Heart of Gold
Arcana Heart may look like a pervo fighting game, but... well, okay, it kinda is. Also, it's awesome.
Published: April 15, 2008
There's no denying the market for Arcana Heart: it's a pure fanservice, all girl-on-girl fighting game with such delightful anime clichés as a robot girl with huge boobs, a kimono-clad girl (and sisters) with huge boobs and an apparently lesbian end boss with (wait for it... waaaaiiittt...) big boobs. You've also got your schoolgirl, your tomboy, your meek little girl with massive demonic powers, a maid with massive gauntlets and... uh... a girl whose lower half is suspended in a constantly morphing blob of water and, um, a goth Lolita who carries around a mannequin with no legs that can crawl around on its own and attack you.
Okay, so it's not all cliches exactly, and clearly someone or more likely multiple people collaborated to actually come up with these things. Crazy though they may be, they're also rather imaginative in the I-just-dropped-a-whole-blotter-of-acid kind of way. And, wouldn't you know it, there's also a rather creative fighting game buried under all those boobs and skirts (wait... that didn't quite come out right). Here's the truly crazy part, though: it's a really good fighting game.
That may not be all that surprising, given that the game has survived quite handily in Japanese arcades -- to the point where the game was patched and re-released as Arcana Heart FULL! that saw a handful of tweaks and rebalancing to make it a little more even during tourney play. Both versions have been included on the localized disc here, and you're free to pick from either the original or the FULL! update when you first pick your character from the pool of 11.
You can also choose from 11 different Arcana, which is where the first layer to the onion that is the game's surprisingly deep fighting system starts to show itself. Each of the Arcana are more than just a creature that can be summoned for a super attack, they fundamentally change the move sets for each character, adding resistances, boosting attacks and adding more moves. Fighting someone with Partinias, the Arcana of Love, is different from fighting them with they have the backing of Dieu Mort, the Arcana of Death. In the case of the former, double-jumps can be turned into a slowly gliding fall for extra height/hang time during projectile attacks, while with the latter, teleportation and poisoning are added. It not only change how you play with said powers, but how you tackle someone else with them.
In the case of the single-player game, all the normal "Maidens" are equipped with their standard Arcana, which means you'll get to know them more or less one way on a march through the "story" to eventually square off with the Typical Fighting Game Last Boss That Is Impossibly Hard For No Real Reason. When playing with other people, though, there are up to 121 combinations of fighters and abilities, so it does offer more than a little strategic thinking beyond just memorizing move sets.
You'll want to do a little memorization, however, because while the controls and indeed even some of the feel of the game is patterned off of a kind of hodgepodge of SNK and Capcom standards. You've got three different kinds of hits in A,B and C buttons (Square, Triangle and Circle, with respects) plus the all-important X button. All X moves are tied into things like Arcana-driven super-attacks, but more importantly they serve as the game's second layer of strategy: the three gems that serve as a special moves meter.
Attacking normally builds up your standard special moves meter, and those can be plenty exciting in and of itself, but the true depth to Arcana Heart comes in being able to blow through those gems to trigger special moves. Pressing and holding it will cause your character to automatically home in on your opponent no matter where they are on the screen. Given that the maps are actually just as tall as they are wide (if not more), this means it's possible to knock someone into the air and then follow them up to continue a combo. You can also use the X button to cancel completely out of a combo, instantly restoring your reaction time or use it to negate the slight recovery time after blocking an attack. It becomes an invaluable and core part of your combo system, for any character, but there are (of course) some caveats: using the more powerful moves not only drains the meter, but completely crosses it out, and additional time is needed to release the lock and let the meters refill. This means if you spam special attacks, you'll never be able to cancel out of the recovery from a bit combo and start your own because any gems beyond the locked one can't refill until the lock is released.
And so, the more time you spend with the game, with specific characters and in turn specific Arcana, the more the game's strategy starts to reveal itself. Though it's really only the kind of stuff that you can properly utilize when playing against another human, suddenly your choice in fighters extends beyond the initial, "well, that one has the biggest boobs; I'm definitely picking them!" and starts getting into the actual depth of their movesets. Not only that, but picking a different Arcana changes how you fight with that character and against others. It's an impressively deep system that never really feels overwhelming, just rife with possibilities.
Despite my obvious love for said big boobs, I will admit that parts of the game actually look rather nice beyond jiggly jubblies. The backgrounds, hand-painted and stretching not just horizontally but vertically are all packed with detail (though, sadly, not quite as much background animation as in some of the bigger 2D fighter from the big two or even Arc System Works), and the characters themselves move fairly smoothly and with tons of variety. In truth, though the game itself obviously isn't anywhere near as visually impressive, I definitely got something of a Guilty Gear vibe, which is definitely a good thing.
The audio's a little less impressive. Atlus wisely chose to keep the Japanese voices, and with no additional dubbing needing to be done during the between-battled cutscenes, it's really just left up to the peppy, chipper music and effects to carry the aural part of the game, and though muffled and rather unbalanced (actually hearing the character chatter at the start of a round is almost impossible, for instance), none of it is especially bad, just decidedly... low-fi.
The home version of Arcana Heart comes with an assortment of extras; a jukebox, unlockable character, arcane and bonus art, movies, and so on, but unless you're an absolute die-hard, they're not going to offer a ton or replay value. Instead, that'll come from actually squaring off against friends, and though we can't say it'll replace any of the impromptu Street Fighter tournaments around here, it's certainly something we'll be pulling out from time to time to mix things up. So should you, but remember, this is an Atlus game, and it's going to go fast. After that, expect it to fetch a pretty penny from opportune collectors, and don't say we didn't warn you.
Okay, so it's not all cliches exactly, and clearly someone or more likely multiple people collaborated to actually come up with these things. Crazy though they may be, they're also rather imaginative in the I-just-dropped-a-whole-blotter-of-acid kind of way. And, wouldn't you know it, there's also a rather creative fighting game buried under all those boobs and skirts (wait... that didn't quite come out right). Here's the truly crazy part, though: it's a really good fighting game.
That may not be all that surprising, given that the game has survived quite handily in Japanese arcades -- to the point where the game was patched and re-released as Arcana Heart FULL! that saw a handful of tweaks and rebalancing to make it a little more even during tourney play. Both versions have been included on the localized disc here, and you're free to pick from either the original or the FULL! update when you first pick your character from the pool of 11.
You can also choose from 11 different Arcana, which is where the first layer to the onion that is the game's surprisingly deep fighting system starts to show itself. Each of the Arcana are more than just a creature that can be summoned for a super attack, they fundamentally change the move sets for each character, adding resistances, boosting attacks and adding more moves. Fighting someone with Partinias, the Arcana of Love, is different from fighting them with they have the backing of Dieu Mort, the Arcana of Death. In the case of the former, double-jumps can be turned into a slowly gliding fall for extra height/hang time during projectile attacks, while with the latter, teleportation and poisoning are added. It not only change how you play with said powers, but how you tackle someone else with them.
In the case of the single-player game, all the normal "Maidens" are equipped with their standard Arcana, which means you'll get to know them more or less one way on a march through the "story" to eventually square off with the Typical Fighting Game Last Boss That Is Impossibly Hard For No Real Reason. When playing with other people, though, there are up to 121 combinations of fighters and abilities, so it does offer more than a little strategic thinking beyond just memorizing move sets.
You'll want to do a little memorization, however, because while the controls and indeed even some of the feel of the game is patterned off of a kind of hodgepodge of SNK and Capcom standards. You've got three different kinds of hits in A,B and C buttons (Square, Triangle and Circle, with respects) plus the all-important X button. All X moves are tied into things like Arcana-driven super-attacks, but more importantly they serve as the game's second layer of strategy: the three gems that serve as a special moves meter.
Attacking normally builds up your standard special moves meter, and those can be plenty exciting in and of itself, but the true depth to Arcana Heart comes in being able to blow through those gems to trigger special moves. Pressing and holding it will cause your character to automatically home in on your opponent no matter where they are on the screen. Given that the maps are actually just as tall as they are wide (if not more), this means it's possible to knock someone into the air and then follow them up to continue a combo. You can also use the X button to cancel completely out of a combo, instantly restoring your reaction time or use it to negate the slight recovery time after blocking an attack. It becomes an invaluable and core part of your combo system, for any character, but there are (of course) some caveats: using the more powerful moves not only drains the meter, but completely crosses it out, and additional time is needed to release the lock and let the meters refill. This means if you spam special attacks, you'll never be able to cancel out of the recovery from a bit combo and start your own because any gems beyond the locked one can't refill until the lock is released.
And so, the more time you spend with the game, with specific characters and in turn specific Arcana, the more the game's strategy starts to reveal itself. Though it's really only the kind of stuff that you can properly utilize when playing against another human, suddenly your choice in fighters extends beyond the initial, "well, that one has the biggest boobs; I'm definitely picking them!" and starts getting into the actual depth of their movesets. Not only that, but picking a different Arcana changes how you fight with that character and against others. It's an impressively deep system that never really feels overwhelming, just rife with possibilities.
Despite my obvious love for said big boobs, I will admit that parts of the game actually look rather nice beyond jiggly jubblies. The backgrounds, hand-painted and stretching not just horizontally but vertically are all packed with detail (though, sadly, not quite as much background animation as in some of the bigger 2D fighter from the big two or even Arc System Works), and the characters themselves move fairly smoothly and with tons of variety. In truth, though the game itself obviously isn't anywhere near as visually impressive, I definitely got something of a Guilty Gear vibe, which is definitely a good thing.
The audio's a little less impressive. Atlus wisely chose to keep the Japanese voices, and with no additional dubbing needing to be done during the between-battled cutscenes, it's really just left up to the peppy, chipper music and effects to carry the aural part of the game, and though muffled and rather unbalanced (actually hearing the character chatter at the start of a round is almost impossible, for instance), none of it is especially bad, just decidedly... low-fi.
The home version of Arcana Heart comes with an assortment of extras; a jukebox, unlockable character, arcane and bonus art, movies, and so on, but unless you're an absolute die-hard, they're not going to offer a ton or replay value. Instead, that'll come from actually squaring off against friends, and though we can't say it'll replace any of the impromptu Street Fighter tournaments around here, it's certainly something we'll be pulling out from time to time to mix things up. So should you, but remember, this is an Atlus game, and it's going to go fast. After that, expect it to fetch a pretty penny from opportune collectors, and don't say we didn't warn you.
