Fighting games are enjoying a resurgence at the moment, but for a small, committed group of gamers the genre never went away. Their jargon is dense, their fingers dextrous and it is for them that Arcana Heart 3, in all its dizzying complexity, is intended.
The main innovations are midair combat and the ability to bring an outsize supernatural buddy – or "arcana" – into the fray. The 23 fighters are a zany melange of anime cliches: bat-winged nuns and bunnygirl robot pilots; an 11-year-old PhD physicist in a snorkel who fights from within a sentient blob; a character called Petra Johanna Lagerkvist. Takashi Murakami might cut it when it comes to wowing gallerists, but by these standards his stuff is positively pedestrian.
Between the language barrier, the intricacies of the fighting system and the wackiness of the plot, most players will find this maddeningly impenetrable; the subpar visuals don't help either. But for any lapsed fighting fans who harbour an affection for the genre's late-90s heyday, AH3's loose and hectic combat makes it a worthy alternative to Waku Waku 7.
