Blade Arcus from Shining - If it works, don´t fix it

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Hello everyone! How are those adventures in the beautiful icy lands of the north going? Good? For this new entry we are going to change the genre and style completely again, and we are going to go back to the 2D Versus genre with a game that belongs to the recent wave of fighting games. The game is called Blade Arcus from Shining EX. Let’s see what this game has to offer in a genre that keeps consolidating it triumphant return title after title.

Developed and published by Sega in late 2014 for the Japanese arcades under the arcade board Sega RingEdge 2, Blade Arcus is in fact a spin-off/crossover of Sega’s classic RPG Shining series, gathering different characters from the last entries of the popular JRPG franchise in a single title. The game received a port for PlayStation 3 and 4 in 2015, which is the version I will focus on for this entry, however, except for some characters and game modes, both versions are almost identical. For some it might be surprising for the see a fighting game from Sega, however, the company of videogame’s most popular blue hedgehog is no stranger to the genre, as it includes a few titles of this genre in its extensive curriculum, having produced in the past games such as Eternal Champions, Golden Axe Duel or Rumble Fish, or even several Ark System Works titles such as Guilty Gear and Hokuto No Ken (The Fist of the North Star). I guess given its experience in the genre, Sega didn’t want to miss the VS Fighting party and decided to put that experience to the use to contribute to the triumphal return of the genre with the expectation of getting a slice of a cake that so far seems to be being eaten almost entirely by titans such as Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, BlazBlue and Guilty Gear. The story of Blade Arcus tells us… Well, basically it tells us the story of Dragon Ball set in a medieval fantasy world. Yup, you read that right. In the world of Blade Arcus there are “seven magical spheres”, that’s right, not six, or eight, but just seven magical spheres that, when gathered, will summon the “grand dragon” who will grant any wish to that who gathers them, so Son Gok… I mean… the main characters of the story will set on an adventure to gather the dragon ba… I mean… seven magical spheres for several reasons. Told ya, the story of Dragon Ball, with the dragon and all, and as rip off as it might sound, is the absolute truth. I guess someone at Sega read too much Dragon Ball during the design of the game… Anyway, the game’s roster includes 16 characters, of which one is a DLC character. All the characters have their own fighting style, all of which match some of the archetypical profiles we can usually find in the genre. The characters are:

Altina                                                           Dylan

Fenrir                                                         Isaac

Melty                                                           Misty

Pairon                                                            Rage

Rick                                                            Roselinde

Rouna                                                              Ryuuga

                                                       Sakuya                                            Sonia (DLC character)

Xiao Mei                                           Urayukihime

Blade Arcus is overall a classic 2D fighter, and although I’ve said this with other 2D fighting games I’ve talked about in this blog before, in the case of Blade Arcus this is particularly true, till the point where Blade Arcus does little to nothing in order to innovate, instead of that, the game just limits itself to repeat again the same classic (albeit successful) formula we’ve seen countless times up until now. However, this doesn’t mean Blade Arcus is a bad game by any means, but all those who are looking for something completely different might as well keep searching, on the other hand, if what you are looking if for a classic style 2D fighter with a solid gameplay as an alternative for the “popular faces” of the genre, then this game just might be made for you. Regarding the gameplay of the title, the game uses a four button layout for the basic actions, three of which are for the weak, medium and strong attacks, with the last fourth button being used to the attacks of our assist character. One of the main features of Blade Arcus is that on top of our main character, we will have to select a secondary character that we will be able to use during to combats to assist us, and depending on our main character, some assist characters will be more convenient than others. Just above our Power Gauge located at the bottom of the screen we will be able to see some crystal-shaped icons. These will be our Team Gauge, which will be the one that will allow us to perform actions with our assist character. Just like it happens with the Power Gauge, the Team Gauge will fill up during the combats, and depending on its level, we will be able to perform one or another type of attack with our assist character. Every assist character will be able to perform several attacks, and depending on their power these will consume more or less Team Gauge. We will be able to link our assist character’s attacks to our combos, including the super attacks, allowing us to perform some really devastating combos, therefore mastering the tag team system will be vital if we want to get the edge over our rivals. On top of this, each character will include the above mentioned super attacks, which in gameplay teams it would be the equivalent to Street Fighter’s 4 Ultra attacks, as well as their own special attacks and the possibility of performing several of the actions typical of the genre, like for example the throws. Another feature of the game is the possibility of choosing a fighting style. After selecting our character we will be able to choose from between two different modes: the Normal Mode and the Simple Mode. The Normal Mode is, well, quite normal (I’m a genius!), which means we will have to input the necessary commands for the characters´ special attacks the old fashioned way: one command at a time. The Simple Mode, on the other hand, will allow us to perform the special attacks of the characters with the press of a single button. As I was saying, nothing new under the sun, just the same old stuff, but at least what it does it does it fairly well.

Regarding the game modes, again Blade Arcus limits itself to follow the standards between the genre, so in the main menu of the game we will find familiar faces such as the Story Mode, in which we will have to defeat a series of opponents controlled by the CPU while the story is told via conversations among the character in between the combats, the Arena Mode, which is just the typical survival mode, the Versus Mode, which we will allow us to fight other players or characters controlled by the CPU, and finally the Training Mode, which, as it name indicates, it will allow to us practice the different techniques and combos of the characters. And now many of you (provided you read this far) are thinking, wait a second… What do you mean by “finally”? Where is the online mode? Just give me my online mode, ok? Is not funny! I need my online mode! NOW! Well, you see… The thing is… There is no online mode. Period. I know, I know, is something hard to believe in these times of multiplayer frenzy, but that´s the way it is, however, there is still a good side, and that is that, just like with Chaos Code, the beer evenings at your buddies´ are back…! I guess most probably this is due to the arcade nature of the game and its most probably rather limited budget, but I agree this is still no excuse… Now you can stone me if you want for not mentioning this before…

As for the graphics of the game, once again Blade Arcus does it right, but that’s it. Opposite to most of the fighting games I have talked about up until now, Blade Arcus has been done completely in 3D, using a style similar to the one we can see in Street Fighter 4 and 5, or Guilty Gear Xrd, although just like in those titles, the game’s gameplay is completely 2D. However, Sega’s title doesn’t go anywhere near to awesomeness of Capcom’s and Ark System Works’ titles, an although the game’s graphics are not bad, the character models do look rather simple when compared to those of the above mentioned titans, and the same goes for the animations, which, despite not being bad, look rather stiff at times, taking away some of the shine of the overall presentation and hinting again the probable lack of budget in order to polish certain aspects of the game. The stages where the combats will take place are very varied and all of them contain a fairly big amount of details. It is also worth the mention that the game also contains several high quality illustrations (in the menus and in the gallery mode) from famous Japanese illustrator Tony Taka, famous for his astonishing (and sometimes “naughty”) illustration of beautiful ladies, and that has been the main character designer and illustrator in all the recent entries of Sega´s RPG series.


Blade Arcus isn’t definitely a game that will go down in the history videogames as one of the best, however, despite its shortcomings, like some stiff animations and the complete lack of an online mode (accept it already!), Sega’s title still manages to deliver a solid gameplay, making it a very valid alternative for the fans of the genre that want to see some new faces throwing some punches around. You can get the game for the PS3 and PS4, and both versions are almost identical. Enjoy it!


GAMEPLAY VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXXhqhPnoH4