
Review: Arcadia Fallen- Chance To Get a Hold On Your Life
November 17th, 2021
Galdra Studios
A Story With No Right Or Wrong Choices
Character Customization & Growth
Dialogue options with tone labels. You decide whether your character is shy, bold, or the type to make a joke of any situation.
Create your alchemist in your own image or play out a fantasy.
Arcadia Fallen is a Modern Fantasy Visual Novel in which your decisions create your character’s personality. Will you be quiet, brave, or always cracking jokes? Play as a young alchemical apprentice who is forced to work with an illicit spirit. When they are unexpectedly drawn into a conflict between humanity and magic, they must band together with a group of unusual heroes to save the planet while escaping their own destiny. Galdra Studios has developed one of the best puzzle games in the category, which was launched on November 17th, 2021.

In Arcadia Fallen, you take a journey with no unpleasant outcomes. Your choices will never stop you from continuing, but they will have an impact on what you will have to go through before you accomplish your goal. Optional dialogue with tone labels. You get to choose whether your character is shy, brave, or the kind to make a comedy out of anything. It is entirely up to you how you spend your time, whether you want to learn alchemy, fall in love, or learn about the world’s mysteries.

Arcadia Fallen is really a beautiful Visual Novel. It addresses many of the issues that we have with the genre and finds answers to them. As an example. You have complete control over what your character says! And not just “once in a while.” Basically, if you are directly addressed, you have the option of responding in a variety of ways, and there are a variety of personality types from which to choose. Another element that this game does right that we don’t always see in other VNs is that the other characters have real interactions and dialogues with one other, sometimes without your character needing to do anything. It helps the setting and characters feel more real and alive, rather than as if they’re all flocking to you because you’re the main character. The voice acting is excellent as well. We liked it a lot more than certain AAA games we’ve tried. They felt more like actual people than characters, and they were (almost) all likable, even the one we didn’t like. Character creation is a nice feature, but we wish there were more possibilities. The background music is diverse and pleasant enough to keep you from going insane. There are even a handful of nice tracks when things get a little spooky. There are two issues with this. For starters, the basic plot is a little cliched. Help to save the world. But the characters handle it well enough, and they each have their own reasons for being there and personal interests that go beyond “Well, horrible things would happen if we weren’t here.” They’re all driven by a common purpose and have their own desires, needs, and weaknesses. Another gripe we have is that our favorite character, Mime, isn’t available for romance. We haven’t finished the game yet, so there could be a story explanation for it, but we’d be lying if we said we weren’t disappointed when we found out, to the point that we had to quit playing for the night. Having said that, we highly suggest the game. It has far too many things done well, much too well, to be overlooked if you enjoy the genre. It’s the most fun we’ve had with a video game since VA-11 Hall-A.
Arcadia Fallen feels like an experiment. It tests the limits of how much freedom you can give the player with respect to the reaction, while feeling that you are making a difference. As a result, more frequent answers don’t seem to have a lot of weight. In the meantime, important choices interrupt the immersion a bit, depending on how prominent they are. Still, the character design is good, allies stand out, and the effort spent on the game is clear. This is the type of game that people who enjoy it should try.
