Because of how terribly managed the Saturn was outside Japan, very few of its RPGs ever got official English translations, and some of the ones that did were just used for some talentless hack's stupid comedy routines. But thanks to the brave and noble efforts of fan translators in the modern age, we're finally able to see some of the interesting exclusives the Saturn got in Japan, and Arcana Strikes is definitely one that's unique and worthy of note!
There's a few things that make Arcana Strikes unique, and at the core of a lot of them are the things the game doesn't have. Most important are the things it deliberately doesn't have: there's no items, equipment, no spells in the way that you might usually think of them, and strangest of all, there's no attack option in battle! All of these things are replaced with cards. You have a deck of up to twenty-four cards (and if you have fewer than twelve, the difference will be made up with useless spam cards), and they come in various categories. There's cards that just inflict an elemental attack on an enemy, cards that can buff an ally or debuff an enemy, and most important of all: cards that summon monsters to fight alongside you!
Every fight in the game will be against a main enemy who stands opposite your character. You both have a space at either side of you, into each of which you can summon a monster. Monsters will always attack straight in front of them: the monster on your left will attack the monster on your opponent's right (which is the left side of the screen, since you're facing each other), and vice versa. If a monster doesn't have a monster in front of it, they'll attack the main opponent directly. You have more freedom, and can attack anyone on your opponent's side, or use other cards for other effects. A battle goes on until the main fighter on one side is killed. Monster cards can be bought from shops, and there are also capture cards that let you steal them from opponents!
Monsters also have elements assigned to them (though there are some neutral monsters), and of course, each element is strong against one other and weak against one other. Your attack cards are mostly also elemental, and if you have more than one of the same card in your hand, you can play them at the same time for more powerful attacks. To explain further, you have your deck of cards, and in battle, you'll have a hand of four of them. You have the option to play a card from you hand (or more than one if you've got multiples), recall a monster from battle, discard one or more card from your hand (you'll draw back up to four on your next turn), or play an arcana card. There are twenty-two arcana cards in the game, any you only get them on special occasions, like completing dungeons. You can play each one once per battle, and they have big effects like healing your whole team, damaging everyone one the playing field, and so on. Finally, each battle happens pretty much in isolation, as your HP and that of your monsters is restored after each one, and all cards (except the single-use disposables) are returned to your deck.
The arcana are what the plot revolves around, too: you're some random guy who was brought into the dream world to find and reclaim these twenty-two arcana who are meant to keep things balanced in the world, but have been stolen by monsters and other evil-doers. It's a pretty bare-bones, generic plot, and it's clear that the developer's focus was on the mechanics. While you do navigate the dungeons in a fairly traditional top-down manner, you don't get to do so in either the overworld or towns. The over world is a series of static map screens with dots on them representing towns and dungeons, and the towns are each just a single screen with a few characters stood in a row waiting to be addressed.
The game's presentation is something worth talking about, too. First, it's clear that the artists were having a lot of fun with their computers: there's lots of very charming 90s 3DCG renders for things like the map screens, and the establishing shots you see before entering a location. Furthermore, the dungeons and the background for the towns are just full of every effect they could think of: garish translucent cloud effects, big shiny lens flares, and more! It's ugly, but in a very charming way. What's not ugly, though, is the spritework use in the battle screens! All of the monsters are detailed and all have their own attack animations, and on top of that, because of how the battles work, they all also have front and back versions of all of their sprites! Another really nice detail is that even when it does the traditional RPG thing of recolouring enemies, there'll be some slight other edits done to each variant. For example, there's a series of enemies that are like little elemental spirits. There's a bunch of them in different colour palettes representing each element, but they also have the element they represent growing from the top of their heads, so they're not completely identical palette swaps.
Unfortunately, for all its charm and originality, there was a very specific point where Arcana Strikes wrecked all the goodwill it had built up. That point is the start of the fifth dungeon. It's off to a bad start already, as the first four were a dungeon for each of the four elements, and this fifth is just another water dungeon like the first one was. Then, to make things worse, the jester character, who appears every now and then to introduce new concepts to you, turns up and tells you that from now on, you'll have to maintain two seperate decks, and to make sure you actually do it, you'll now have to fight every boss twice, once with each of your decks. I tried to persevere, but this knowledge weighed heavy on my mind, and I just had no more interest in playing the game, realising that it was going to continue gradually becoming more and more labourious as it went on. If you've got the patience for this kind of thing, maybe you'll find Arcana Strikes to be a rewarding game in its ever-increasing complexity. But for me, it was just too much hassle.
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