VN - Unity - Completed - Arcadia Fallen [Final] [Galdra Studios]

I wasn't sure of what to expect when I downloaded this VN, but I was extremely pleased to find it a fantastic and memorable experience that has stuck with me for many months, even after finishing the game. (Victoria best waifu btw)

This is very very impressive game with many efforts put in artstyle, voiceover and dialogues.
I can complain that puzzles are annoying addition (completing alchemy books is a hell but I have even more problems with needing to actually decypt stuff on paper in IRL before trying to match result for one particular puzzle... I just can't remember that weird runes) and the way how you pick up additional dialouges is a bit... annoying, but the game still shines brightly.

Reminds me of Henchman Story, but that one was worse in the art style.

At least in my playthrough there was nothing even remotely erotic or sexual, so I question whether this game belongs here on this site. However, I did enjoy the game very much, primarily due to the excellent voice acting .

The character that you see is what you're gonna get and I'm not really a huge fan of any of them, not that there is that much choice. The story is a generic JRPG story. I'll give props to the guy that did the art, interface and choice system.

But the character designer and story writer needs to step up their game.

Very good game. Very wholesome with good artstyle and loveable characters. It's a visual noble with character creation, choice making, puzzles and I guess romance? Haven't finished it yet so yeah.
Anyways it's a cute game and yeah no sexual stuff or anything in it (atleast doesn't seem like it)

I didn't think when I picked up the game over the holidays that I would finish it so quickly because I got addicted to the gameplay. So this is probably one of the first 5 stars I give. Unmarked spoilers in some instances because I feel like this should have been confirmed.

PROS:

• The art style is great. It allows for some funny expressions
• The voice actors are top notch. As shown in the opening credits, all the voice actors are those you would hear in Fire Emblem 3 Houses. So of course Allerga is there as Victoria and its like "She's definitely Shamir". I also like how the Ashen Wolves are pretty much the majority of your party members (in that regard).
• The character customization is simple but great. You can pick your pronouns and appearance and have fun with the voice options.
• The Avatar's personality is shaped to how you want them to be. For me, I picked an androgynous male (long white hair, purple eyes) with male pronouns and a voice but had a female name (Valerie). I always picked the sarcastic/humorous comments until the situation got serious (and of course, I think the game checks how you've been playing your character since later on, some options stop popping up). Either way, when the situation could no longer be funny, I just stopped picking the snarky comment since it would come off as a coping mechanism for all the bad things that happen. Of course, when it comes to romance, I like the tsundere archetype (snark at everyone, be even more snarky with Michael and then go into a blushing mess when alone because sarcasm isn't working anymore).
• The characters are great and well-written. You need that to be invested.
• The dialogue options and completing sidequests do actually effect options later down the line. At the climax, there's a witch trial being held and the avatar is made to appeal to the crowd. If you didn't do certain things, some arguments wouldn't be effective. Like if you don't help Quinn with the forest, I feel like that option wouldn't be used as evidence that mages aren't the bad guys. (I also think that if you're jumping around in the argument, that the crowd wouldn't care).
• The puzzles are very creative.
• The lore buidling was amazing
• Romancing Michael was amazing <3 Rogue character who flirts a lot, is an outlaw but has a dark and troubled past that makes you want to help him deal with his issues? SIGN ME UP.
• I like that the last chapter doesn't pull any punches. There will be casualties no matter what you do even if you tried to play the "shall not kill". I picked the most logical ending at the end and I'm still upset because its the most fitting.
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CONS:

• I'm bad at puzzles so there were times that I felt like I shouldn't have won that mission.
• The game feels short and the alchemy puzzles just seem to pad the game
• The game sometimes repeats party banter which is more of an error of the game.
• The alchemy game when you get all the flowers actually lack any use to the story. When I made a powerful poison, I thought I was going to end up using it on a certain character given how much of an evil bastard he was, but it never came to pass.
• The audio. This is a strange one, but even in the option setting, it doesn't feel like it works. The music is louder than the voice actors at times and I feel like I misheard dialogue as a result.
• Since this game tried to tie everything together, there were still some unresolved plotholes mainly involving Mime. She's a child so there's no romance option with her, but that means that you don't get that many opportunities to learn about her because she's an amnesic. We're supposed to put two and two together that she's the daughter of the King of the Forest. But this plot point doesn't actually have any importance since the endgame is still the same despite the choices.
• This might be a first time playthrough thing, but if you focus on one character for the romance, you'll probably be locked out of other important information of other characters if you're not as close to them. You're given enough information to help push them toward their goal, but I feel like I never influenced Ann on anything TBH.
• The Avatar for better or worse is more of a mediator who can push decisions but is overall not the one who can make the overall big ones. They lack in fighting power, so they use words to their advantage. In many situations, the Avatar is helpless in dealing with obvious problems due to this flaw. I personally enjoy an avatar that isn't forced to be overall important outside of pushing the others to be better, but I do think the foreshadowing at the beginning of the game and linking to Mime gave the impression he was more important than the game let on.
• Liz is brought up multiple times by the characters, but at the end of the day, the plot concerning her and the empire is never touched on (maybe because I didn't pick the seal ending).

Overall, this game while short is amazing. I would play the game to see all the romance options, but I don't think any of them are going to outdo Michael except Victoria (as the first person who is introduced to you). I was very satisfied for how each character ended up in the epilogue. No sex is needed for this game to be enjoyable.
Support the developers and hope that with enough support, they can make a sequel. There's so much to explore in this universe.

It's review o'clock

Warning, there is no need to be scared of pronouns, neither of any attack helicopters or anything else, it might come of as a bad sign for most, but Arcadia doesnt really suffer from it.

The Characters of Arcadia are mostly well voiced by their Voice actors and most of them are ok to well written, besides maybe Victoria, since she was too long stuck, with the role of being the classic Lawful character, , otherwise the rest of the cast was great, beside some issues with Mimi.

The Plot of the game is nothing special or that hasnt been done before, but that doesnt make it instantly bad, it has set up its worldbuilding and has its own worldstructure that also maybe took some minor aspects from dnd, it generally has to deal with the issues of its current Political system.

Overall its a setting about an empire, currently ruling over most things that are inhabited by humans, magic, spirits and everything else is being looked down upon and everything magical is being harassed usually, the only magic really allowed is by the official magic school, that magic is usually used for trivial things, like a botanist mage or a chair and table mage.

You are playing an Alchemist apprentice(self insert) and work at a old lady's Alchemy shop (no gilf route), you basically go out to run some errands when you run into an aley since you heard someone scream there, and get stabbed by a rude asshole, while you are trying to protect a spirit that he has been harassing, the spirit saves your life and is now bound to you,
you having no fucking idea how to separate the spirit from you, and are now bound to find out how to undo this fuckery, to get back to normal.

Now im going to go over the plot more and it will get spoilery, so skip this part if you try to go blind into it.


The dialogue in the game has some flaws, is overall pretty strong tho, you get to decide what kind of line your character uses to respond, be a sarcastic asshole, be sad, happy or angry, most of the time these choices have nearly no impact, but adds to the player experience, I had fun being an sarcastic asshole most of the time with my choices.
One of the stronger points of dialogue, is the banter after finishing dialogue scenes between characters, since they start talking to each other about things that transpired a moment ago and address each other, for anyone that played persona 5, its like the dialogue you have in morganas car while driving through mementos. The only annoying part of that is, that you have to actually wait in the map screen, so u can let them finish speaking everytime.

The game also focuses on choices a lot and tells you most of the time if the decision you make, will actually be important, most of the time these choices have minor impact, other times the game lies to you and it only gives you three lines of dialogue you can use in conversation, otherwise its more flavor text on how you want to resolve a situation, like run away and get saved or be beat up and then be saved. Choosing how my character behaved in conversations, was one of the aspects i enjoyed the most and would recommend.

The romance in this game was ok and pretty barebones.
Disclaimer tho for everyone, everyone on the picture of the mainpage is romanceable, that isnt the girl with the pink hair, so dont go in there expecting that she has any romance options.
Everytime you get a romance option the game shows it to you and lets you choose a romance dialogue option, i didnt notice any difference in using certain responses, so you can choose whatever you want in there, it wont make a difference, neither will it give u any negative stats or anything, even if you are being a creep.
More than a few more lines and a kiss scene is all you get for romancing a character, otherwise most events stay the same and wont make a big difference.
Another thing that would be important to note is, you can choose romance options with everybody in the game to a certain point in the game, near the end, the game will ask you, if you have any feelings for said character, after saying yes or no the game locks you onto this character and restricts any other romance options, so be mindful on who you pick.

The music in this game was ok and nothing extraordinary, and im not really sure if this game has any skip function or other controls, since im a subhuman and i have a scuffed setup that connects my laptop with a controller, that then connects to my headphones.

The Art in this game is pretty cool tho and reminds of the style of the world ends with you, most poses for characters are also well drawn and expressive.

The game also lets you choose your protag and how he/she/it/dog would look like, but there are barely any options, but having them is good for the people that need the extra immersion, gender also wont change anything, so choose a boy or a girl, story and dialogue mostly stays the same.
Thank god tho that they gave the protagonist a voice u can choose from tho, since i'd take a protag with more voicelines over a silent one any day.

Now to gameplay,
well its a VN with very little puzzle mechanics, that feel unnecessary for the most part, its more like a chore you have to complete for a sec, to get back to the VN, at one point in the Story the puzzle difficulty spikes but then goes back to normal again, where u usually complete it in a few seconds, so if you are into puzzles i wouldnt recommend the puzzle aspect here to you.

The game takes you about 4 to 5 hours depending on how fast you read.
I also dont see much replayability for this VN, since the extra romance lines are very short and prob only the ending makes a difference worthy enough to reload, since there are no real routes depending on the char you romance.

Otherwise i can recommend it to people that like to read short VNs , for a good but short time, and if you like being an ass to people, dont expect too much of the romance tho.

Btw Michael best boi

An unexpected but highly welcomed visual novel.
l will admit, l underestimated this game at first. l thought it was one of those tags of "LGBTQ+" and the character creation having the option of using "Them" but l chose to go through this game, had a hunch; that it might be good after all. l played a lot of games like this but none managed to keep me invested, always left down on me, left the games before the 25% mark of a story because l had enough. But this game managed to keep my interest with fitting voice acting, acceptable story progression, suitable art style and simple companions.
It is an overall cute game with a short story, l would say unforgettable as well because what this game accomplished is; not being a bad game. It is not extremely good but at least it isn't a bad one, at least in my opinion. It keeps you going and even at the end of the story, you want more. l felt empty after ending it like l wanted more, l even felt the need to cry, maybe l am doing it right now.
Of course, the story can be predictable at times, cliche but the voice acting and the chemistry between the companions held on to me. Got to love the romance between you and Ann even if it is shown only a few times because of the length of the game.
However, the problems that l recognized were the repeating voice lines; when a character says only a few words instead of being fully voiced. The constant " soooo", protagonist laughing after every joke response, using the same laugh with no variety etc. Its anti-climatic ending felt a bit rushed; everything happened so fast after you fell into a trap, you gather your allies back and bam, the world is saved. The game can feel that nothing is at stake. And possibly my least favourite of all; the presentation during dialogue.

Have you ever played or watched Ace Attorney? l consider that game series as the ACE of visual novels. It might not have the freedom of choices but how the characters express themselves during dialogue and how the game shows you pictures; when people reminiscence, so you can understand visually what they are talking about, not feeling like you're being shoved a wall of text and the speaker being stuck with one-two expressions. It felt human.
Arcadia Fallen fails at that part, though the voice acting(when used) holds it however,l can't say for how long. Most of the time, when a huge exposition comes into the play, l just skip it. l can't just keep watching only 1 expression and voiceless text. It suffers from the "Tell" and not using the "Show".
l forgot something important and that is player acknowledgement (maybe it has a connection to Player Agency as well), as l like to call it. It is when, despite the game giving you the choice of being male or female, you feel like an entity and nothing more. You feel like THE hero and not the male or female hero. In other words, gender doesn't really matter and that breaks immersion, especially mine.
Perhaps the best example of player acknowledgement off top of my mind right now is: Persona 3 Portable. There you have the choice of being a boy or a girl but the choice really does change a lot. The main story remains the same with some differences in flavour text but how the world reacts on you is astounding. l felt like being a girl when l played that game, most games keep you being a boy, l already experienced that a lot of times but this.
All these 2 examples are something you should look into if you're interested in understanding what l meant and why l chose these 2.
All in all, l really recommend Arcadia Fallen, a flawed game but manages to keep your interest, unlike others. l could write more about your connection and the building of the protagonist that needs work among other things(and the cute and lovely music, especially the main menu) but l can't say more. It is best to try it yourself.