Arcadia Fallen II

So, here we are again, and what a pleasure! Pros: - This game improved A TON, on the original. - The cast is colorful and vast. So many cool characters! - Great dubbing, marvelous casting all around, especially Ragnar, the Librarian and Morax. - The game is almost twice the length of the first one. - A lot of character costumization! Your look, major, roommate... You can even colorize your prom outfit! - The character writing is inspired. Everyone has their own distinct personality, and you want to get to know them. Even side-characters are interesting, and impact the story in a meaningful way ;) - The world is very intricate, detailed and feels lived in. Events impact eachother, also those from the first game, and things are always in motion. It's so interconnected and interesting! - The character-stills are so fun and expressive! soooo many neat character designs! And there are many instances of gorgeous splash art, sometimes you even get to see your own character in them, customizations and all! - The new UI is so sleek and stylish! Cons: - It's a bit on the slow side, story wise. A lot of talking, not a lot of action, unlike the first game. While I love to get to know the world and characters, I do feel a bit of spice is in order, to keep things moving. - you don't get to use your major a lot, or at least I didn't, as a mendor. Someone is hurt? not my problem, lol! - Only one minigame, albeit a fun one (pipes) - The male mc voice clips don't really match the vibe of what he's saying, so it feels awkward a lot of the time. - The skybox (clouds) clip when you fly. - There are some inconsistencies with the tone indicators. At one point you can say that you're proud of someone, and the indicator calls it "proud," but at another, you say essentially the same thing, but it's "happy." - The UI can look a bit odd, regarding longer sentences, when you pick dialog choices. Overall it's clear Galdra Studios has really put time and effort into making this game even better than the first, and if they keep at it like this, I can absolutely see a long sucessful franschise ahead of them! :D thanks for yet another nice journey!

this game is delightful! while some (a lot, actually) sequels fall flat on their face trying to balance connections to the previous game and coming up with something new, this is the perfect in between for me. the academy was mentioned so much in the first game, that it only made sense that this would be the setting for the sequel. for anyone who wants them, here are my more expanded thoughts. pros: - the characters are great. the cast is balanced, fun, and mesh well together despite their differences. there's someone here for everyone - the voice acting is a lot better than it was in the first game! i especially have to shout out whoever voiced ragnar, because it was superb - just like the first game, having choices to establish both who we are as a person and how we affect the people around us makes the game feel a lot more meaningful - i love the parallels to our world, especially with how the knights will just villainize any group of people to get what they want, without caring about how they're affecting others - it truly is immersive, and i feel like i know so much about this world - the plot was engaging the whole way through, and i felt it was very enjoyable cons: - with how many choices we get in every other aspect of the game, i'm disappointed there isn't more character customization. i'm not extremely picky, and i appreciate the diversity within the appearances themselves, but with only two hair options per character, and one outfit option? it falls way flat compared to the rest of the characters. half of the time, i was thinking about how much uglier my character was than everyone else. it's the same as the first game, but i think it bothered me less there because i much preferred the hair options (which is pretty much the only customization you have, aside from colour palletes) - i had the same thing to say about the first game, but if you want a visual novel with a more well written romance, this isn't for you. you have no more time with your preferred character than you do anyone else, and your romance is forgettable 90% of the time. again, overall, i love this game! it's super fun, and if you were a fan of the first one, you'll 100% love this one. the art, acting, and writing have all improved, and it's clear the team worked super hard on it. the cons are just my personal pet peeves as someone who LOVES character customization and prefers visual novels with more dedicated romantic side plots

[h1]Overall Review - 3/5[/h1] 0 - Horrible (Don’t Buy, not enjoyable at all) 1 - Bad (Generally not enjoyable, but may have some few good things about it) 2 - Average (Solid, nothing really special) 3 - Good (few flaws, but really enjoyable) 4 - Fantastic (near perfect) 5 - Perfect/Timeless (Must Buy) Please note these are my opinions about the game. [b]tldr[/b]: I’d recommend this game if you like visual novel games or enjoyed playing the first game. For these types of games, I think the story and characters should have a high precedence in why I like the game. The characters feel 3 dimensional rather than 2 dimensional and the story is compelling. The performances from the voice actors were great. The art style is good and crisp. The soundtrack is not for me. I’m not sure about the choices or replayability as I played the game once. I might edit this when I replay the game. I honestly didn’t know this game came out until I happened to see it during a visual novel sale. I enjoyed playing the first Arcadia Fallen. I haven’t played the game in awhile, so my memory is kind of hazy. I believe I played it twice or maybe 3 times. The story, world building, and alchemist mechanic was interesting and fun. I actually really liked the alchemist spirit locket mechanic and was probably the initial reason why I liked the first one so much. I’m kind of sad that we couldn’t do that again or something similar, but as the narrative continues. I understand why it wasn’t back for the sequel. [h2]Pros:[/h2] [b]Narrative/Dialogue/Story[/b] - The story got me hooked on by a certain chapter. Not saying that the previous chapters were lacking, but when that chapter hit, it became very captivating that I ended up playing the rest of the game almost in one go. I did wish some characters would come up earlier in the story, as I wish the main character had more time with them to develop their relationship a bit better. In the first game, you pretty much were able to meet all of the characters right away if my memory serves me well. The dialogue and dialogue choices felt good. Sometimes a bit wordy though. I really like the random banter dialogue while on the school map. It reminds me of the tales of series skits. They bring more life to each character and their relationship with each other. This won’t bump this down, but I just have one minor gripe. The story’s ending/resolution didn’t feel like an end, but a plot continuation. [b]Art/Design[/b] - The game is very clean and visually appealing. I like the look of each character, character design, and backgrounds. There's not much to say outside if you like the art style. [b]Voice Acting[/b] - Initially when I started the game, I didn’t see the voice actors trailer, so I wasn’t prepared to hear Erin Yvette and Yuri Lowenthal’s voices. I was surprised to hear an older sounding Spider-man as one of the professors. I’m glad Laura Post was back to voice Ann again. Everyone's voice acting was great and performed really well. I’m not sure what the ratio of voice acting and dialogue is, but I wish the game was fully voice. I understand this may be costly, but I would like to just put the game on auto and make my choices. [b]Character Creation[/b] - While this isn’t the best character creator, I’m glad there is one. You have minimal hair and body types. You can choose which type of mage you want to be out of the 3 choices: Mender, Illusionist, and Tinker. I chose Tinker and was able to choose Tinker choices. You can also choose your roommate at school. You are able to choose choices for the events that happen in the first game. While these choices I think may not be huge or very influential, it is nice to have. I hope they can improve on this and make it worthwhile to make these choices. [h2]Neutral:[/h2] [b]Sound/Music[/b] - I’m not really a big audio person, but I personally didn’t hate it or love it. I thought it was okay. For some reason, I did end up focusing hard on the music and for some reason it didn’t click for me. There were certain parts of the song that were enjoyable, but then it would transition into a weird dissonance melody that I felt like it didn’t belong with the song. [b]Game Mechanic (Choices)[/b] - I’m not entirely sure how much the choice matters, but there were a lot of “big choices”. I do not know if these actually change anything, but it seems like some of them change how a character changes. Of course, there needs to be a way to move the story along and having a branching path is hard to write. As for the general choices, most of them were fun or well written. [b]Replayability[/b] - I’m not sure how much replayability there is to this as I have only played the game once. It does seem like there were a plethora of “big choices”. I’m just not sure how important these choices are. [h2]Cons:[/h2] [b]Game Mechanic (pipe puzzle)[/b] - I think these puzzles are fine. I didn’t have any trouble with these. However, I didn’t really find them as fun as the first game’s alchemist mechanic and combining herbs/items to create an item for the quest or for a side quest. [b]Random Minor Gripes (Saves)[/b] - Since there were many “big choices”, I made a bunch of saves. I was also playing with a controller and it would take a small amount of time to scroll all the way down to save 40+. I would prefer to create a new save at the top of the save menu and the new saves would populate the top. [h2]For any dev that may read this:[/h2] Thanks for making the game! I really appreciate the story and world building of the game! I hope to see what is next from the developers. I would like to note some things. I would like to see some more mechanics and side things to do outside of the main story. There were a few short side things like returning items to students, but there was very little that I forgot that happened after a certain chapter. As this story is already finished, I would have liked to see a mechanic for the grade system in the story. I would’ve liked to go to class, take some tests, and see my grade either go down or up depending on the test/choices. It would help immerse myself more and have the anxiety of being a student again. I understand that this is another mechanic that may make the game take longer to make, but I think it would be worth it. I hope the next game can have a mechanic that may be similar or something for the player to interact with rather than making choices.

I absolutely adore this game! The story is fantastic, the characters are well written, the art is really good and it is overall a huge improvement over the first game (which I thought was already pretty good, for the record.) I don't want to say too much about the story, since it would go into spoilers immediately, but man did I not expect it to go the places it was going, but I'm very happy it did. Also the world building of the Arcadia Fallen series has so much thought put into it, without being overwhelming - I really appreciate that!! It's no super necessary to play the first game before this one, but I do recommend it. I had forgotten A LOT of the lore from the first game, which did made me feel like I lost out on information here and there. Nothing dramatic, but I think you're definitely gonna have a better experience if you play both games. All that being said, I do have a few gripes with this title, that I hope will be improved upon in any further games from the developer: While the voice acting was fantastic, the mic quality for a lot of the characters was kinda bad. Soren comes to mind, among others. You could always tell that there was some weird noise compression going on with his voice, that took me out of it now and then. I feel like this was only an issue with Mime in the first game, so I'm not sure what happened this time around. The music also could have used more variety. I found that a lot of the times they played a track for way too long, or played a track that didnt fit the mood at all (like having a 'chill hangout' track play in a scene where the characters are very sad.) Lastly, I noticed something when replaying the first game. In AF 1, the main character is irreplacable; they are what puts the cogs in motion and their specific circumstances and talents are crucial for the story, even if their personality can be slightly different based on players choices. In Arcadia Fallen 2, this is very much not the case. The main character could be replaced by Puk or Kim ([spoiler]up to a certain point in the story anyway, after which any of the other characters could just take over as mc though[/spoiler]) and the story would play out basically the same. Sure, you'd need to make a few changes but not as many as you should have to. The game itself ([spoiler]or Elias to be more precise[/spoiler]) even comments on this a few times, pointing out that the mc could just walk away and nothing would change, but then doesn't really do anything to rectify this, other than having a few characters say "no no I'm super glad you're here, you're such a hero" but this is never actually shown in the player characters actions. And the whole 'we need to be there for our friends' part doesn't really make sense to me, when the main character has a completely interchangable personality. I know this is kind of a problem of self insert stories, but I wish there was some more build in lore for the main character anyway. The mc in AF1 felt much more like an individual character with a backstory and aspirations removed from the player (also because they had way more lines voices, something I dearly missed from AF2 as well) And to talk about the ending; [spoiler]The icing on top is that we don't even get an ending that's specific to us if we romance anyone. We're just along for the ride of whatever our Love interest wants to do, and suddenly that specific thing is also what we want to do despite it never being indicated that we'd be interested in doing that at all. I really can't imagine what an ending where you don't romance anyone looks like, because the main character has no set personality, hobbies or backstory that an ending could be build on.[/spoiler] I really hope that for a potential Arcadia Fallen 3 (which I very much hope is being made one day!!) we get a main character that has more voice lines and their own backstory again that actually plays into why they are necessary for the plot. We can still influence their personality going forward, but I really want a starting point that we can build off of, instead of a completely blank slate. To end on a positive note, I do love the designs and individual sprites for the main character, the team did a fantastic job!!! Overall, the amount and detail for the art really blew me away and especially the backgrounds have improved soo much! Tldr; Great visuals, fantastic story and characters, good voice acting with some strange mic quality here and there, somewhat repetitive music and a very blank slate main character to the point of being redundant for their own story. Overall 8/10 Really looking forward to whatever Galdra cooks up next!

Having played the first one and now this one, I love them both. I'm really happy with how the story progressed and the way certain moments were written. I laughed, I cried, I smile, pretty much the whole time I smiled. The slowness in the beginning is necessary for the moments later, that slowness early allows you to get to know and care about the characters. Just keep going, because its worth it, that build up is worth it for the later events. This universe is one of my favorites and i cant wait for Arcadia Fallen 3!!! Only one suggestion: The only thing I would change is in the initial dialog remarks between character interaction during the romantic, serious or melancholy moments and maybe just have music. The voice acting is amazing, the voice acting is amazing for all characters and emotion adjustment to different scene is perfect. I only think the initial remarks can be off from the tone of the scene. For example MC is in a romantic scene and choosing the amusing option may or may not have them burst out laughing, or when both characters are speaking they will have the initial starting dialog remarks and the tone of the remarks don't fit the romantic scene. I also encountered a conversation with Puk where their initial dialog had them saying "wellll" back to back but the dialog didn't need Puk to have that tone. I think it would be completely fine to have these scenes with just some music in the background and no initial remarks, I love the voice acting but I understand that every scene cant be voice acted, just some nice music in the background that fits the theme is enough to keep the tone set without the tone being thrown by character remarks that don't match what's happening. (this is a small occurrence it only rarely took me out of the immersion) I hope that explanation makes sense, I still love the game so much!! I will be playing it again and again as one of my top favorites. <3 <3 <3

差第一部远矣····· 第一部主角有大段配音，第二部只有语气词 第一部主角封印恶魔战斗爽，第二部主角是受气包摄像头 第一部队友相亲相爱如一家，第二部天天被各种神人压力，还要被打····我主角做错了什么我心疼你····推凯瑟琳更是无妄之灾看着她被各种霸凌干等不入队，我们小情侣真是一对苦命鸳鸯···· 第一部小游戏炼药精彩至极，第二部小游戏拼水管拼到睡着····· 第一部虽然只有7章但短小精悍，第二部章节扩容了一倍但结构松散····· 真的很喜欢这个系列，衷心希望第三部加强主角主体性！拒绝压力主角！拒绝神人队友！

After enjoying the first Arcadia Fallen game, I was very interested when I heard a sequel was coming. The first game was a great visual novel with the odd puzzle in it. The story was great and the characters were well written. For the sequel, I couldn't believe how they managed to make the story even more gripping. As mentioned I certainly enjoyed the story of the first game, but throughout the story, I was so engrossed in the story of the protagonists and how much this story was needed right now. The message behind the story really shows impact and I for one loved that. The characters were very well written and I genuinely felt everyone of the main cast had each a great story arch for themselves that blended in with the plot flawlessly. This is predominantly a Visual Novel and a sequel at that, so mileage might vary on some audiences but for me, I am not only very satisfied with the game, I actually think it might be my favourite game of 2026 so far!

SOMEONE THAT I KNOW PLEEEEASEEEE BUY THIS I NEED SOMEONE TO TALK TO ABOUT THIS GAMEEEEUH

[h1]A worthwhile sequel with some flaws[/h1] As someone who played and enjoyed the original, I was mostly satisfied by this worthy (but flawed) sequel. The story was not the greatest I had ever heard, but it did it's job in telling a low stakes story in a fairly interesting world (even if a lot of it felt like sequal-baiting). [h2]Meaningless Magical Discipline[/h2] One of the major problems I had was with how pointless the option to choose which class you belonged to ultimately was. It ultimately devolved into a handful of mior choices with slightly different fluff dialogue. If you are expecting this choice to have a major impact on the story, you will be disappointed. [h2]Underwhelming Romance[/h2] Another big issue was with the game is how the romance system worked. Being able to choose different options for romance has returned and is a pretty good system that allows for more nuanced relationships. The first few hours has quite a few romantic dialougue options and the characters are interesting and fleshed out. However, once you have "locked in" your partner, the amount of romantic scenes takes a nose dive. This would be fine if this happened at the end of the game after spending a good amount of time with your special someone. [b]Unfortunately this scene takes place abount 4 hours into an otherwise 12 hour (ish) story, only having about 3/4 scenes throughout the remaining 8 hours where romance is even mentioned.[/b] The developers apparently wanted romance to take a back seat to the narrative, and have ultimately made it rather shallow and bland. Adding in far more scenes with your love interest or even allowing us to date multiple people at a time may have alleviated this (though I'm leaning more on the former). [h2]A few smaller problems[/h2] - Character creator is fairly light on options. - Confusing colour selection in character creator. - Ragnar's story resolves pretty randomly. - Pipes minigame is inconsistent. Sometimes its a pretty tough challenge, but most times it is snooze-fest easy. - Story never really surprises you, what you think is going to happen usually does. [h2]Final Thoughts[/h2] Ultimately a pretty solid sequel that builds upon what made the first good, but doesn't do much outside of deepening the lore for an inevitable trilogy. [h2]Score:[/h2] 7/10

Just like the first game, so underrated and such a great visual novel game. Can't wait for more from these developers.