Arcadia Fallen

Really interesting game! Puzzles, stories and choices! I got lost in it easily!

HIGHLY recommend this game !!! Was eating this story up at every turn. The characters are lovable (both your main group and the side characters who aren't as present are endearing!), the worldbuilding is coherent and intriguing and left me wanting to learn more, the alchemy gameplay is fun and makes your brain work for it but not in an overly frustrating way, and the dialogue is fun and the banter feels natural but at the same time the game knows when it needs to be serious to make a moment land. And when a moment lands, it LANDS. The ending ACTUALLY got a few tears out of me which is VERY hard for games to do. I also appreciate that the choices you make are marked with their tone, so I know in advance if a line I'm choosing is being spoken as genuine, a joke, or a complaint, and that romance lines are filed away in their own tab to prevent any stealthy wooing you didn't intend to happen. Very nice qol features for my neurodivergent brain that can sometimes be an issue in other VNs/choose your own story type games. Plus, I also really like how your impactful choices are usually not cut and dry "good guy" and "not as good guy" choices; all major choices are more or less arguable wit…

I gotta say, I was not expecting myself to like this game that much. I picked up on sale, expecting to get maybe half an hour in before I got bored and refunded it, charting it as "not for me" like most visual novels. Buuuuut, instead, I played the whole game. And honestly? It's great. Not perfect, but a solid 8/10 visual novel to me. The characters were likeable (or the exact right amount of hateable) which meant I never spent any time trying to avoid conversations. They were fun to read through, and the voice acting was pretty top notch. That being said, the ending was... well, the best way to describe it is "Rushed" We reach the last act, and barely 5 minutes later I'm doing the last puzzle, which is no harder than any of the other puzzles. Aaaaand we're done. Yeah, it sorta felt a bit rushed and left a bad taste in my mouth. That and well, the romance. God, I'm a sucker for good romance (and in case nobody could tell, I ended up liking Ann a normal amount) but... We get a couple cutesy scenes, one confession, and like, 4 total kisses. That... I know the game isn't super long, but that felt way too short. I wanted more! Yeah, overall, I liked the game, but it just needed an e…

I came across Arcadia Fallen II being recommended to me me and got curious about the first game. Boy, am I glad I played! Just finished my first go-through. I played a kind-hearted woman who was timid at first but grew into a leader who brought everyone together with Reason, Diplomacy, and even Determination when needed. Right off the bat the art work is lovely. However, it is the voice acting and story that really shine. Truly, I haven't heard acting in games this great in a long time. I laughed, I cried, I stayed up far too late twice, and I enjoyed the puzzles. ♥

Good enough VN with many choices to enable proper role play, but certainly isn’t anything groundbreaking. It ends right after it starts getting interesting, the story isn’t particularly deep nor does it have much to say - aside from the usual stuff of doing an allegory to show that bad things in our society are bad. Like sure it explores complex topics, but every other piece of media explores those same complex topics and some of them do it just plainly better. Same goes for word building - it’s largely mashing concepts we have already seen hundreds of times and sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. And even the cast of characters falls into classical tropes - the law ignoring mage, the state sanctioned warrior conflicted about state, mysterious guy from far off land and so on. It works - no doubt helped by the voice acting, but it doesn’t push the genre forward and won’t leave a lasting impact. Last;y the romantic subplots are a token inclusion at best. Haven’t played any dating sim for a significant amount of time to know how it’s supposed to be done, but having like 5 “romantic” interactions (the quotes are doing some heavy lifting here) and finally getting a kiss just…

Great visual novel! highly recommend