Awesome review as always, Lee!

Heh, that game looks fun, if only for the epic breast physics. Hell yeah.

I remember playing this game in China town against a bunch of strangers.

It was kinda weird, considering how ratty that particular part was. It was a bunch of creepy young men and me.

i played the second one in a ratty chinatown arcade, although i love the old hole in the wall places.

Who doesn't love tit punching action...

Sean doesn't. It hurts him.

I noticed you edit some parts from the Youtube version of the video. I wonder if Chris Hanson is monitoring anyone who buys this game.

Funny, no one called me a pervertwhen i walked in to buy this game on release day, then again, its common knowledge at my local game stores that I will buy anything that can even be remotely described as a "2-D Fighter". That Said, Arcana Heart is a glorious and unique experience. It reminded me of Guilty Gear, if GG were... you know... Happy? Its got some great mechanics, and a serious hardcore fighter following.

Lee, if you are not familiar with Guilty Gear, do yourself a favor and pick up Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus, which just came out at the beginning of this month. It is the cleanest Gulty Gear package to date, and if you liked Arcana heart at all, you should have a great time with Guilty Gear.

looks almost identical to guilty gear. only guilty gear's "feature" was the slash thing where you could pull out a sword or with some people another character, or yoyos. They were great games except in all the versions i played the AI was broken. Seriously for the gameboy advance version you could beat the entire game pressing one button! even excluding the D-pad! They actually brainlessly run at you with out counter attacking or blocking on the hardest difficulty! You just stand still pressing slash and you win! It was fun to play with a friend over a link cable but i wanna check this game out cause it looks like the AI is at least working. I don't know what is about the guilty gear games but they have the worst AI in fighters. I know nothing of the anime associated with this so excuse my ignorance but it looks like about a billion other all female fighters (about 90% never made it to the US) in that they weren't for perves more like made for girls fighters. Like the sailor moon fighters.

So...you only ever played Guilty Gear X Advance Edition.

No. Guilty Gear's "gimmicks" are Absolute Defence, Burst Attack, Dust Attack, Roman Cancel and the False Roman Cancel.

Absolute Defence takes away from your special meter, which you need to perform supers, but gives you perfect blocking with no chip damage.

Burst Attack lets you interrupt your opponent while he's in the middle of a combo, you basically press a button and your character somehow gets one hit out in a fairly large radius that's enough to stop getting hit repeatedly.

Dust Attack is basically a move that launches your opponent high into the air, letting you jump in just the right way to intercept him and wail on him for a few seconds.

Roman Cancel and False Roman Cancel lets you cancel out of a fairly long cooldown animation to keep going, at the sacrifice of a little from your Special and Burst Meters, but you need your Burst Meter full to commit a Burst Attack.

I have Guilty Gear XX #Reload on the PC and I can tell you, the AI is just fine. At the highest settings it gets kind of ridiculous with barely two seconds passing between the match beginning and it abusing the defence triangle to get into a 30-hit combo.

Hm, I'd buy it, but at the moment I'm almost WAIST-DEEP in games I ABSOLUTELY NEED TO GET, in terms of list, sort of.

And I know this is obvious but.. your ending is hilarious.

Great review Lee! As an Otaku, I embrace my inner perv, and I'm not ashamed. I will walk into a Game Stop and ask for it gleefully

It's still one of my favorite reviews, behind Megaman Legends that is.

Great review. As a 2D fighter enthusiast I could probably head down to a nearby arcade and try it out, but $1 a pop is a bit pricey for having never played it.

Also, loved the Hokuto no Ken bit at the end there.

Oh lee the compression rate is a bit too heavy on the connection...

122 MB video ? for such an amount of time, that's heavy, just to let you know...

Never heard about this game, it looks pretty good

The ending blew me away...
ULTRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA COMBOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

only takes one.

Hey solid review, good to see you made a point to focus on the air combo system, and yes it is very reminiscent of guilty gear, but there is a strong argument to be made that arcana heart’s system is actually much deeper. The one thing I don’t think you touched on close enough was how the mechanics of the different arcana can affect your over all play style. They determine what your super move is, some of them give you more potent dash moves, some offer your bread and butter shodo moves, some arcana’s moves chain better with certain characters, there is simply and endless mix up game available to the player who is simply willing to experiment and maybe do a bit of research.

Its just a damn shame that, as with most Atlas titles, this port has already finished its full production run, meaning that any copy’s of the English version can now be considered limited edition.

Some people will be surprised to hear that this game had quite the dedicated arcade following in Japan, partially because it was released amidst a sort of rut in 2d fighting games. Street fighter 3 third strike was now years past, it had been a while since a really good guilty gear was released to arcades, it was a little while after MVC: Chaos, it really just came out at the optimal time for Japanese arcade enthusiasts to really sink their teeth into it(resulting in some absolutely terrifying top tier tournament footage).

The game looks pretty damn sweet. According to Wikipedia, however, the game wasn't released here in Europe... so I guess we miss yet another great title!

I never got the hang of the homing system, which might explain why I sucked at Arcana Heart.

I could imagine the game being much more fun in multiplayer, though.

It also helps to alleviate stares if you buy the game when a girl is with you.

You want some pervy all-female fighting games? Check out the Japan Only series...es "Asuka 120%" or Tecmo's "Angel Eyes". Only problem is, neither of them are very good... I have them around here.... somewhere. Probably near wherever the hell I have Arcana Heart.

Oh Kenshiro, can't you go one day without killing humanity?

Good review, I saw this game before, thought it looked rather neat, but I need a few more characters before a consider giving it a fair purchase.

Loved the end with the Hokuto no Ken reference.

Wow it looks like an awesome game

Looks like Cyborcat would LOVE this game!

Saaaaaaaay, Lee....

What's your job? 'Cause, with all those games in the background, I doubt they were donations, or something.

Wow! That surely looked like one sweet 2D fighting game. Its good that japanese still make 2D fighting games and not just 3D fighting games. Honestly, 2D fighting games actually not only look better than 3D fighting games but they are also much more fun to play.

Seems like an OK fighting game to me, but thats coming from a guy that sometime played SoulCalibur only for the sake of seeing some boobs physics action. (Ivy and Taki anyone?)

And I must admit I loled pretty hard at the Hokuto no Ken reference at the end.

Arcana Heart is still and never will be out in the UK makes me upset i was waiting on this and give up becuase they stoped it coming out over here

Many of those games were on mega clearance. Glancing over there I see a lot of price tags that say $3.99 and $4.99. At this point in time Still Gaming does not accept donations, but in the future may be open to receiving used games and consoles. Brand new games and consoles should be donated to the Child's Play Charity.

To address some other concerns, I did notice a few very, very minor technical problems (nothing that crushes the review into oblivion) with this version of the upload and they will be fixed next week. Thanks!

Looks like nowadays liking girls means being a pervert... the world really got screwed up...

lol, nice review, Lee.

I really do have to applaud you for actually saying some of the things you said. I guess that's what sets reviewers apart from audiences is that you guys can say what you want. And really, it doesn't seem so awkward on our end of the table. We're all in your shoes!

@nitoro81:
It's not so much liking girls, it's liking young Japanese Anime schoolgirls pixelated into a computer game.

I use to have this game it was okay, but, the story line eh to much if you ask me. The graphics are good for a 2-D game but, I sold it...

Like you said in your video, except for the homing system, Arcana Heart really is pretty much a slower-paced Guilty Gear.

Tit punching action.. that's all i needed to buy this bro

This really Reminded me of Iamp and Swr (espeacially thet it was an all-girl fighter x3)
And they seem to have all very diffrent system from traditonal fighters :3