Arcana Heart

I thought about whining about Mana Khemias two whole flaws, that I’ve run into anyway… but I’m kind of busy doing that somewhere else and so I figured I’d blurb about my other latest aquisition… Arcana Heart.

Now, any of you people who’re gamers probably recall a little thing from a while ago known as Rumble Roses… okay maybe I should stipulate just a little more, any of you who are gamers, and male… though that is the majority… vast majority… sadly… It was a wrestling spinoff game with an all female cast. Complete with ‘humiliation’ moves and mud wrestling… although on the ps2 version the mud looked like a completely different semi-liquid that only scat fetishists would get turned on by… That and it was completely devoid of loli… -.- However it was nice for those of us who wanted wrestling and not look at huge mostly naked steroid engorged men who would prance around the ring flexing and cussing for twenty minutes before each match.

That’s why Japan, in all it’s sometimes strange wisdom, invented Arcana Heart. Take Street Fighter and add a dash of Guilty GEar and then the very base idea from the aforementioned Rumble Roses… All female fighting game. But no, that’s not all, let’s take all the characters with their own skill sets and then mix in another set of ‘characters’ to choose from… so that each character has a total of eleven different freaking things to pick from… Which as their promotions keep throwing at us, (as if we can’t do simple multiplication, or in my case some complicated addition) adds up to 121 different setups you could use altogether.

The great thing, in my opinion is it jump starts the 2d fighter market, I hope anyway. Sure there’s the ever present Street Fighter, sure they dabbled in the 3d fighter buisness and they haven’t put out a new game in… a long time… (I don’t count things like Capcom vs SNK) but heck they’re what you think of when you hear the words arcade and fighter… well either that or King of Fighters … Anyway, a while back ‘they’ made Guilty Gear and it was awesome… and it had… what four or five installments and if I recall correctly it hasn’t done anything as of late. But one thing it did new, aside from more cartoonish art style, which was awesome as Capcom’s sprites haven’t changed in the last… forever… (Though I will stop and say that SNK’s sprites are frikking awesome) Where was I? Oh right Guilty Gear added music, not just background music though. Good Background music, music good enough that I think I have some of the songs kicking around somewhere on a disc. Guitar heavy and just… well awesome.

So anyway Arcana Heart… kind of like Guilty Gear and Street Fighter and KOF all rolled into one and as mentioned, all female. But it doesn’t really end there, because all the characters are anime archetpyes… more or less anyway. There’s a twelve year old in a school swimsuit with one of those little red backpacks… there’s a different girl in a school uniform witha sword, dog girl ninja (named Konoha). There’s a glasses girl witch complete with stupid pointy hat and absurdly large SENTIENT staff… robot chick… absurdly happy girl… maid with a BIG sword uhm… goth loli… I mean you’ve seen all these before just neevr all in the same place trying to kick, stab, maim eachother.

Heck I’ve not even played story mode yet so I don’t even really know WHY they’re all trying to kill each other. Yes, I’m not even sure what the game is about yet. >.< I saw a promo video over on gamefaqs.com and saw Kira Daidohji being all cute and eleven years old and in you know… mizugi >.> *cough* So I bought the game… and my research whilst awaiting shipment threw sword girl, maid girl and Aino Heart at me…

The game has a steep learning curve. But no in the usual upward direction of fighting games, where there’s your easy stuff and your absurdly hard combos. Anyone who has even played Street Fighter has the general idea of what to do in Arcana Heart down. But as I’ve experienced, Street Fighter was a whole lot more forgiving than Arcana Heart. It’s kind of particular about how you do your joyctick/dpad movements and your button input… which means when someone like me tries to play Maki (I think that’s sword girls name anyway) and we try to super move we may be doing different motions but we wind up doing the same move over and over and over because doesn’t like the way we did our dragon punch and so defaults it to a fireball motion. -.- Anyway it starts simple and then it spikes upwards while you learn what to do with whatever Arcana you’re trying to use and then skyrockets some more whilst you try to comprehend ‘homing attacks’ and ‘homing cancels’ and then clashing which you’re sort of used to anyway if you’ve played Street Fighter 3 Third Strike, or Soul Calibur… (just without impact guard) That’s where all the learning happens which is why I call it a downward sort of slope.once you figure that out it’s all downhill since you know all this stuff already. If you’re totally new to fighting games… grab a few quarters and head to an arcade and look for a street fighter or a capcom vs snk or a marvel versus capcom or a marvel versus streetfighter or a… you get the idea. ;p

Now I’ll break things down into a pros and cons list and wrap this up so I can go watch MacGuyver (which is 305 of why I have no anime updates atm.)

Pros:

Great Character Design

Great Artwork on both sprites and backgrounds

Big arenas, in a vertical way more than horizontal

Arcana can make even a character you know how to beat a pain in the neck (yes I count that as a pro)

Cons:

First off, no custom palettes. After several years of capcom vs snk pro I kind of require a palette editor so I can colour anyone I don’t like absurd colours. BUt in the games defense there’s eight colour sets for each character.

Secondly: THere was supposedly more audio for the game, in the way of between battle taunts. THese have been cut down to text in the english release. But I’ve never played the arcade version so I can’t really vouch on any claims about it. But on the chance it did once exist and was removed… WE ARE HIGHLY UNAMUSED! Any sequels should have that stuff left alone. The vast majority of us actually want that in there, sure a very large chunk of the portion that wants it doesn’t actually understand it… but you don’t go choppign out taunts and move names just because it’s not in english do you?

Mehs:

Dash is completely and totally whacked out. There’s still double taps but it’s not for running it’s just for hopping in and out of the way of things ‘running’ is done with a dash button.

So now, before I leave I’ll cross my fingers and hope there’s an Arcana Heart 2 and that it gets released here… and that they don’t cut out the between battle character audio.

Upcoming?: I just tracked down a couple older titles, Magical Shopping Complex Abenobanshi and Shrine of the Morning Mist… they might be what I blab about next… they might not be. No promises.