Arcadia Fallen 2 Review
“Going where the seven winds take me” Written by: Hunter (@ReaperHunter23) Review Copy Provided by Developer
It has been a little over four years since my first time playing Arcadia Fallen. It was a charming visual novel with some very compelling character writing that I had a great time with. I was eager to see what Galdra Studios would do next, and luckily they were very up front about moving on to a sequel. I just knew I had to wait patiently and support the kickstarter when the time came. It is the kind of slow and steady wait cycle that almost made the imminent release feel a little unreal. But the game is out and I am eager to give my thoughts on it.
Image Credit: Galdra Studios
Arcadia Fallen 2 picks up seven years after the events of the first game. Rather than placing you back in the role of The Alchemist, this game opts to give you a brand new player character to experience the world with. This time around you assume the role of a mage attending the Seven Winds Academy in their final year. You get caught sleeping in class, are swiftly sentenced to cleaning duty and the story kicks off from there. Studying for the upcoming midterm exam slowly falls by the wayside, as you and your fellow detention mates stumble upon a rather alarming conspiracy. I think the choice of setting does a great job at changing the flavor of the story compared to the original, while allowing room for the familiar things that drew me into the world originally to still be present.
One of the more impressive qualities of the story of Arcadia Fallen 2 is that it manages to just keep escalating in a way that was pretty well paced overall. I thought the unjust grading conspiracy was going to be one of the main cruxes of the story, and the game managed to surprise me in a pretty positive manner when the scope extended beyond that.
I loved the cast in this game. All of the main friends you talk to are likeable or compelling in some way. Puk is a lot of fun. They are a genius tinker mage but have zero time for chasing grades. They do exactly as much as they need to get a passing grade and then devote the rest of their time to building an airship. Puk has a lot of roguish qualities. They don’t really respect the rules of the system or the prestige of the academy. They have a shrewd entrepreneurial streak and a lot of the early interactions the main character has with them is a lot of “You scratch my back. “ exchanges going on.
Hannah is a great foil to Puk in a lot of ways. She starts out wholly focused on maintaining her perfect grade and often is first shown just kind of letting people roll over her while she brushes it off and returns to her task. It doesn’t take long for the player to become privy to her overworking herself to the point of physical burnout. A lot of her arc is an introspective examination of what she actually wants to do upon graduation.
Kim and Elias are also really good foils to each other. Both of them serve apprentices to a respective teacher. Kim feels kind of stuck being pulled in a couple of different directions while Elias seems pretty sure of who he is and what he wants. This translates to their social status as well. Kim doesn’t really have many friends before meeting up with the player, and Elias is the school’s top charmer. The interactions between these two get really good in the latter parts of the game.
The cast doesn’t stop being charming at just the main crew. Nina and Soren are the player’s two oldest friends. While they may not get as much screen time as Puk or Kim, they still hold a fair amount of emotional weight for the player character and are still important in their own right. Professor Tornkvist is a stern no nonsense teacher that contrasts well with Professor Hyben’s more free spirited nature. Seeing Ann in a teaching role was interesting. I perked right up when I saw her the first time. It was cool to see how she matured since the events of the first game.
Image Credit: Galdra Studios
The party banter that you get on the school map screen in between scenes really sells the dynamic between the characters.I really enjoyed Puk and Hannah pranking each other back and forth. Ragnar and Hannah writing a song together was surprisingly heartwarming. Puk and Kim have a lot of entertaining personality clashes. My favorite banters by far were Nina’s ghost stories. Everyone in the group at the time would chime in with reactions to her story and it served as the best showcase of how the party bounces off of each other.
I think one of the biggest positives of the story of Arcadia Fallen 2 is that it does a great job at filling out more of the world that was established by the first game. The academy is mentioned by Ann and others plenty of times in the previous game but getting to experience it first hand makes it feel all the more tangible. Having students be from each of the five capitals and be from backgrounds both noble and common provides plenty of opportunities to organically color in the pages of the setting. I was always left wanting to know more about the world in spite of how much they had already told me.
Being a visual novel, a lot of the gameplay in Arcadia Fallen 2 comes down to making choices and talking to people. The game is very upfront about the severity of these choices. Usually, you are just choosing how you want to fill in the personality of your character rather than insisting that everything you say will become a spiderweb of far reaching consequences. The choices that do have some manner of lasting effect come up in regards to how your character influences the arcs of your companions. It seems like most characters still land in a similar ballpark by the end but the motivation and rationale behind their actions shifts depending on how you talk to them.
The character customization in this game is a respectable improvement from the first. You still have the choice of three body types: Masculine, feminine, and androgynous. Each body type gets two hair styles to pick from. I found the big improvement to be that you are more thoroughly able to customize your character’s color scheme. In the first game I remember pointing out that I would have liked to be able to customize the accenting color on my clothes instead of just the primary one. Well this time I got my wish and then some. You can choose the color of each article of clothing as well as the accenting colors. Altogether the customization options were pretty good. I was very pleased with how I was able to make my character look.
The puzzle mini game underwent a shake up this time around. Instead of the symbol-matching rotation puzzles, this game opts for pipe connecting puzzles. A pretty straightforward “build your path from point A to point B” system. It even throws in optional conversations you can go out of your way to get if you want. I thought it was an alright way to change the pace from the more dialogue heavy scenes. It served as a very solid transitional activity. I think the one bit of critique I would offer is that I think the distinction on the effect of each party member node is a little too subtle. Like you can see the border and know what direction they fit in when you look at it, but it doesn’t come off as super clear to me at a glance. Nothing that ruined my experience, just something I think could have been cleaned up with maybe a more contrasting border color or other detail tweak.
Image Credit: Galdra Studios
Arcadia Fallen has a fairly unique artstyle. The thick white outlines on the characters really help them pop out from the backgrounds. It also does a great job to sell the story book aesthetic. I think Arcadia Fallen 2 serves as a pretty natural progression of that artstyle. The two games don’t look drastically different but the art in this one looks a little cleaner. I think you’d get a good idea of what I mean if you compare and contrast Rune in both games. The character designs are all pretty great. My favorites are Elias and Hannah. Elias’s more subdued color palette feels like it subtly clues at him being one of the more mature students at the academy. I am also just always going to enjoy a jacket cape. Hannah’s design really sells the straight laced studious aspect of her character. Her reaction sprites were my favorite. The one of her pulling back in shock brought me no end of amusement.
The voice cast also knocked it out of the park in this game. The delivery on Ragnar’s lines often made him come off like a lost Animaniacs character in a way that I found to be really charming. It made his more serious moments all the more potent because of the heavy contrast as well. Erin Yvvete does a great job at portraying Catherine as an ice cold mean girl. And the performance when the mask slips is also just as believable. Yuri Lowenthal as Professor Hyben is really entertaining. It is certainly a change of pace from the characters I usually hear him lend his voice to so it was refreshing. It also added a lot of gravitas to Hyben’s best moments.
This game’s soundtrack was quite pleasing. A lot of themes felt more subtle and part of the background at the start but before long I would find myself going “Oh cool, this one again.” I think the area themes all really capture the spirit of the magic disciplines they house. The Tinker workshop totally comes off as this cross between a garage and a gadget store and I really enjoyed it. The recurring use of the Darling Wildflower theme was also very effective as the story progressed.
Image Credit: Galdra Studios
Summary
I would definitely recommend Arcadia Fallen 2 if you enjoy visual novels. I think the familiarity with the world really led to a level of comfort in the writing that worked to the game’s benefit. This game managed to present several aspects of the world without getting too bogged down in the details or losing focus on the story at hand. The story of the game ended up being more poignant than I was expecting it to be and it served as a great vehicle for the pleasant cast of characters to have their adventure.