Recently I've been interested in Arcana Heart 3, a fighting game made by Examu that was ported to PS3 and XBox 360 by Arc System Works. Previously I had 0 interest in the game other than Parace, the boss character to the second game, but 3 is a different story because it actually got a good port. In the case of the first game, the PS2 port was actually ok but the game itself was just awful so I didn't really care about it. Arcana Heart 2 was actually very good but the PS2 port was complete garbage, suffering from slowdown and not even being the most up-to-date version(most recent ver of AH2 was 2.6 while PS2 port was something else). AH3 gets a next gen port that is pretty much arcade perfect, and it even has online play.
Now, even though I mention AH3 getting a good port, it doesn't actually affect me because I don't have any next gen systems! However, someone went and ripped the arcade version of AH3 onto PC, allowing cheapskates like me to play it. So I've been trying to learn the game, using the PC rip's training mode, which actually shows hitboxes. Unfortunately I can't play my 2 favorite characters in the game, Parace(who is a boss) and Mildred(who is an arcana), so I have to settle for 3rd best with Scharlachrot. After learning some of the intricacies of the game, I have to say it's pretty fascinating. I used to think Arcana Heart was really boring from watching random videos, but now that I kind of understand what's going on it's much better. Sadly I haven't gotten the chance to play against people in this game that much though. There are several elements in the game that remind me of GG, and I really like the variety that the characters + arcana combinations give.
In GG related news, recently there have been a lot of compilation vids of the best moments in Guilty Gear on nico. There is a user on nico who is basically compiling the best moments from Mikado GG vids, and also compiling the best casual matches from the Mikado stream. There's also a few other compilation vids that people have made from Gamechariot and other arcades. I've been thinking of making a big GG compilation video from all of the games for a while now, so those videos inspired me a bit in actually getting up and making my video. Anyway, I ended up making two of them. You can read a longer explanation at Norematch.
Best moments in Guilty Gear
Best moments in Guilty Gear - Volume 2
The world of Melty has been pretty interesting recently. Current Code was surprisingly short lived, as 1.05 has come out, bringing with it new balance changes, new system additions, and a new character in the form of Powerd Ciel. I'm pretty surprised CC was updated so quickly, since I felt that the game was positively received by the community. The tier list for CC was:
新宿勢の一部でランクを作成したので貼りにきました。
各自Ｓ～Ｃの４段階にに分けてランクを作ってもらい、Ｓ４点、Ａ３点、Ｂ２点、Ｃ１点で加算したのが以下の結果になりました。参考までに。
参加者
キリヤ、ジン、SAT、新屋、じゃむ、かんな、丸やん、芳乃
Ｓ：赤主(32)、シオン(31)
Ａ：さつき(26)、秋葉(25)、ワラキア(25)、シエル(24)、志貴(24)
Ｂ＋：琥珀(20)、リーズ(20)、七夜(20)、キシマ(20)、ヒスコハ(19)、式(19)
Ｂ：都古(18)、アルク(17)、青子(17)、翡翠(16)、ネロ(16)
Ｂ－：Ｖ(15)、白レン(15)、ワルク(14)、ロア(14)
Ｃ：レン(12)、メカ(11)、制服(9)
点数以外の段階分けは適当に書きました。
Ｂが分かれてるのは、ＡやＣに変えるほどの差はないけど、多すぎて見づらいからです。
Basically this was made by 8 top players, where they were asked to rank the characters from S(4 pts) to C(1 pt). Points were then totaled and a list was made from them. The players that participated are Kiriya, Jin, SAT, Niiya, Jamu, Kanna, Maruyan, and Yoshino.
S VAkiha(32) Sion(31)
A Satsuki(26) Akiha(25) Wara(25) Ciel(24) Shiki Tohno(24)
B+ Kohaku(20) Ries(20) Nanaya(20) Kouma(20) Maids(19) Ryougi(19)
B Miyako(18) Arc(17) Aoko(17) Hisui(16) Nero(16)
B- VSion(15) White Len(15) Warc(14) Roa(14)
C Len(12) Mech Hisui(11) Seifuku Akiha(9)
One thing I found pretty interesting was that Kiriya only really had to ask 8 players. The previous "top player survey" tier lists made for earlier games always had 20 players because of disagreement about character placement, but it seems that in CC everybody pretty much agreed on all the rankings. I think the main point of disagreement I saw on the BBS was Ryougi's placement, as some people rank her really high.
Anywho, CC 1.05 is out, and it's going to get updated again soon! 1.07 is set to be released sometime during the summer, and it will have yet another new character in the form of Archetype Earth, who was a silly boss character introduced in the PS2 port of MBAA. I don't know how the Japanese community is reacting to 1.05, but it seems like many people in the American community don't like the changes. 1.05 brought about some pretty drastic changes, bringing back OTG relaunches from the doujin game days of MB, and allowing every character to do followup combos off of raw airthrows. In addition, the new character Powerd Ciel seems really strong in a Melty context, as the Crescent version has amazing normals, an air special that gives a hard knockdown, a ridiculous DP, and a projectile that she can throw out after knockdowns that is massive +f on hit and block. She seems almost like a GG character brought into the Melty system.
I think I'm one of the few players in the American scene that actually likes the new changes in 1.05. Melty's game being too air based and the obnoxious jumping were always my biggest gripes with the game, and I've always felt that the game didn't reward players enough for getting off neutral airthrows, so I love that 1.05 makes airthrows stronger as it takes care of both of these problems. Another somewhat minor change is that all walkspeeds are much faster, which I like as well because it makes the ground game more important. I'm pretty indifferent towards the OTG relaunches; they were extremely broken in the earlier versions of Melty, but AA has gravity and hitstun decay so it should help balance out the craziness. So far, nothing broken has been discovered with OTGs so I think it'll turn out ok.
I find it pretty sad nowadays how out of touch I am with popular music. I just follow amateur singers on nico now haha. A lot of the singers I follow have actually gone and released albums recently: Wotamin, MARiA and Choucho got solo album releases under doujin circles, Yamai got two albums out on her major label, and MARiA ended up doing the opening theme for the Freezing anime.
I've also discovered the magic of timeshifting on nico, so now I can watch all those lives that get put on at horrible hours in my timezone(lol 5am). For the nico singers, it's pretty interesting to hear them perform during the namahousous without the help of mixing and post-production. [TEST] from the nico band [Mint] recently did an all acoustic live with Choucho and Sariya-jin that I enjoyed a lot, so I ended up restreaming it so that I could archive it(since nico only archives stuff for a week). It's kind of like a Macross Frontier appreciation themed performance.
http://www.justin.tv/psyblade/b/285367944
OVZ(Otaku-Verse Zero) is this Youtube show I've been following for a while. It has Yuu Asakawa in it speaking English, which is pretty awesome in itself. The show got off to a rough start but it's pretty good now in its 2nd season. This is easily my favorite episode so far, since it details a live show that Yuu Asakawa produced for herself sometime in January. It's pretty surreal to hear Megurine Luka's original voice actress singing some of her signature songs.
