Game: Arcadia Fallen II
Genre: Visual Novel, Adventure, Puzzle, RPG, Simulation
System: Nintendo Switch (also available on Steam & Windows)
Developer | Publisher: Galdra Studios
Age Rating: EU 12+ | US Teen
Price: US $29.99 | UK £24.99 | EU € 28,99
Release Date: April 9th 2026
Review code used, with many thanks to Galdra Studios.
Arcadia Fallen II is a beautiful visual novel that takes place during your senior year as a mage student at the Seven Winds Academy, as the heightening political turmoil threatens your school life. Your choices reflect your personality and impact not only your relationships with fellow classmates but also their futures.
Welcome New Students
The game starts you off in a train on your way to your first year at the magical academy. Here, you’ll meet two of your first friends, Soren and Nina, whose experiences help ease you into the worldbuilding of the Empire and the Seven Winds Academy. While the cheerful Soren is from a family of mages and eager to begin his tinker studies, Nina is more reluctant to engage with magic, since she was separated from her family by the Hunters and forced to attend the academy. While I haven’t played the original game, those who have can adjust certain settings so that the returning characters and setting of Arcadia Fallen II reflect their personal ending from Arcadia Fallen.
Suddenly, the story jumps ahead, and you’re already a senior student in your final year of study! Here, in the character customization screen, you can choose your character’s name, pronouns, voice, and appearance in addition to selecting your major of study among the Tinker, Illusionist, and Mender classes.
Your Fellow Magical Classmates
Arcadia Fallen II presents a diverse cast with characters that you can befriend and even optionally romance (there’s no detriment to the story if you play platonically!). It’s not long after you create your character that you’re thrown into detention and tasked with cleaning a storage room with Kim, a shy Nature mage, and Puk, a rebellious Tinker. Soon, the three of you accidentally stumble into the secret den of a small reptilian creature, named Ragnar, who claims to be a dragon.
As the story progresses, you meet other classmates who can join your little ragtag team, including Hannah, the hardworking prefect of the Illusionist class, Elias, a flirtatious Mender with a mysterious aura, and even Catherine, a cutthroat competitor shouldering her noble family’s ambitions. As political turmoil in the Empire increasingly impacts your once peaceful school life, even other unlikely allies can be convinced to assist in your fight.
Know Your Choices
As a longtime player of roleplaying games, I have experienced many times the dismay of choosing a dialogue option that results in an unexpected line, saying something far different from what I originally intended. In Arcadia Fallen II, the tone of each dialogue option is clearly marked, so there’s no more guessing if your choice leads to a sincere compliment or a sarcastic quip.
I also greatly appreciate that this game clearly indicates when your choice actually impacts how the story unfolds. For example, determining your motivation to fight affects whether your character is seen more as a civilian or as a hero. Your words and actions can also influence each of your classmates, allowing them to grow throughout your adventures together and leading them down different paths.
Exploring the Seven Winds Academy
At its core, Arcadia Fallen II is a visual novel with much of the dialogue accompanied by voice acting, which really helps to bring these characters to life. You’re able to explore the Seven Winds Academy using the school map with each location clearly labelled and small portraits that indicate who is in each area. In between scenes, you can also listen in on your classmates bantering among themselves!
While you can freely move about the school during the day, your nighttime trysts will require you to solve a puzzle to successfully sneak around. Your goal is to rotate the hexagon tiles so that the pipes form a connected path from your starting point to the goal. While the puzzles start simple, they eventually become larger and more complex, with optional objectives that allow you to eavesdrop on others also lurking about the academy at night.
Conclusion
Overall, Arcadia Fallen II delivers an engaging story with enjoyable twists, accompanied by beautiful art and voice acting that bring the Seven Winds Academy to life. I definitely plan to play through the original Arcadia Fallen soon to learn more about the lore leading up to this story.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up
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