[quote]Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If you like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades [/quote]
One of the most interesting ideas in entertainment is crossovers, as the very idea of previously unrelated characters interacting with each other and reacting to new situations is something that is very exciting. When done properly, these crossovers become some of the most enjoyable pieces of media that you have ever consumed; But we don't always see proper care put into making them by people who were in charge.
Blade Arcus From Shining: Battle Arena is a crossover fighting game that brings characters from Shining Tears, Shining Wind, Shining Hearts and Shining Blade together for friday night fisticuffs. But in a twist, the development duties were put in the hands of Studio Saizensen, mostly known for their Umihara Kawase series and Code of Princess. Therefore, some might get very suspicious and think they are looking at nothing short of a disaster.
Well, the game is not a disaster and is actually fun to play. However, it does have some glaring problems that warrant a not recommended rating.
[h2]Not gonna lie, game is fun[/h2]
Before I begin, let me remind you that if you want to see in-depth FGC explanations and analysis, you have gotten the wrong guy. I just play a fighting game, ♥♥♥♥ around and find out, then see if my experience was fun or not. With that out of the way, let's start.
Despite Blade Arcus looking like your usual anime air-dasher, it does not play like one. Sure, the combat is very fast and there's a lot of mechanics (like assists and cancels) available to do long and intricate combos with, but there's no air dashing, most of the combat is grounded and even the simplest of attacks can wipe a HUGE chunk of the opponent's health bar in mere seconds. So, each match boils down to how you can bait the opponent to leave themselves open in order to deal massive damage, while making sure you don't do the same mistakes. As such, the game might feel a bit like Samurai Shodown, but much faster and with the addition of a whole lot of other games' mechanics to it.
The variation between the characters is also praiseworthy. Each character has a different fighting style compared to the rest of the cast, and it's pretty easy to find one or several characters you would want to play as. Therefore, the combat in Blade Arcus is very enjoyable, letting anyone and especially casuals get into it with ease. But unfortunately, it does have two big problems. First, there are balancing issues and some characters are incredibly underpowered compared to the others. Second, there's basically no content in the game because the developers didn't bother themselves to put them in it.
[h2]YOU ARE PAYING FOR AN INFERIOR VERSION OF THE GAME[/h2]
This game has a whole lot of missing content and despite [url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/446040/discussions/0/353915309340768255/#c353915309342585719]Degica Games advising the development team to implement them[/url], they just brushed it off and never did it. Why? Maybe low sales of the PC release made them think it's not worth it. But what did they expect, globally releasing a very niche fighting game with missing content and nearly zero advertisements in the first place?
The PC release is based on the v2.01 arcade build that came out before the console versions, and therefore misses all of their additional features like the art gallery, arena mode and the casual-friendly controls. Instead, the devs offered an online mode exclusively for the PC version which had problems like bad netcode and lobbies being limited to 2 players, which caused it to become vacant. To make matters worse, they released an updated version in 2019! "Blade Arcus Rebellion from Shining" is a Japan-exclusive version of the game with 2 additional characters, a new mission mode and over 200 new illustrations to unlock in the gallery.
So, by purchasing this PC release, you are getting the most barebones version of the game with absolutely no chance of getting access to the superior versions. I cannot recommend the game for this one fact alone, as it basically nukes any enjoyment you could have had with it.
[h2]It's not false advertisement... but it feels like one...[/h2]
Things get worse when we get to what the game already has. The game only has 4 modes: Story, versus, online and training. Versus requires local opponents, online is dead, and training is... well... for training. That only leaves us the story mode, which is advertised like this on the game's store pages: [b]"Explore the characters stories in an RPG style with full voice acting in Story Mode!"[/b]. Now, the full voice acting part is true and is incredibly well-done. But the rest of it?
First of all, what story exploration? What we have here is pretty insignificant and feels like an afterthought! The gist of story is that someone removes the seal on the seven soul orbs, the orbs fly out and embed themselves inside strong people, and whoever collects all of the orbs by defeating the hosts is allowed to have one of their wishes granted. So, the good guys and bad guys each make a team and move out to find the orbs and have their wish come true on the side.
That's basically Dragon Ball with a Shining theme. And contrary to what you might think, nothing of value happens in the story. The two original characters (Pairon and Ryuga) don't get a proper introduction. And as for the rest of the characters, the game assumes that you already know who they are, so it does not explain anything except for "Oh yeah, these characters know each other". Not only that, basically nothing happens when each character gets to the end. Nearly all of them either wish for nothing, or for something very trivial or dumb as a joke. Hell, even one of the characters (Sonia) does not have any storyline or ending. This is speculated to be either the devs themselves not wanting to mess with the lore of the series or SEGA not allowing it, which is pretty dumb if actually true. Crossover games are not known to have canon storylines unless explicity confirmed (e.g. Persona 4 Arena) so no one would have objected to proper endings here.
Then we have that part about exploring the stories in an RPG Style, [b]which is a complete lie.[/b] The story mode in this game is basically arcade mode with a bunch of story dialogues added in, and there's nothing in the whole game that even remotely resembles something from RPG games. I don't know why they said that, but don't go in expecting something like BlazBlue's Abyss Mode or Granblue Fantasy: Versus' RPG Mode.
[h2]Looks good, but...[/h2]
On the matter of audiovisual presentation, I personally have no issues with the game. The music tracks are well-composed, and while the character sprites (yes, those are sprites) have very limited & unnatural animations, I honestly like how they and in-turn the game looks as a whole. Taking the art and professional voice acting anto account, it seems like the devs did their best here and what they did is enough in my book. But I really cannot forgive the technical limitations.
The game barely has any graphical options. It runs in 720p resolution by default, without any way to change it, and activating the fullscreen option just maximizes the window to run in borderless mode. This means that the bigger your resolution is, the blurrier the visuals will become on fullscreen mode due to resolution mismatch, and the smaller the game's window size will be in windowed mode.
[h2]TL;DR[/h2]
The gameplay is actually really fun, but the high amount of missing content compared to console versions, the locked resolution and the dead online modes will prove to be dealbreakers.
