Arcana Heart 3

So far, so samey, but the real twist comes courtesy of the Arcana system that augments your character with supplementary abilities.

After picking a fighter, the select screen fades away to reveal 23 Arcanas that look like the distant cousins of Final Fantasy's summons. Each one is ranked by its attack and defence characteristics, but in truth, they affect everything from your character's health to how quickly your super gauge recharges. They also confer passive abilities that include immunity to chip damage, unblockable charge attacks and increased jump height. Metal even lets you charge your super gauge manually, SNK style.

Things get even more complex once you start experimenting with the Arcana-specific moves, as with everything from basic projectiles and command grabs to advanced special moves that let you harvest plants for health or morph your opponent into a helpless dark slime, it's clear that Arcana Heart 3 offers a mindboggling level of depth. And that's without contemplating the ins and outs of the Force Gauge and its defensive Arcana Bursts and screen-filling Arcana Blazes.

And yet, despite all its mechanical splendour, Arcana Heart 3 suffers from The King of Fighters XII syndrome, with its comparative lack of single-player distractions.

The weightiest offering is the by-the-numbers Story mode. This plays out through static storyboards as you work your way through a handful of AI opponents, before cumulating with an elaborate yet uninspired boss fight. Then, once you've skipped the end credits more times than you'd care to, you're left with the sedate Versus, Score Attack and Gallery modes.

Thankfully, the online functionality proves to be more accomplished; working with Arc System Works, developer Examu has borrowed the excellent BlazBlue netcode. This means lag-minimal matches when playing against people in the same country, and with customisable Player and Ranked matches to keep you busy, Arcana Heart 3 offers a pleasingly robust experience. You can even brush up in Training mode as you wait for an opponent to join your room, which is a welcome touch.

To recommend Arcana Heart 3 therefore depends on what you want from a fighting game. If you're the kind of player who demands a wealth of single-player content and expects to see everything from combo trials to challenge towers, then this barebones approach will rub you up the wrong way. And if you prefer your games gritty and gory, then these manga maids are only going to make you cringe.

But if you can accept the pleated pixels for what they are, can appreciate the accomplished fluidity of the on-screen animations and - more importantly - are prepared to invest time into learning a technically demanding yet ultimately rewarding combat system, then Arcana Heart 3 is one of the most flexible, diverse fighting games that money can buy. It's far from perfect - and the variety it offers will be too spicy for some - but it effortlessly positions itself next to the current cream of the crop as a colourful, curious alternative.