2090: Fighting Games Are Confusing Love Max!!!!!

Was playing a few games with Andie earlier, and on a whim I decided to give Arcana Heart 3 Love Max!!!!! a try, since it had been eyeing me up from the Steam store for a while, and I’d been curious to give a modern fighting game a go.

My history with fighting games is a bit patchy. I played a lot of Street Fighter II back on the Super NES; I had an American copy, so it ran in super-widescreen thanks to NTSC/PAL differences, but it was still pretty fun. I also played a bit of Street Fighter IV on the 360, and various installments in the Dead or Alive series over the years. But I’ve never really got my head around anything more complex than the original Street Fighter II which, as fighting game enthusiasts will doubtless know, is considerably simpler than the monstrosities we have today.

One of the reasons I decided to give Arcana etc etc a go was because it appears to be regarded as a reasonably accessible example of a genre that has become increasingly impenetrable to newcomers over the years. It still has its fair share of complexity, mind you, and a few systems whose use isn’t immediately obvious — not to mention a lack of in-game tutorial — but once you get your head around the basic systems, it’s relatively straightforward.

The basic controls are pretty simple. You have a light, medium and heavy attack, and standard Street Fighter-style button combinations (various quarter and half-circles along with the Dragon Punch Z-shape plus an attack button) tend to unleash special moves for most characters. There’s also a “homing” button, which is Arcana Heart’s main distinguishing feature from other games of its ilk; tapping this causes you to home in on your opponent, and tapping it again causes you to home in more quickly while allowing you a certain degree of control over your trajectory. By using this, you can have some pretty impressive mid-air battles rather than being confined to the ground; it also makes for some interesting dodging mechanics that I haven’t quite got the hang of yet.

The Arcana part of the title refers to a significant addition to the usual fighting game formula: as well as selecting a character, you also pick an Arcana to assign to them. Each of these Arcana have their own set of benefits and drawbacks as well as a few extra special moves; essentially, they allow you to tweak and customise the character you’re using in various ways according to how you like to play. It also effectively makes the character roster expand considerably, as equipping a new Arcana in many cases makes a character play rather differently.

The bit that usually confuses me about modern fighting games is all the gauges on screen at any time. Arcana Heart, despite doing a piss-poor job of explaining these in the game itself, is relatively easy to understand once you know what they all do. Your health bar is self-explanatory; the little curvy bar next to it is called the “Focus bar” and allows you to trigger a short-lived mode where you move faster and have some other buffs; the bar at the bottom is your “Arcana bar” and is expended on super-special moves of various descriptions. The Arcana bar starts at one-third of its maximum possible value; in order to expand it, you have to land attacks or get hit, but the bar will only grow if it’s not in the process of recharging. In other words, you have to restrain yourself a bit with the supers if you want to grow the bar to its maximum potential, which you’ll need to do if you want to unleash the most devastating moves in your character and Arcana’s respective arsenals.

I absolutely haven’t got my head around how to play the game well yet, but I feel I at least understand the basic systems, which is more than I can say for some other modern fighting games out there. I feel like with a bit of practice — as well as curtailing my tendency to panic when playing fighting games and lapse into button-mashing mode — I might be able to get the hang of this, and hopefully have the opportunity to teach it to some friends, too, as I can see it being a lot of fun against other people owing to its inherent ridiculousness.

A decent investment, then; I’ll be curious to see how much — or indeed if — I improve with a bit of practice.