Title: Arcana Heart
System: Playstation 2
Release Date: October 11th, 2007
Genre: Fighting

Arcana Heart is an all girl Doujin game that first made a huge impact in the Japanese arcades once it hit a year before the PS2 version. With a gameplay mix of Guilty gear and uh...Street Fighter/King of Fighters, this game is pretty solid. 10 playable girls (ranging from the age of 3 - uh...16? Seriously these girls look like they're 19-20 minus 3.) 1 is hidden in the original Arcade version. A patch was released months after the game that fixed a few game mechanics and frames on moves along with making the Mid Boss playable.



I can't go so much into the story cause well...I don't know it. No one's translated the main story or the storylines of anyone yet (or if it is, they haven't put it up on Wiki yet.) Along with the 10 girls are 10 "arcana" which increase the gameplay a bit more. Think of them pretty much as your "pact animal" cause that's pretty much it. All doing different abilities such as the stone arcana Otsuchi giving you a slow homing dash (i'll get in to that.) but you'll have a rock in front of you to prevent attacks from hitting you. Or Tempestras the wind arcana, gives you an extra jump added to your arleady double jump and a extra air dash. Each 10 have their unique ablities and are pretty damn fun paired with the right girl.



Now the homing dash is just a dash that does what it says...homing. So if your opponent is say..launched high up in the air, pushing forward+X (from here on i'm doing the regular command notations.) she'll home up to the opponent to continue a combo. There's a limit to how many times you can do this (which is 3) and doing a homing dash over a regualr dash will X out the 3 bars above your super bar. They refill over time. just have to wait it out. Homing dashes take 1 full dash bar and X it out. meaning it won't just refill after using it. Dashing will refill after use.

Moving on with the gameplay, you have the supers. Just like every 2d fighter out there, supers build up. You can stock away 9 bars (which is really alot...but you can thank the arcana for that.) Most that I know take 1 super to do. The arcana can be called out for their own supers but they're pretty punishable and are better off doing their "Arcana summon" state which grant you some special powerups depending on the Arcana again. Otsuchi gives you super armor (you'll take hits but won't stop your movment.) and the plant Arcana will regain your health. But once you activate your Arcana, it eats up your super bars. So if you have a full 9 stock, the effect will last much much longer than obviously a 2 stock super bar. Nothing groundbreaking but it levels the field of play. Oh did I forget that during the Arcana summon startup, you're completely invincible? yea. So you could be in a combo and you can just call your arcana granted you have some meter. make sense? hope it does.

There's enough variety in the 10 girls that you'll find which one you'll like. Of course you have your 2 resident Ryu/Ken characters (Heart and Saki.) and I personally like Saki. Granted she's a charge character, the crap she spits out is good stuff for a person who loves the rushdown game. Then Lilica (she has rollerblades on, has devil wings, her hair uh...well you can see the girls in the pic.) is pretty technical yet she's quite some fun.

If you're still a big person into fighters (2d fighters at that.) don't sleep on this game. It's hot stuff and gained alot of popularity among the Japanese and American crowd (well..mainly the hardcore american crowd. I only know of 1 arcade that has it on the East Coast and that's in New York.) and there's already a sequal in the works (i'll show some of the scans of 2 of the 3 new chicks below.). Play- Asia or any import store should still carry this. It's not that old and it's still pretty big.