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Some will argue that we're not really caught in a resurgence of the 2-D fighting game, but I'll say this much: even in the crazed mid-1990s, when everyone from Namco to Saurus latched onto the genre, Sega never made a fighter based on the Shining series of RPGs. Of course, the Shining games of that era were strategic fantasy sagas with power struggles and colorful fairy-tale aesthetics. Today's Shining creations are usually crammed with artist Tony Taka's curvaceous heroines, and that fits into a typical fighting game better than canine priestesses and unbearable arctic blasts.

Blade Arcus From Shining EX rallies together characters from two recent Shining games and throws in two new entrants: the clawed, shadowy Ryuga and the electric Bai-Long. From Shining Hearts, the game borrows Rick, Xiao-Mei, Dylan, Roruna, Isaac, Misty, and Melty. From Shining Blade, we get Yukihime, Rage, Altina, Sakuya, Roselinde, and Fenrir. And if you buy the game soon enough, you'll get Sonia from Shining Resonance. The gameplay is largely unchanged from the arcade version of Blade Arcus: the moves keep it relatively simple compared to BlazBlue or The King of Fighters, with three attack buttons and a fourth that allows tag-team swaps. Blade Arcus also shuns sprite-based graphics in favor of 3-D models in two-dimensional play, and it's certainly not as sharp as Guilty Gear Xrd. And for one final nick, there's no online play at the moment. For a fighting game, that's a trip down a long, empty elevator shaft into obscurity. Say hello to Chaos Code when you get to the bottom, Blade Arcus.

It's also a little disappointing that a Shining series fighter swipes only from two or three games. This is a line that stretches back to Shining in the Darkness on the Sega Genesis, and while it's not known for exceptionally strong characterizations, it's stocked with the sort of fanciful creatures rarely adapted for fighting games. Blade Arcus has no turtle warriors, no dragon-men, no bird-people, and no valiant centaurs. Outside of Mortal Kombat, there aren't many centaurs in fighting games.

Import Barrier: Between the region-free release and the universal language of fighting-game brutality, there's not much impediment to Blade Arcus.

Domestic Release: Sega hasn't released Shining Hearts, Shining Blade, or Shining Resonance here, so the odds don't favor a fighting game based on all three. Still, Sega localized Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax, so pleas for a North American version (with online play) might not be wasted.

What We Need: A 2-D fighter starring Mr. Bones, Astal, Chakan, Bug!, the Last Bronx cast, and other Sega superstars!

One glance at Grand Kingdom will suggest a Vanillaware game. It has the detailed backgrounds and polished characters that recall Vanillaware's Odin Sphere or Dragon's Crown, and the game's vision of warring nations and medieval-fantasy battles seems straight out of Grand Knights History,a Vanillaware gig that never came to North America. Yet Grand Kingdom is the work of MonoChro, a studio founded by Tomohiko Deguchi…who just so happens to be the director of Grand Knights History. So there's your connection.

Grand Kingdompicks up where other games are content to end: a proud empire fell a century ago, and now four kingdoms (well, two kingdoms and two queedoms) are grabbing the imperial pieces. The player commands a group of mercenaries at the heart of the struggle, and the ranks expand with various character types: gunners, shamans, lancers, archers, monsters, warriors, mages, and the explosives experts called “challengers.” Battles take place in a side-view diorama where characters arrange themselves along three planes, hopping between them to attack and defend. It's not as hectic as Guardian Heroes, but it makes for an interesting hybrid of RPG mechanics and strategic positioning.

Look closely, and you'll note that Grand Kingdom isn't as sharp as a dedicated Vanillaware title. The characters don't have the same detail and exaggeration as George Kamitani's lovingly rendered artwork—though they don't show his predilection for garish physiques, either. If it not as attractive, though, it seems solid in its gameplay.

Import Barrier: Both the plotline and the battles require some command of Japanese, so non-fluent players might be best holding out for a…

Domestic Release: Not too bad. Grand Knights History wasn't localized due to the developer lacking the time and personnel for it (and perhaps the PSP market steadily shrinking), but a semi-prominent RPG like Grand Kingdom stands a better chance today.

What We Need: A remake of Princess Crown, an action-RPG that Vanillaware's founders made for Atlus back in the Sega Saturn days.

Net High is a game all about winning Internet arguments. That's potentially the dullest thing imaginable, but the game's vision goes well beyond people hunched over keyboards and smartphone, frowning indignantly at someone's curt opinions about Buckaroo Banzai or labor reform. Net High sees the Japan of 20XX as a nation of people pressured toward good, satisfying lifestyles by the Neo Communications Act. The government tracks its citizens by giving them free smartphones and gauging their accomplishments on a service called Tweeter. Those who lead rich social lives and amass followers are rewarded, while the unpopular sit around wondering why no one faves their blurry photos of half-eaten bagels.

Naturally, this society leads to a virtual-reality dictatorship where pretty, well-groomed, high-follower “riajuu” control just about everything, leaving the have-nots disenchanted and barely employed. Net High's hero is one of these losers, with little to live for beyond his vague hope of meeting a mysterious girl he once saw on Tweeter. Yet his life changes when he discovers a Mega-Nexus device that…well, it looks like the super-powered red glasses from Gurren Lagann. More to the point, the Mega-Nexus shows him coded OBEY messages in a black-and-white world turns him into the renegade hero of Tweeter and gives him an A.I. sidekick named Cil. And so he sets forth to dispense justice to the tyrant tastemakers of the Internet, including a strange woman who hijacked Tweeter and held an entire city hostage.

When not posturing like Kamina, Net High's protagonist tracks down online superstars, investigating their proclivities and weaknesses. By filtering keywords and posting replies, the player pieces together a battle plan and brings down a riajuu threat, whether it's a vain hipster or an annoying socialite. Marvelous puts a thick layer of anime style on the game, courting the fantasies of anyone who's sneered over self-absorbed Facebook posts and Twitter feeds. And if the player's adept at Internet dueling, the game's female characters might take a liking to him. That's another fantasy fulfilled.

Of course, you could skip Net High and just annoy real people on Twitter, but that'd be mean and not as stylish.

Import Barrier: With a lot of the gameplay conveyed through dialogue, Japanese skills are a necessity.

Domestic Release: Darned good, since someone already spotted Net High trophies translated into English. The likeliest suspect is XSEED Games, though they haven't announced anything yet.

What We Need: A mode where the player's avatar steadily evolves into whatever they pretend to be online. Spend too much time posting like Twitter superstar Dril, and your character becomes a diapered, rat-kissing worshiper of sacred jeans.

I get the impression that Nintendo really doesn't want to release Devil's Third. True, Nintendo fished it out of development purgatory after the game switched engines, bounced from the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and spent years in development. Yet it's taken a critical pounding, and Nintendo's pushed it with the reluctant shrug normally reserved for contractual embarrassments. Far too much time and money went into Devil's Third to cancel it now, and it's not as though the Wii U can afford to ditch exclusives…or even limited-time exclusives, since there's a PC version of Devil's Third in the future.

Devil's Third is a comeback attempt from Tomunobu Itagaki, who spent years at Tecmo making solid and unapologetically chauvinist games like Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden. His creations, straightforward opinions, and sunglasses made him an industry standout, but he's drifted out of the spotlight since leaving Tecmo. Devil's Third finds him dealing in the same hyper-macho ethos. Set in a world where a collapsed satellite network sparked international warfare, the game follows a former terrorist named Ivan (other characters even call him "the Terrible") through a roaring procession of bloodbaths and shootouts. He'll slash apart ninja, gun down enemies from a first-person perspective, and piss off terrorist vixens and stuffy government types with his silent cocksure attitude. And when we first meet him, he's playing the drums in his prison cell.

It's hard to tell where parody ends and Itagaki's potentially serious take on a “terrorist shooter' might begin in Devil's Third, though the game at least borrows from a few good places. Ivan carries a variety of weapons and pulls off a sliding move right out of Platinum's Vanquish. Devil's Third also sports a multiplayer mode with a level editor and three-sided matches. That's hardly unique among modern games, however.

Devil's Third seems headed for mediocrity, though I wonder if it'll turn out unintentionally special. It almost seems like the sort of thing that acquires a weird, half-ironic fan base years after its release, so perhaps Nintendo's banking on the video-game version of The Room.

In all fairness to Devil's Third, a game can be fun as long as it does one thing well. Look at the Earth Defense Force series, which started off as a budget release successful in a single way: pitting human soldiers against giant, city-wrecking insects. From there it grew into vastly improved sequels, and now we have two upgrades hitting this month to bring us a holiday season of horrific monster invasions.

Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders From Planet Space remakes one of the better games in the series, letting players control foot soldiers, flying Pale Wing commandos, and Air Raiders who place traps and automated weapons. The vehicle lineup is also much larger, and the game sports multiplayer for four people at a time. It also received new voicework for the Vita port, and appropriate voiceovers are more important to an EDF game than some might realize.

Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despairbuilds on a more recent piece of the franchise, one that we knew here as Earth Defense Force 2025. It still has the glorious cornball appeal of scrappy human soldiers fending off an enormous bug invasion, and it adds even more weapons, missions, mutant foes, and a new dragonlike giant—and the best way to fight it is by piloting an equally huge mecha. The game also runs smoother on a PlayStation 4, further enabling the spectacle of a city devoured by giant dragon-bugs.