Yes, all those exclamation marks are part of the actual title and I’m a suck for punctuation. Arcana Heart is a long running series of japanese ‘anime’ fighting games – the term used to describe fast-paced, highly technical games, many of which come from publishers Arc System Works and use similar systems to their headline series Guilty Gear. It’s coming to Steam in a couple of weeks on the 29th of September and a new trailer shows off everything that’ll be available.
The system works by allowing you combine any of the 23 angel characters with any of the 23 arcanas to customise them as you like, creating a massive number of possible strategies. Obviously at the highest levels not every one is viable, but it means there’s far more possible combinations than your average fighter. The fights are more airborne and combo-heavy than you may be used to from Street Fighter or other games that are more popular in the west.
The game comes with fully integrated online play of course, plus Story and Survival modes. It seems to be a straight port of the LOVE MAX!!!!! version that was released on PS3 and PSVita in 2014. Here’s some footage of that from a local tourney in America via FGC broadcasting superstars Team Spooky:
Looks pretty fun, though I expect the majority of folks who’ll be interested in playing it will be hardened veterans and easily kick my ass to the curb on launch day. Anyone out there fans? How does it compare to other fighters? I’m hoping it’s a prequel to Guilty Gear Xrd making the jump, because that game is rad as hell.