Studio Saizensen's 2D fighting game Blade Arcus From Shining: Battle Arena pits a colorful cast of 16 characters against each other in single player or tests your mettle against other players in the game's online multiplayer part. Chances are that you're completely unfamiliar with the Shining series, but that doesn't really matter that much, anyway. Blade Arcus' plot contains characters from the PSP titles Shining Hearts and Shining Blade, but it seems to tell a self-contained story. Here's what you need to know: there are a bunch of mystical orbs and owning them all grants you one wish. Enter said colorful cast who want to, well, catch them all in order to have their wishes fulfilled.

There's gruff fighter dudes, athletic cat girls, and other anime tropes. It's a varied bunch of playable characters that, thankfully, plays differently enough to warrant completing the arcade mode with every one of them. Inbetween matches there's some interplay and banter, but you're probably not missing out on too much of the lore if this is your first Shining game. In any case, the game looks lovely and plays really well.
The basics of Blade Arcus are easy to grasp if you ever played a Street Fighter title. Can you hadoken" If so, you'll be fine, as most of the game's 16 characters use variations on Street Fighter's most iconic sets of moves. There's also a force gauge that allows you to pull of extra-powerful special moves when full and a separate assist meter which hel...