Arcana Heart

[Advent Cirno]

So uh, yeah. Games out. Wheres the new vids :V.

[Zaido]

dunno.. D:... i want to see some hot Maori action!! D:damn it!! i want to see what she is capable of !! so far i only see her getting beat ><

[woof]

[23:54] <+woof> i a m going to implant a tracking device

[23:54] <+woof> onto a japanese person who goes to the arcade often

[23:54] <+woof> the tracking device will have a camera

[23:54] <zer0kage> AC already got it's share

[23:54] <+woof> and then i will have as many arcana heart vids as i want

[23:54] <zer0kage> we should now find AH vids

[23:54] <zer0kage> ermm dude you want to see those guys bathe or something

[23:54] <zer0kage> lol

[23:55] <+woof> no it automatically turns off once they leave'

[23:55] <zer0kage> wtf

[23:55] <+woof> man i need my arcana drugs

I FUCKIN NEED EM

[Advent Cirno]

Your not the only one :V.

[furix]

http://astore.amazon.co.jp/top12-22/detail/B000KGGK76/503-9054300-3429522 we need this

[woof]

NIGGAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[zer0kage]

There are special KO animations if you beat them with a super move. Nothing like AoF or old SNK games though.

[woof]

WE HAVE A SOURCE OF INFO PRAISE THE LORD

Alright, i'm bumping up this old thread. As some of you may or may not know, Arcana Hearts is officially released in Japan! Naturally, i spent most of the day at the arcade. I was just there for about 7 hours playing (though at least 6/7ths of that was waiting, watching matches, etc.)

Ok i got to the arcade around 1:20, Arcana Hearts isn't set up, but there's a decent crowd of about 8 other people. After about an hour of messing around with buttons and fixing whatever the problem is, its finally going. Now there's a group of about 12 people there for one machine (two cabinets back to back).

However, they put AH on freeplay all day today, and the arcade closes at Midnite. Guess i know what i'm doing. XD

I was one of the first to go. Two matches finish, then i go. I knew that before i even played the game that Heart was gonna be my character just cause she's all sorts of awesome. Hell, her name is Heart, that's half my screen name right there...

Anyways, i win my first match against a Kamui player, and then lose to a Mei Fang player afterwards. Now the fun begins. For most of the afternoon, most of the players there use either:

Kamui

Heart

Mei Fang

there's a couple other guys using other characters. One guy used only Lilica, etc. But for the most part, there's no "trying out new characters," its pretty much all business. And even if another character is picked, they always lose to the Kamui, Heart, or Mei Fang player.

After i lost to the first Mei Fang player, and up until about 11:00, the ONLY characters i played against was Kamui and Heart. Sad faces.

Anyways, the way it looks, im not gonna be like OMG DAY 1 TIER LIST, but im gonna do an "ease of use list"

But first, the basics:

A B C

D

is the button setup. A = weak, B = mid, C = strong. D = misc.

One air dash, one double jump in the air, simple enough.

throw = A+D and direction

Your character has 2 bars. One is 3 small meters, one is your main power meter.

The small meter, when one of the bars is uses, it either turns black and starts refilling quickly or it gets a big X over it. If there's a big X over it, you have to wait for a bit, then the X will go away and the bar will quickly refill. The consequence to using this bar too much is not being able to use it if you X out all three of your bar things. Granted, while they will come back, it might not be for a while, and Homing Cancels rely on them, and Homing Cancels are REALLY important.

The large meter is your power meter. Doing a super from there takes one bar. It goes up to 9.

Arcana = To activate your arcana, which also acts as a "get out of jail free card" of sorts for the round, you press A+B+C. What i mean by "get out of jail free card" is that at anytime in the round, whether you're getting hit or not, you can do this with A+B+C. Your character will do the arcana activate motion, which is them floating above the ground for a bit. Theyll then land (invincible until landing), and they recover immediatly when they land, so theres nothing "guaranteed" the opponent can do against this. However, you can only activate your arcana once a round. Aside from getting you out of troublesome situations, it also does stuff. Depending on the arcana you choose, different things can happen. While i've yet to figure out most of them, i do know that the one i use, Morimoto, i believe it's called, a plant one, recovers your health. So for example, i have three bars. My opponent gets a combo on me. In the middle of the combo, i hit A+B+C. My character flies out of the combo (and i think it takes an extra bar away because of it, but dont quote me on that, i might have just been seeing things) and now i gain life the whole time in "arcana mode". But, it only lasts as long as you have meter. Your bar drains somewhat quickly in this mode. You can still do a super in this mode (i think it just drains one bar) and at anytime in it, to end it, you can do 236A+B+C to do the big "Arcana move" which is where you pretty much call the arcana spirit to do a huge attack. Sorry if that sounds complicated. If any of you play Melty Blood, it's like going into heat, but you can do it anytime, even if the opponent is comboing you. But different arcana's have different effects, once i figure them out, ill try to let people know.

Guard Cancel (GC) = While guarding, hold either forward or back (not sure about other directions) and press D to either hop backwards from guarding a move or get a small shield and push forward. This uses one bar of the small meter.

Air dash = in the air, tap D and a direction to air dash in that direction. This uses one bar of the small meter.

Homing Cancel (HC) = after you hit the opponent with a move, hold a direction and D, your character will cancel their move and go airdashing towards the opponent if it hit them up, or just cancel into forward, backwards or whatever if the move was blocked. This uses one bar of the small meter.

Jump back = You can also use the D to just jump back or rush forward without even guarding anything. Seems pretty pointless though. Uses one bar of the small meter.

Easy:

Heart (Main girl)

Kamui (Sword girl)

Mei Fang (Bathing suit with Chun-Li hair things)

Medium:

Lilica (Rollerskating...thing)

Saki ("Side" girl)

Kira (Little girl in school swimsuit in a blob)

Konoha (Ninja girl in gym bloomers)

Hard:

Loli girl (uhh...Loli girl? I forgot her name. Its like, Lanchalotte or something wierd like that)

Maori (priestess looking girl)

Dunno cause nobody used her:

Witch girl

Learning Heart or Kamui is about the equivilant of learning Tic-Tac-Toe. Mei Fang is pretty easy too. Some characters look like they have no way of dealing damage and seem really abstract, such as Loli girl and Maori.

I'll give the rundown, i played about half the characters at least once, so i'll do what i can:

Heart: Basic, 236 is the punch that lunges forward. sweep into punch into punch super = yay 623 is the dragon punch, and 623A+B is her dragon punch super which can be done in the air, too. air 214 does this like, kick stomp thing that recovers the instant she touches the ground. Pretty hard to punish unless the opponent is being careless about using it. Def leads to good offense though. 421 is a hop into an overhead hit that goes a certain distance depending on which button is used. If you land with it, since it ALSO recovers instantly, you can combo from it. Kinda cool when it jumps a low. As far as normals, she's got good range and good damage. Solid character overall, and super easy to learn. Her j.2B is really abusable.

Kamui: I dont know notations, but anytime she's in the air, she can do this air slice into an air slice super for hella damage after whatever air combo you want. On the ground, she's got a 3 hit into super combo that was used quite often. She's got hella range cause of the sword. Hell, she has an attack that reaches far enough to hit the opponent at the beginning of the round. Huge range, fast, and damage. There's a reason she was picked the most.

Mei fang: She's got crazy air dash homing cancels for hella damage that can end in a super for even more hella damage. She's fast and powerful, thats all i can really say about her.

Lilica: She's really fast, but her range is somewhat limited from what ive seen. She's got some good normals and stuff, and i dunno if it was just the guy playing but sooo many of his moves whiffed, and his air combos missed a lot cause of range, and when he DID hit, they didnt do THAT great of damage. Again, i only saw one guy playing her, and he knew some good stuff, but he rarely won, so i cant really judge her from that.

Saki: Near the end of the night, one of the many Kamui players started playing Saki. She seems kind of like Heart, really basic, but her inputs are charging as opposed to 236 and such. In addition, her sweep into kick into whatever combos are way harder to do than Hearts sweep punch super homing cancel.

Kira: Thankfully, near the end of the night, one guy showed up and stopped the whole "only Heart/Kamui/Mei Fang are winning" deal and busted out a mad crazy Kira. She's pretty much Zangeif. She's got that crazy throw that does a ton, got the FINAL ATOMIC BUSTER (i dunno what she says, but the last word she says sounds a lot like "Buster"...) Either way, Kira, while slow, has mad mad range and mad mad damage from throws. her 2B or whatever is a punch that hits up that has HUGE range, can lead into a move that throws your character across the screen, and Kira can HC into a j.C which is a giant boot, into another hit into a different throw that throws you straight down and leads to a piledriver setup. She's beastly in the right hands, and it was good and refreshing to see a different character winning.

Konoha: I played her and i liked her when i first played her. After a few matches though, i realized she had no range. Only moves that had any sort of range in terms of normals was 2B and 2C. 5C has such short range that its pitiful. Her 236 is ninja stars, you can throw three of them. A throws them forward, B up diagonal, C even more up diagonal. She has a teleport that recovers pretty fast by doing 214 moves. She also has a dash forward move thats done with 623. Its one of the only other moves with range. In addition, because her legs are so short, air combos are hard to pull off. I can see someone really good still being good with her though, but from my own play experiences and the two other guys who tried to play her, she's not the easiest to use.

Loli girl: Shes got NO range without her doll. Her standing A is punches that move like, 4 pixels from her face. Its ridiculous. Funny as hell, but ridiculously not that great. Her C and j.C and 2C are all her opening up her box and the doll lunging out as well. However, she can throw her puppet out of the box and have it on the field, similar to Zappa's dog in Guilty Gear, i guess, but a lot different. It has its own lifebar as well. If you hit the doll, it falls down for a few seconds then gets back up and resumes. If you do that three times, the doll doesnt move anymore. However, Loli can still pick it up and once it hits her box, its life recovers and she can shoot it back out on the field. On the field, it attacks, i cant figure out what makes it do what, but it kinda just goes around on the ground attacking. i DO know that Loli can set out these little crystal things and the doll will come jumping at wherever she set those up. Aside from that, i dont really know how to control it. And when the doll is out of the box, she loses lots of range. She doesnt really do a lot of damage either, though it's probably doll related, her damage, that is. But on day 1, people probably wont be perfecting the way of the doll, i would imagine. I see good things in store for her, but at the moment, shes too damn hard to use, that few people used her, and the two or three guys that did like, never won.

Maori- My other favorite aside from Heart. I got kinda sick of seeing Heart getting win streaks and stuff, so i was using Maori for a bit. her 236's summon one of her sisters on an origami crane and she comes in and depending on the button depends on height. 214 is the same thing but from behind the opponent. 22 is a girl dropping from the ceiling on the opponent, and i think 421 is a girl running in from behind Maori. Im not sure if that's the notation, but theres one where a girl just charges in. Her 623 is a whip type move of some sort that has some use that i obviously dont know about yet cause i couldnt hit with it and it just got me killed. She shoots it at a 45 degree angle. Her normals though, are also what make her hard. She doesnt feel very fluid the same way Heart or the other characters are fluid. Shes a very range based character, with her j.C being her throwing one of the tops she balances at a low angle. her j.B is her throwing a top straight ahead. So it's hard to link attacks from what i noticed. Again, it was only day 1 for me, and i REALLY hope someone finds out some good Maori stuff cause i didnt find out much in terms of combos. Her super is her sisters shoot in and do an explosion. Seems too slow to combo into though, but yeah, premature assumptions. Hopefully i'm wrong.

Yeah, and i never saw the witch girl with the staff used.

Now, what would Arcana Hearts be without the Arcana's?

What they do, aside from different effects in Arcana mode, is a couple things.

1) Moves. They each have their own movelist that's done with the D button. The stone one has a 41236D move thats a big stone punch. The leaf one has a 236D which is a vine hit forward. The fire one has air fireballs. The lighting one has lightning strikes. etc.

2) Supers. In addition to regular attacks, they each have their own special super. I think it takes one bar for each of these as well, but im not 100%. Not a lot of these were used, but a couple were.

3) Arcana summons. In Arcana mode, as i said, you can summon them with 236A+B+C. This differs depending on which one you choose. Some of them are a one time grab and its either hit or miss. Some are a giant thing on the screen, and then there's ones that if you dont get hit in a certain period when summoning it, it automatically gets the opponent.

Now for my impressions: The game is a LOT of fun. Its smooth, fast, and unlike most 2D fighters that i play, stuff links into other stuff REALLY well. Supers dont always do ridiculous amounts of damage but if its after only one or two hits, or on it's own, it'll def do more. Throws have an animation even when whiffed in the air. I might be biased cause im a fan of games that have (imo) cool character designs, but if i can stay in a smoke filled arcade for 7 hours (left for a while for food and such) waiting for most of the time just for a CHANCE to play the game, then yeah, it was fun. Freeplay made it all the better cause i got a full night of awesome entertainment and it didnt cost me anything.

If anyone has any questions, i can try to answer. I may have missed some things, it's late and this took me kind of a while to type, but yeah. Hopefully other people are as excited about this game as i am.

[furix]

Awesome. and lol... you air dash with D and home cancel with D.. Touhou :s (I had to say it). C'mon were the vids at! I am dying to see some vids, specially of lilica!~

[Zaido]

Maori !! hard to use :D.. hahai knew it XD... but anyways sso far sounds good to me !!!

[woof]

more shit

Got it in Oki, oddly enough.

If you ever get time to actually play through the game Maori does some retarded shit that makes me want to learn her. She's the Yuda of the game with her Miko friends assisting her flying all over the fucking place. There's one who drops from the top of the screen with a dive kick(will keep hitting you till she lands driving you to the floor) or she hops in and does a Makoto-like dash punch that will wall bounce you, and the other two fly around on origami cranes at 2 different heights and directions on screen.

She can also leave her tops spinning on the ground for an extra hit later like Bridget IIRC. One of her supers inclused dropkick girl dropping in for a 1 hit kick then punching you FUCKING HARD into the wall which Maori gets free followups.

Let it be known that I love all things grappler so 3 guesses who I chose. This is where I realised that I NEED to learn the system, because Kira-sama doesn't like doing full Arcana Chains. She can only do xA->xB/xC or xa->xB->6/3+C(slight charge on both) this isn't really a problem though, because both her 2 and 5+b pop them up for either airthrow or homingxxboot. She has 2 grab supers, the first was mentioned (Super Kira-sama Buster) and the other is pretty interesting, as it's an airgrab. She grabs them, piledrives them from the point in the air that you caught them(I THINK the damage is variable to how high you catch them), then one spinning powerbomb(Kira-sama Buster), then the same finish from her other one, the good ol Hugo-like Gigas Buster(lol).

She has ticks and all the other good grappler tools(SHE HAS SPLASH air 2C), running grab, 2 air snatches(the aformentioned wall and ground slams), SPD(Kira-sama Buster, now known as KSB) and an air throw which I haven't baited them with yet and am not sure if it combos.

Her default Arcana I don't understand yet. So far I've gotten it to summon bubbles like Sogetsu from SS4->Tenka, but they don't appear to do anything? None of the other moves make sense either, short of the 236+ABC, which will slow down time for your opponent(ENLIGHTENMENT BITCHES) dependant on how much meter you have, which, thankfully for them they can only get hit by air snatch(which speeds them up again) and standard attacks.

So far I've done:

5A2BXX623+any,6D, 5A2C reset

random dash KSB

5A wait KSB

5A hop air super

So, so far I'm scrubby and need to find an easier Arcana to start with. lol

I went to Ko-Hatsu today for a Soul Calibur 3 tourney, and as luck would have it, they have Arcana Heart for 50 yen. Not only that, but they have two machines. It also wasnt very crowded, so i got PLENTY of time to play over and over again.

In all my playing, (woof is gonna like this) i kinda put Heart on the bench and i decided to try out Lilica cause she looks awesome. I played her and i was feeling pretty good about using her. I played her against a few people and i was having decent success. I played her against this one Yoriko (witch girl) player who was pretty good who whomped on me like, 6-7 games in a row. However, it felt like she had a distinct weakness against certain things.

HOWEVER to THAT however, i decided to use the default Arcana for Heart, Partenious, the one where 236D is a slow tracking fireball, 623D is a lazer, and 214D is a projectile shield absorb. When it absorbs ANY projectile, a ball similar to 236D comes out and follows the opponent faster, and when it hits them, it does 3 hits instead of just one, and its easy to combo off of that.

IMO, Lilica's main weakness is that she loses to people who spam moves that stop jumping in, and against people who keep her really far away. Well, tracking fireball makes it so youre able to get offensive, and lazer allows her to attack from far away as well. This pretty much kills her main weak spots and her offensive game is really good aside from that.

The combo i mainly use is:

j.B 2A 2B 2C Homing Cancel Forward, (hold forward) (6)A (6)B jump 9 j.A j.B 623B 623Bxx236A+B.

The j.A wont hit if theyre too far away. In that case, 6A 6B 6K into HC forward if theyre far from the wall or just wait there and hit them if theyre near a wall.

Her fast dashes arent the greatest, but they have their uses. The low slide is unsafe, so its best not used often, but the mid jump kick is crazy fast and seems pretty safe. Best not used often though. If anything, backwards slide into 236D or 623D seems to be the best option.

Also, if you dont hold forward or backward when you throw, your character does a throw that you can HC and juggle them afterwards. So for example, Lilica can do:

Throw HC up j.A j.B 623B 623B 236A+B. Pretty good damage for one throw, one HC bar, and one meter bar. A goofy trick with the arcana i use, the light one, if you do that throw and then do 236A+B+C, theyll get thrown and then the giant ball of light will hit them for MASSIVE D4M4G3!!!!

I dont know what the light one does on activation. I found out that the stone one gives super armor and lowers damage. That one is SUPER good with Kira cause all she needs is the chance to throw

Speaking of Kira, Saotome, here's a few things i noticed Kira players doing:

-Crouching 2B or whatever that upwards punch is, air throw, homing cancel into boot into another grab into KSB on wakeup.

-Guard cancelling forward into KSB

-Just 6[D] into KSB

-Activating arcana, buffering the S-KSB, and then right when Kira lands, doing that.

Her arcana can call like, fishes and stuff to come up and eat the enemies. Not sure how to do it, but i saw the computer sitting there and fish coming out of the ground and stuff. Hopefully im not thinking of the wrong arcana.

Other useful arcanas are the bat-wing one, with the boomerang projectile (thankfully it cancels if that character gets hit) and the wind-trap-pop-up-thing. The lightning one, where the lightning homes in on the enemy. The grass one where activating it gives life, hitting with the super gives life, and the plant traps. The stone one obviously, where activating it gives super armor and its got the huge stone punch, and a rock that can appear from above the character that activates it and fall right in front of them.

But yeah, after the tourney, i started playing against the guy who beat me 6-7 times and the guy i played when i first got there, who i went even with. After i figured out the Lilica stuff out and figured out the right Arcana choice for me with her, i got like, 14 wins in a row against those guys (only stopped cause i had to go or i'd miss the train back). She's definitely a beast, and she's mad fun to use as well. Woof, you definitely made the right choice from the start.

Since its winter break and i'm in Japan, chances are i'm gonna be playing this a LOT.

My arcade just got Arcana Heart, too. I went there to check it out tonight, and I don't really have a lot to add to the discussion yet. It does seem pretty fun, though.

I noticed that the different Arcanas also modify the guard cancel behavior; I don't know if anybody mentioned that, yet. It's performed by forward + D while blocking.

The 'wind' arcana has a push-block that's quite effective, especially against characters like Lilica or Heart. It's arcana force is a beam that has instant startup and does a pile of damage. I was moving towards an opponent when he used it on me, and I couldn't block it.

The 'earth' arcana has a good 236D attack, and of course super armor during activation. However, the arcana force seems a little awkward - I never actually saw anybody land it. Might require some special setup. And the guard cancel is this weird little hop back + dash, which didn't really help me when I was trying to get people OFF OF ME.

The 'time/clock' arcana (has a bunch of gears in its picture) modifies your back dash to leave a little shadow of you, which will absorb a hit, and it gives you a huge, fast forward + D dash. The arcana activation stops your opponent for about 10 seconds for free comboing, but the startup is really long. I think I only got it off because my opponent thought it would be a counter super, and just stood there.

People were doing pretty damn well with Kamui and Lilica over at my arcade. Heart was a good, easy pick, but she got edged out after a little while. Lilica can do some heavy damage with her combos - I got hit a lot with ground chain, air chain, air super, HC air super.

Kamui, though, was really kicking ass. Probably just easy type LOLs, but her air super does some ridiculous damage, and one guy had down a combo that would eat about 40% of your life. Plus she's got a counter special and a counter super. The special looked decent, but I'm not entirely sure how it works. The super version takes off a crazy chunk of life, about 1/3 or so.

I spent most of my time playing Konoha and a little Kira. But I suck at 360s, and I had a tough time getting people off me, so my Kira got crushed pretty quick. Konoha is kinda fun, but my first impression was that she would have a hard time putting in the same kind of damage that Heat and Kamui dish out.

I didn't see any Mei Fang. I'll have to look into it.

Gothic girl is hard to use, and nobody who tried her could figure out how the hell to use her before losing.

i am PUMPED

[Charred Chad]

Few matches & the opening up at GameDial: http://www.eonet.ne.jp/~gd-nanpon At the top. Anyone seen more matches elsewhere?

[Maho]

Matchs are : - Lieselotte vs Kamui - Konoha vs Kamui - Konoha vs Mei-Fang

[Advent Cirno]

*dies of happiness*

[woof]

some other shit:

http://www.ayutet.net/archives/2006/12/post_331.html

big blade chick looks awesome. if a console release ever comes [it better ] then i sure hope she's playable.. and not in the broken way.

the boss of the game is pretty funny though. by the looks of the screens, it's like she's a rockstar millia or something. her hair is like super long in one shot and short for her artwork. and then she's a floating island. what???? [it is probably something similar to grant's EXPLODE FROM SKULL HOUSE intro in garou]

[Advent Cirno]

Sorry Woof, but when I clicked that link, the only thing that caught my attention was "VIRTUAFIGHTER5XBOX360".

So we're all gonna pitch in and buy this, right? Who's house would it be kept at though :V

http://www.coinopexpress.com/products/pcbs/pcb/Arcana_Heart_PCB_7000.html

[M.Song]

flashget will help you find videos

[woof]

So we're all gonna pitch in and buy this, right? Who's house would it be kept at though :V

PARTY AT MY HOUSE

[Master Chibi]

Mei-fang has the best ending in a fighting game ever.

[furix]

o man... Nice videos. Can't wait to watch more~ I can't wait for some hot Lilica videos :s

[sibladeko]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKIg2YjLfu4

Finally some Lilica.

Though she loses =/

Arcanaarcana has some nice matches up (wtf Konoha has a tail? =O)

[furix]

We got so far 3 people from here that got the hots for Lilica, don't we? :s Man, this is great. Finally we get to watch some clear matches. I really can't wait to play this game. EDIT: Fuck yeah, those combos Lilica is doing look HOT :O

[XAQshinor]

GOD DAMN!!! these stages are really humungous!!11!!1!!11! game looks pretty fun big bubz china girl ftw

[sibladeko]

I'm sort of curious what the two bosses look like now. All I have are their names. Edit: My bad :V, but those links were broken the first time I was there :V

[woof]

its

on the site

that i posted earlier

some other shit:

http://www.ayutet.net/archives/2006/12/post_331.html

you motherfucker >