Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If you like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://psteamproxy.yuanyoumao.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades

Big gaming corporation never fail to make me feel like a bunch of idiots are running them. They always screw their chances at making some of their IPs popular and profitable, simply because of their own stupid decisions and their unholy desire for short term profits.
From what I've seen, it seems like Square Enix really wants Million Arthur to be the next Fate; A popular franchise with tons of money making potential. However, they always fail to do so because of their stupid decisions such as announcing NFTs, doing crossovers with wrong games/series, or not being sure of the future of whatever they put out. Like the game we have here.
Million Arthur: Arcana Blood is a fighting game that is created by the talented team at Team Arcana/Examu, utilizes beautiful 2D sprites, and was released with little to no amount of marketing. And when you take a look at what it offers, things get more confusing, making you wonder: Why did they think releasing this game in this state is good for the franchise?


I'm not going to lie, there's a lot to like in Million Arthur: Arcana Blood. First, and the most obvious, is the game's gorgeous visual identity. The development team's sheer talent at making 2D art shows itself once again, with each included character (whether it be a playable fighter or a supporter) sporting detailed and smoothly designed sprites in addition to very short, yet high quality animations that play out upon activating each fighter's ultimate attack.
The gameplay is also very fast and fun, with mechanics that add depth and complexity to the battle system, and yet are not hard to learn and master at the very same time. The highlight of the gameplay would be its partner system though, as it allows you to select 3 partners (each with different abilities) to bring with yourself into battle, and activate them by inputting a quarter circle back motion alongside any of the attack buttons, opening up a lot of opportunities by allowing you to customize your battle approach for each match. But unfortunately, despite the battle system being really enjoyable, there's not a lot to have fun with.
There's no active online playerbase for this game anymore. If you really want to play this online, you will need to schedule matches with other people who are willing to play, either through social media or Discord servers. And if you are getting this to have some fun on your own... well... I've got some bad news.


Million Arthur: Arcana Blood is a fighting game that is very light on content, to the point that you can go through everything it has to offer in about 4 hours, and it even blocks access to some of that content for reasons. Let's start from game modes and then work our way through the details.
The game offers these modes for you to play:

• Story - Play 8 matches while going through visual novel sections to reveal more of the story, culminating in an ending for each playable character.
  
• Episodes of Arcana Blood - A short story mode which seemingly features the canon storyline of the game, with the added option to skip all of the battles.
  
• Versus - 1v1 game mode against another player or the CPU.
  
• Network - The online mode which is dead right now and requires scheduling matches beforehand.
  
• Time Trial - Play 6 matches, with your best completion time recorded after beating everyone. Has no unlockables bound to it except for a few achievements.
  
• Training - Self explanatory.
  
• Tutorial - One of the most unintuitive tutorials in a fighting game, as it explains technical information and the gameplay systems through texts and videos, instead of letting you practice them.

You basically have access to an arcade mode, a short story mode, and a time trial mode. The rest of the contents are either reserved for multiplayer, or are for training purposes. Additionaly, the roster is pretty small as well. This is somewhat understandable as 2D sprites are pretty expensive and time consuming to make, but I don't get why they had to lock 3 of them to specific modes.


There are 13 playable characters in this game, 3 of which are not accessible in the story mode and thus have no endings and unlockables. These characters include Iori Yagami, Koume Sakiyama and Wildcat Arthur, and since the game has no voice acting in its story segments, I have no idea why they don't have story paths of their own. Not that you would ever want to finish their stories if they had one though...
Unfortunately, the stories you get to experience and the endings you get by finishing them are not satisfying. The focus of the story mode is on the main two protagonists at all times, with Twinblade Arthur's story and ending being definitive and applying to all of the others. Therefore, all of the stories start the same way and have the exact same epilogue. The only differences are how their story progresses (which mostly amounts to creating excuses for battles) and their endings which shows what they went to do after Twinblade Arthur's ending took place, with a whole bunch of them being humorous.
Not only that, with the exception of Iai Arthur, none of the character stories reveal useful infomation about the world and the setting (aside from basic stuff). So, coupled with the endings not being interesting closures, the whole thing quickly becomes boring and useless to go through. It also doesn't help that those stories are retconned through the "Episodes of Arcana Blood" game mode! This mode offers a more cohesive plot with more visual novel sections and more information provided to players, and a totally different ending that closes the storyline of the game once and for all.
The gallery rewards you get for finishing each of the stories are not worth the time either. Million Arthur: Arcana Blood's gallery is one of the worst that you can find in a fighting game, and makes you wonder why it's even there. There is no currency to unlock things with, no music, no videos and no character arts. It only offers the 19 images that you get by playing the story modes, alongside 3 posters that were used for promotional purposes. That's it!


Everything I have said so far can make anyone confused as to why did this game even get a PC/console release to begin with. It does not have enough content, and whatever's in it is not enjoyable, so offline players won't like it. It also never had the chance to have an online scene, due to it not having any marketing and player reach. So, what was the point of releasing it in this state?
I think I may have an answer to this question: Gacha.
This game was based on a gacha that never found its way to international markets and stayed in Eastern countries. So, I think this was supposed to act as an advertisement for the gacha, especially since arcades are not that popular outside Japan. But when the higher ups realized there won't be any global release, they decided to cut as many corners as possible and release the game with whatever was ready at the time, to save money and see if they can turn a profit from the sales. That's just my theory, but it seems like it's the most probable one.


Looks great, feels very fun to play, but fails in every other aspect. The online scene is dead, it has a bafflingly low amount of content, and utterly fails to make you interested in the franchise.


PS: I actually really wanted to quit playing mostly because I could not tolerate the announcer saying "Please tell me your select" before each round. I know the game is made by a Japanese studio but C'MON! Is their Engrish getting worse?
PPS: My playtime is not accurate as I kept farming the game for 9 hours to get trading cards, before finally trying to play it.