izigame.me

This is it. The new gold standard for visual novels. Okay, the story could be better, the music's a little flat, and the variety of art is rather low... but all of this is rendered completely irrelevant by how the game handles the protagonist's dialogue and player choice. Let me explain.

Typical VN Pitfalls

If you've ever played a visual novel - be it an Ace Attorney, an Otome, or your typical Catgirl Breeder 69000 - you're probably used to the typical formula, which goes something like this:
- you're introduced to your protagonist, who's usually the first person narrator - sometimes you get to name them
- you watch your protagonist interact with characters, usually from their own point of view - so you (almost) never get to see "yourself"
- occasionally, you get to choose from two or three options of dialogue or action. Those choices will impact which route you'll enter, and which ending you'll get. In more edgy novels, making the wrong choice will kill you - and you'll need to reload your game.
In other words: one - the protagonist is their own character, someone whose role you assume during the game. And two - your choice of dialogue is ultimately motivated not by what you think is right, but by what do you need to do to get that best ending, or to bang the chosen Neko-chan/get claimed by Mr. Dommy CEO.
Arcadia Fallen, on the other hand, says "F**k all that s**t".

F**k All That S**t

Here, your character never speaks on their own without your input - but no worries, you're given multiple chances to speak per scene. And when you do, you're given a list of options; usually there's 3, sometimes more, sometimes less, and they don't only summarise your answer, but also have a little label which explains the tone of what you're trying to say.
Why is it such a big deal? You know how sometimes in visual novels you're thinking hard about what to say, go with the chosen option, and then realise that the actual answer is nearly the total opposite of what you were trying to say? Mass Effect also suffers from this, and it feels more prevalent in Otome games... anyway, if you know both the summary and the involved emotion, that problem is completely resolved. As a sweet bonus, you get some very strict control over what sort of person your character is.

Control Everything

And that's the gist of it: control. You can customise your look, your gender, your voice. At certain points you're given a bit more defining choice; what drives you? What is your attitude to the burden fate has placed upon you? Those choices will affect what sort of "mood options" you'll be getting later on - and no worries, the game very explicitly tells you that. The game really goes out of its way to make you feel like this is your story - even the narration is not in the first person ("I saw Mime sitting on a barrel") but in second person ("You see Mime sitting on a barrel").
Also, sometimes one of your companions tells you about an internal conflict they're struggling with, and the way you help them resolve that conflict will influence their storylines; the game tells you when you're about to make one of those decisions, and you get some extra explaination as to what this option means.

The Bad Things

Okay, so that's all very, very nice. Transformative. Revolutionary. Sadly, Arcadia Fallen... fell a bit behind on other things while pursuing this incredible endavour.
Even though the writing is good - especially the dialogue between the characters, with sass, bonds blossoming in spite of animosity, hidden depths, internal conflicts - the characters themselves feel a little... unexplored? Undeveloped? Out of 4 romancible characters, only one I'd call well-developed (talking about Michael). Kaidan's story just kind of... cuts off in the middle, right after I've decided to romance him. Victoria is incredibly flat and boring, and the last one... there are moments where she tries to be an interesting character, but in the end also fails.
Even the ending comes kind of... out of nowhere? It's sudden, it's strange, it's over way too fast. I feel like the production got a little rushed towards the end.
Also, if you're used to getting lots of scene pictures when playing a VN... you won't get many here. I don't think there are any, in fact. Even the amount of character poses is a little low, especially considering that they sometimes do not correctly express the character's mental state. Michael in particular has a very wide range of emotions, and the game simply does not show his darkest moments correctly, I feel.

Conclusion

Luckily, the voice actors do amazing work bringing the characters to life. Michael, Kaidan, the male protagonist and Ronan all are excellent, and Mime's pretty cool too. The female characters, however, aren't interesting enough to romance in my opinion. And you can't romance Mime, so don't even try.
But even with all those issues, I think the game is absolutely groundbreaking. I trusted in my beliefs and my friends alike, and the adventure we got through truly was worthy of a song. Not many games succeed in making you feel like the victory is yours. Not your character's, not the guide writer's, but yours. Isn't that nice? How about you find that out yourself, and play Arcadia Fallen.
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