Arcana Heart 3

[DANGERMAN]

THE big fighting game release of this week

Arcana Heart is a game name I thought I made up but it's a real thing and has apparently been around since the PS2 era. It's a 2d fighter, and the entire cast is made up of women (or young girls at least). It's not as t&a as you might expect, there's short shorts and the title screen has cheerleaders on it, but it's actually pretty restrained considering it's a fighting game. The characters are pretty eclectic, it sort of falls in the era of fighting games where Darkstalkers and the like appeared, there's a character who's imaginary friend she drew on the pavement comes to life and fights for her, someone who rides a wolf and has a crow helping her. But then there's a Terry clone, lots of dragon punches, 'proper' fighting game characters

The way Arcana Heart plays is a bit odd, but refreshingly it's not as overloaded with systems as it initially looks. It's a bit slow, at least to close the space between the fighters, but there's a homing button that launches you towards your opponent, the downside to this is more often than not you're throwing yourself in to a punch in the face.

After you pick a character you then pick a god, or something like that, these alter your base attack and defence, but also have moves of their own. There's a 3 gauge meter for your specials and a meter for this god thing. Activating the meter improves your speed and attack but also lets you use another super. I found this my go to super with one of the characters last night, it's powerful and relatively cheap to use as the meter fills up quickly

There's a few modes, one of them is a challenge mode, which is the story mode without the story, instead there's goals to achieve during the battle. It's a good way in to learn the game, in theory, but it doesn't tell you how to do stuff only that it can be done. The story mode itself is a piece of piss until you get to the bosses then it's infuriating. The last boss is at least creative, frustrating but creative