Arcana Hearts Prologue

Here’s my more proper review (with some lousy narration from me) of the game, Arcana Heart. XX has been asking me to try out this game ever since he had done so not too long ago. Tried it out the other day at Dhoby’s Zone X and got some hands-on experience with this new 2D Fighting Game.

I think its developers are trying to promote this game widely as it was announced to be one of the game titles in the Tougeki Tournament, which is held in Japan yearly since several years back. This particular tournament can be considered one of the biggest (fighting) gaming event in Japan and for certain games they even invite players from Korea, US and recently China.

Certainly i’ve heard of this game even before XX blogged about it but back then (last year) i thought i would never be able to try out such a game since it’s new and seemed to be a game targetted at the Jap market. Who would have thought it will come to Singapore and at least a few arcades have it…

Having watched that single youtube clip over at XX’s blog, i had some vague idea on the game’s system, or at least part of it. Indeed, this game has many similarities to that of a Guilty Gear XX series game, with air dash, air recovery, cancelling of moves etc. Started out with Kamui since it’s a character that has been tested by XX and deemed to be rather easy to use/learn (else he wouldnt have been able to complete the game on his first try either). Indeed, the AI wasn’t too challenging and I did manage to complete the game on my first try too. During the course of this first game, i was familiarising myself with the game system, especially the Arcana (something unique i guess) and the Homing cancel. But of course, i was fiddling with Kamui’s moves and possible combos before actually testing Homing cancel and stuff.

I knew that homing cancel would be a crucial part of doing extended combos in this game (yes, from that 1 video i can tell :P) but i just couldnt grasp the timing at the very beginning. Even so, my imagination of what this would bring about in terms of combos and stuff is far poorer than reality where it’s more deadly than what i had perceived. First saw it when Clarence got challenged by some guy who obviously knows how to play since he could do long combos/juggles rather easily. Back then, all we could do was to be amazed by the possibility of pulling of something like that while not knowing any methods of countering it/reducing the damage taken. With that loss, we proceeded to buy tickets and stuff (see earlier entry. dun wanna repeat myself).

Didn’t think too much about it after that since I knew too little about the game to even try to deduce more stuff about it. Given my interest in fighting games, i stopped by Zone X once more just before going home to just try it for the 2nd time. Of course, it’s still Kamui and I could complete the game without much problems. Did further testing with Homing cancel and managed to pull off a 15hit combo some point in time (pretty impressed with myself :P). Seemed to have grasped *slightly* better timing and feel of the game but I know it’s still far from any of the dudes that challenged me/my friends.

Yeah, little did i expect that some pro (compared to my level then) challenged me as i decided to test the game for a 3rd time. Man, getting challenged on my 3rd game on my 1st day of playing isn’t what u would call exciting when u see that the guy obviously knows his stuff just by playing the first 5s of the 1st round with him. With some basic fighting game instincts and foundation, i *somehow* managed to win it (gasp!) but obviously someone of his level isn’t going to be happy losing to me who is without a doubt a newbie at the game. His re-challenge further proves that he knows this game much better than i do since he switched from using Saki to Heart. I guess he got really mad and used his better character and i got to feel what it’s like to get pounded by hurting combos that i had no idea how to counter then. It goes without saying that i lost (quite) badly this time. After losing, i decided to steal some tricks from him by watching how he plays and the inputs he does. He certainly isn’t the best of players but more than sufficient for me to learn and understand more about the game. With that, the whole concept of Homing cancel seemed so much clearer and i think the next time i try this game it would be more fun (if i dont get challenged).

Well, enough of narration. On to more serious stuff. About this game there are 10 (i think 11 cos there’s 1 unlockable) characters u can choose from (all girls). For each of them, there’s a “corresponding” arcana (hence the title i guess) that’s deemed more compatible. Of course, u can “customise” and choose other arcana to compliment your character. More info and character/arcana movelists can be found at the official site (in jap). The site has also a page on the game system which is explained in Jap so i couldn’t really figure out everything from staring at words i can’t decipher :P Anyways, with such a system of choosing arcana, which behaves like your summon/partner, i would think that combat approaches will be more versatile as each arcana has its own special abilities. But of course when one becomes more familiar with the game, i guess it’s not that hard to be able to see what kind of tactics your opponent (more targetted at human players for VS) would try to pull off.

Basic controls are your joystick (duh!) and 4 buttons, namely A, B, C, D. A, B, C represent light, medium, strong attacks respectivey while D is mainly used for movelist meant for the arcana. Button D is also used for doing guard cancel, homing cancel and some kind of dash (with a direction pressed). Each of the last 3 mentioned features use up one of the 3 arcana bar (i dont know the proper term for it so i’m just coming up with my own terminology. lol) that can be recharged over time once used up. Certainly, some planning is needed while playing. It’ll be a waste to not have enough of those to do homing cancel which allows lengthen-ing of combos but neither would you want to be stingy and not use it to create set-ups and mind game tactics with the special kind of dash. As for power bars, i’m not sure what’s the maximum level of power bar you can store but i’ve stored up to 6+ once. Currently i dont see any other use for it besides executing DM which fortunately doesnt seem to have 2xqcf for many characters, and depleting of it after pressing ABC (explained later).

Air recovery is key to this game as you can prevent unwanted juggles being performed when u can simply recover in the air. I’ve yet to find the definitive moment whereby air recovery is allowed but it seems to be some point in time after hitting the highest point of ur trajectory into the air. I’ve yet to confirm this and unable to check if the official site has any comment on it. Another way to stop a combo is by pressing ABC (which is only allowed once per round), which essentially means you have to press ABC at the early stages of the long combo to make it worthwhile. Definitely useful if you know u’re gonna end up eating a 30+ hit combo which costs about half ur life bar, but it’s only truly useful if you can try to prevent the same situation from happening a 2nd or 3rd time in a round. Oh btw, pressing ABC will deplete your power bar over time unless (i think) you execute some command for the arcana (think it’s qcf ABC, not sure if it applies to everyone). Also, logically if you get hit right at the start of round 1 without any teeny weeny bit of power charged, you wont be able to use it and thus have to take the full combo executed upon you.

Damage system wise - definitely, damage scaling is used in this game though i can’t really tell the relation right now. But generally, the damage of individual moves goes down as the combo gets longer and longer (some what like marvel games) but this game doesnt seem to allow resets all the easy (or at least i think this way). It’s a good thing considering some characters have really long combos and would kinda be unfair if the damage system follows closely to that of KOF.

Graphics and sound - i’m not sure what hardware board it’s running on (lazy to find out even if there’s info) but the graphics looks pretty nice. The girls look like they are part of the Anime world which is why i thought it’ll be kinda “exclusive” to japan only. Even the voice actresses sound like they are part of an anime production. Well only then it fits right? :D However, at the “intro” screen before any battle between 2 characters seem to be a little laggy in terms of fps. Perhaps too much graphics present in the screen. Shrugs.

Gameplay - Has story mode (8 stages) and arcade mode (10 stages). Havent tried story mode before. Arcade mode is better since i get to try more stuff with more stages. :D Even if i played story mode and see proper endings, it wont be much of a meaning to me since the winning quotes in arcade mode is already in jap, so i guess storyline endings would also be shown in jap text, which is useless to me .

I dont know if it’s Dhoby’s AI setting or what but it certainly isn’t putting up very much of a challenge. Perhaps the developers made this game with VS in mind rather than trashing the AI since Zone X isn’t known for putting free frag difficulty for their games (can aid in earning more revenue at times). I can’t really comment about balance issues in this game as i’ve really too little info/knowledge to make a judgement. But as with most (actually all) fighting games, there will tend be a tier list. It’s just a matter of how “broken” the tier list will be.

For now, i guess i will be focusing more on using the characters correctly before going indepth into arcana though i’ll mess with the latter as much as i can remember/am allowed to. Shant be too ambitious about this game since it’s a game whose system isn’t all that close to what i’m better at.

Lastly, some Kamui and Heart VS action (how convenient ^_^). The opening Heart combo is already a showcase of how devastating a combo can be in this game even though the damage doesnt seem to be that much for that many hits. I guess i would be experimenting with these 2 characters, assuming it really does go to AMK Hub’s new Zone X outlet (as clarence believes it would) Dhoby is just not suitable for experimentation. If it doesnt, there probably wont be much chance of seeing a proper Chapter 1 in the future. Heh.

As curious as i am about this game, i wouldnt specially go snooping around to research more on this game unless people recommend me nice videos (like clarence does :D). I can’t remember fighting game stuff for long if i dont actually have some hands on for it. I do really hope the new Zone X @ AMK Hub will have this. Lol. That’s a 2d fighting game fanatic for you. Not really a fanatic but you get what i mean…

p.s. If there’s gonna be a Chapter 1, it’ll probably be on Kamui only. Doubt i can venture so quickly into testing other characters. I’m not that good in such games u know. I’m no genius :P

p.p.s. any incorrect info will be corrected when i do finally get to know the “truth” of it. this is one mega long entry again. hope it didn’t bore you to death. or maybe u just skipped the bulk of the entry and ended up reading here first.

edit 2nd June: the logo i used seems to be a “patched” version released in Japan… apparently to fix some balance issues… sheesh.