Unboxing [JP]: Blade Arcus from Shining EX - Standard Edition (PS4)

And another Japanese fighting game joins my shelf, this time it's from SEGA again with their Shining franchise.

Blade Arcus from Shining EX (ブレードアークス フロム シャイニング EX) is a 2.5D fighting game from SEGA consisting of characters from various games in the Shining franchise. The Shining franchise has a whole as had a rough time due to the later games not receiving any localisations whatsoever. The only instalment that made it outside Japan was back in the 80s/90s with Shining Force. The fighting game spin-off started off in Arcades until eventually making its way onto consoles.

The following playable characters are as follows:

Ryuuga

Pairon

Rage

Sakuya

Xiao Mei

Altina

Roselinde

Melty

Fenrir

Isaac

Rick

Dylan

Rouna

Urayukihime

The following playable characters are exclusive to the EX version:

Misty
Sonia

Format: PlayStation 4 (also available on PlayStation 3)

Version: Japan

Exclusive: Yes (to Sony)

Local Players: 2

Online Players: 0

Resolution: 720p/1080i/1080p

HDD Space: 3.17GB

Trophies: Yes

The game is entirely in Japanese but the menus and character names are in English to help navigate. Given this is an arcade game I suspect this was intentional. The gameplay itself will also be simple to understand since it's a fighting game.

There is local multiplayer but no online so there's some replayability. The game is also available on the PlayStation 3. The game did actually get localised by Degica (the same folks who also localised Koihime Enbu) for Steam in English but only based on the original arcade version (it does have online however).

First print copies, like mine, did come with download codes but they have expired. I bought this title from Solaris Japan for a pretty decent price, but of course they can fluctuate over time.