A girl for every fetish

by FrankyCritter

In Group: Fun

Worth to: Rent

Arcana Heart might look like a mindless fighting game but it has more depth than meets the eyes

At first glace one might think Arcana Heart is a mindless fighting game but it has more depth than one would expect. The game is tailor made for those who love to play as female characters in fighting games – all the characters are female. There’s not a single male character. All the girls also represent every fetish preference. You have the school girl, the serious business type, the hot mama with the big jiggly breasts, the pre-teen, the cutesy magician, the tomboy, etc. It’s every creep’s dream come true! At first glance that is…

The game has a lot more depth than just pretty girls bouncing around. This isn’t a Dead or Alive. Arcana heart has as much depth as Guilty Gear. The game, besides a few gameplay differences (more on that later) and the all-female cast feels and plays like Atlus’ other weird fighter (both Guilty Gear and Arcana Heart were produced by Atlus). In fact, the game resembles Guilty Gear so much one might think it uses the same engine (and it probably does).

Characters

First of all, each character has a juggle (that’s juggle, not jiggle) move that sends opponents flying in the air that allows players to execute various juggle combos. Second, like in Guilty Gear, players fly through the air, except here the action is executed with a special “homing” button. The effect is enhanced when the player jumps and presses the homing button. This makes the character fly through the air towards the opponent – a nice feature but takes some getting use to. Third, the graphics have the same precise, beautiful look as Guilty Gear. The camera zooms out when opponents move away, and gets close when they get close.

Like in Guilty Gear, some characters have strange companions and powers. One girl for instance as accompanied by a creepy wooden puppet (or doll), another can morph her parts, like Dizzy (I believe) in Guilty Gear, another is a Baiken clone (serious samurai girl with a katana). One girl wields a giant broadsword, kinda like May in Guilty Gear with the anchor. All characters also have counters, special blocks, slams that send the opponent flying across the screen, special counters, sweeps that make enemies fall down, and a plethora of other features, special attacks and so on.

Features

The amount of depth in Arcana Heart can be a bit overwhelming at first, forcing some to simply press all buttons in the hopes of getting some results. The game takes time to fully master. One feature that distinguishes the game from Arcana Heart is the card feature. Each players can select a card before starting to play with a character (you can only make this choice once). Each card is associated with a deity, which grants the player specific powers. One deity can give you the ability to perform lightning super moves from a distance, another lets you make dash attacks and fiery dragon punches. There are maybe a dozen cards or so to choose from, and every character can use them all. Basically the same character can behave in different ways, which might or might not appeal to some. It might not appeal to some who like specific characters to behave in a distinct way. The card feature allows anyone to be able to fight from a distance or from close range. Each character does have specific traits though. Some are quick, some are fast, some are jump real high, others don’t. Each character also has a distinct mega super move.

Story

Arcana Heart offers the same game modes found in just about every fighting game: Story, Arcade, VS, etc. Story mode is typical. You pick a character and go through mindless dialog. Before each battle you can select who you want to fight. This is done in a map of the city of Tokyo where you can chose which stage and opponent you will have. Before the fight your character exchanges a few words with her adversary. It’s usually something idiotic like “Where is my creator? Won’t tell me, then die!” or “Love is the root of the all happiness, now die!” That’s Atlus for you.

There are some nice cut scenes between some rounds, but they are only pics (though some of the pics are nice, nice and big and juicy). The story is about an elemental merger between two dimensions. An evil woman in a flying castle wants to make the merger happen. And as you know it, she has the biggest set of hooters of the bunch (I guess that’s why all the other characters are out to take her out – they are jealous). Not sure how the game ends. Never finished it. The ending is impossibly difficult. The hot mama just beats the living crap out of you from a distance, but I guess once you master all the features (homing, counters, etc), you can take her out.

The game has some very deep gameplay and as much eye candy any boy can handle. All the cutesy stuff is only skin deep though. The game is a technical, tactical fighter. A very difficult game to master. The hot girls are there to motivate us to keep playing I guess. Well worth to try. I don’t recommend buying it though. It’s a great Sunday rental while having horny friends over.