretty cute but I'm glad it doesn't rely on any tropes or really affect anything gameplay wise. I'd definitely recommend giving this a try!

While it does take a minute to read through the instructions and understand what's going on, once you get the hang of it, the rules of the game are very straightforward. The board is double-sided with slightly different rules if you're playing as 2 players or 3+ players. For this review, I played a 2-player game.The goal is to reach the top of the mountain first, and on each level, there is a task to roll for and a corresponding diamond card. Each player takes 5 dice and tries to accomplish any single task available per level. For instance, tasks may include landing your dice on "all dice X color" or "all dice must be flower symbols" or "dice cannot be yellow or flower symbols". You get the idea. Everyone gets their own set of five dice and rolls. On each roll, you can keep or swap out any dice you like until you accomplish the task. The first to do so collects that task and matching diamond card and moves up a level. Then the next round begins, leaving fewer possible tasks for the player(s) stuck behind. The game ends when any player reaches the top of the mountain. At the end of the game, you reveal your diamond cards which have a value from 1-4 on the back, and the person with the most total points wins. This leaves a degree of luck, since it's possible the player who reaches the top may not have the most points, although they will have the most diamond cards and the best odds of winning.That explanation may sound a little convoluted, but once you actually start to play, it feels fluid and fast-paced. It requires some quick decision making since you have to decide which task to go for on your given level of the mountain as the dice land. Given the mix of quick strategy and luck, it's also possible for players who are far behind to quickly catch up (as has happened with me in multiple games), and the luck element helps keep it feeling fair even if you have players of differing ages playing.I thought the game was a lot of fun! Each game is very quick, allowing you to get a full match in in roughly 10 minutes, so there isn't a huge time commitment to play. This'll be a fun one to keep around for game nights!

Overall this game is ok. The game board and pieces are well made and high quality. For a non-strategy game it is good, as it is a lot of luck. Games like this are nice if you are playing with a wide range of abilities or with people who don't like strategy games. We got bored with it pretty fast though as there isn't much to it.Basically you have to roll the dice at the same time as everyone else and reach a 'goal' first. For example, maybe you need to roll all 5 of your dice to be blue flowers. Whoever reaches their goal first tells all players to stop and then that player levels up. All other players stay at the level they were at until they complete it (re-setting their dice each round). As you go you collect diamonds of various values and whoever has the most $$ worth of diamonds at the end wins. If you'd prefer for it to just be whoever gets to the top first you could always just remove the diamonds, but we decided they added an extra layer to the game that wasn't bad so we left them in.The instructions were a little unclear on a couple of things in the 2-player game. It had a picture of the set-up for 4 players, so that was more straight-forward. We thought we were supposed to add dice for every set of lanterns on the board, but then that didn't seem to work out with the numbers on the 'expert level' pieces the second time that we played. We adjusted things as we went and figured it out, but it would be nice to have more clarity on that.I like how the game board is 2 puzzle pieces that you fit together. The game board and pieces are all a high quality, and I appreciate how they even included empty baggies to contain the pieces after we punched them out. The design of the board, pieces, and box was well thought out. This is a really well made and nice game; just not my favorite.