GameLight - Arcana Heart 3

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 releases in stores tomorrow on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.  At the moment, it's not the only fighting game that I'm looking forward to this year:

Source: Youtube Channel Bunnyspatial

Arcana Heart 3 is a 2D Fighting game that has an all female cast of characters based off of stereotypical personalities and looks from manga and animé culture.  I guess the description on wikipedia explains it a little better with the characters "a variation of the moe archetype".  So there's the Chinese fighter, the puppy girl, the magic caster, the tsundere, the school girl that can fight, etc.  I first found out about the series when I saw the first game on Playstation 2 at a Play 'n Trade.  Seeing how I wasn't home with my PS2 and it was something like $30-$50, I didn't feel like buying it.  Still having the interest, a friend of mine said they had it and decided to bring it to a game night once and I got to try it out.  Besides the novelty of having an all girl-cast fighting game, I wasn't expecting much out of it.  The game was pretty fun, especially the air combos I did (I have no idea how I did it).

Source: http://darkaquamarine.blogspot.com/2010/12/arcana-heart-3-official-wallpapers.html

The game feels almost doujin (fan-made) but still retains a sense of fluid gameplay of a professionally made game.  The first game was actually much slower which gave players more time to think between each chain of combos to perform.  This third release looks much faster paced following the stylish action fluidity of games like BlazBlue and Melty Blood.  I don't know too much about the game yet, but I heard there was over 23 characters to play from, a story mode, and a better combat system from the previous titles.  What really attracts me to fighting games is the animation (not necessarily graphics), music (though that's very hard to judge), controls (I've played fighting games with really bad controls before), and an intriguing story (ever played Tekken recently?  The way they create stories out of the plots of other characters in the game makes it an involving experience for me).  I'm still not sure when the game will be out, but I'm glad an English version is being released.  I just hope they give the option to switch the voice acting back to Japanese if they plan on dubbing in English.  Here's hoping for an awesome game.

Oh yeah, Happy Valentines Day.  Get it?  Heart?  Valentines?  Yeah, that didn't cross my mind till just now.