A Visual Novel That Rises High Above the Original
One of the things I liked most about Arcadia Fallen was that, while it took place mostly in and around a shop in a small provincial town, it felt like the centre of the world. There was nowhere else in its world of Arcadia that could possibly have been more deserving of a visual novel. And that was no small feat: it was a visual novel on a budget, just a few locations and characters, yet the stakes – particularly the emotional ones – were sky high.
The first game’s incredible alchemy was always going to be hard to beat in Arcadia Fallen II. It creates the ‘difficult sophomore album’ problem: does it go big, pushing the boundaries of the first game, or does it deliver more of the same? Going big might mean losing the magic, but going small might become overly familiar.
Yeah, Going Small was Never Really an Option
Credit to Arcadia Fallen II, as it takes the harder path of ‘going big’. The shop expands outwards to encompass an entire Hogwarts-like magical university. The cast bulges with – and I’m guessing here – about twice the number of characters than the first game, with teachers, students and unwanteds all featuring. The length of the game is significantly greater. This is not a sequel that has taken shortcuts: this is expansive.
What surprised me most at the start was how – superficially – so little of the first game transfers over to the second game. Sure, you get asked to hand over your choices from the first game (if you can remember them – Arcadia Fallen II could have been a little friendlier in terms of bringing the player up to speed), and there are some recurring characters (one of which even makes it into the main cast: Kim, the nature mage) but generally the opening chapters feel distinct. This is a new story in the same world.
That assumption was taken apart, brick by brick as the story of Arcadia Fallen II developed. That’s not only because more of the original’s cast start turning up (some playing a vital role in the closing chapters), but because its themes are the same. This is still very much a story about being ‘othered’ in a magical world, of having to live in an authoritarian, magic-sceptical state that lurches from suspicion to marginalisation to eventually persecution. You won’t have to look far to see real-world parallels.
Harry Potter and the Undermining of the Social Contract
These themes were all in the first game, but Arcadia Fallen only left room for the story to ratchet up two or three notches. In Arcadia Fallen II, there’s room for far more notches. The acceleration is incredible. I was merrily playing a fantasy interpretation of The Breakfast Club, only to find – ten chapters later – that I was playing something akin to Red Dawn, or How To Destroy a Pipeline.
Those huge tonal swings give you real perspective on the characters. You see them comfortable and then not so comfortable, peace time and war time, and it’s the secret sauce to why Arcadia Fallen II works so well. Just when you think it can’t pivot its very affable, lovely characters into another dramatic situation, it finds ways to do exactly that.
Like Arcadia Fallen, there is a small splash of gameplay alongside the visual novel stuff. The chapters are effectively ‘days’ in a very bad fortnight for the students, and at the end of each day there is something akin to a heist. That heist is a kind of hacking/pipe minigame where you eventually get to slot in your characters as interchangeable ‘mega-pipes’. You need to get from one end of a maze to the other (the maze represents a character’s ability to travel through a back-of-room magical pipe network), and there are optional objectives with story rewards, if you fancy showing off a bit.
These are fine, and mostly don’t get in the way. They remind me of my opinion on Dispatch’s superhero allocation stuff. It’s a minigame I’ve played in other games, and it’s not particularly onerous or interesting, but it’s mostly just nice to break up the walls of text every so often. The same goes with Arcadia Fallen II’s game map. You can choose rooms to visit in the day, some of them optional, some mandatory, but it’s mostly just satisfying to have some agency beyond picking dialogue options.
Branches that Often Return to the Tree
It’s the dialogue options that are my only substantive negative with Arcadia Fallen II. There are plenty of chances to pick dialogue paths, and there are dozens with dramatic ‘pick a side!’ interfaces. Initially, you feel like you are being given a significant number of divergent paths to choose from. But that feeling begins to ebb away a little. I found some choices to be different articulations of the same point: I could talk to someone with different tones, but ultimately I had to say the same thing, ultimately agreeing with someone or going along with their plan (even when it borders on the reckless). I couldn’t deviate from the path that Arcadia Fallen II had set out for me. I need to play it again to confirm the theory, but I felt like I had the freedom of choosing besties and lovers, but very little freedom in choosing the future of the school. That might be incorrect, but it’s the takeaway I had from my playthrough.
You will probably have an inkling of how much this will bother you. I ended up going with the flow for two reasons: one, the writing is so good that you kind of get swept up, and two, I feel that choice in narrative games can be overrated anyway. I had the ability to express myself, and – with only a couple of exceptions – that was enough.
I really want to circle back round to that point about the quality of the writing, and the general production values of Arcadia Fallen II. This is one of the finest, most confidently wrought visual novels that I have played in recent years. The characters actually sound like different people, with different wants and perspectives. While some of the villains are a little pantomimically evil, everyone has an arc and justifications for their actions. And the scenario is a patchwork of different shades of grey; the choices end up being extremely difficult, and you can completely understand how the situation has devolved into the state that it’s in.
A Step Forward
It makes for a swaggering, confident step forward from the first game. If you loved Arcadia Fallen, then I can say with no caveats whatsoever that you will love Arcadia Fallen II as well. It still plays the same trick – staying in the confines of a single building but ensuring the world is out to get you – but that building is bigger, and the stakes are magnitudes more thrilling. Sure, the choices occasionally feel like railroad tracks, but the quality of the tale is great enough that all is soon forgiven.
Here’s hoping that there’s room for Arcadia to fall just a little bit further in an Arcadia Fallen III.
Important Links
Arcadia Fallen II Returns To A World Of Magic, Choices And School Life Drama – https://www.thexboxhub.com/arcadia-fallen-ii-returns-to-a-world-of-magic-choices-and-school-life-drama/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/arcadia-fallen-ii/9NF3W6T37FPR
