The world has fallen to Peccato Mania (original sin), which causes self-harm and other problems. To save his younger sister Christine, who has been stricken by the disease, Rust full-dive into the online game "Archetype Arcadia", which is the only way to stop the progress of the symptom. Hope, pain, joy, betrayal, and inevitable "death" are found in this game, where the memories of the players turn into avatars and fight. A fully-voiced text novel adventure game that tells a terrifying story of the overwhelming volume, led by memories that should have been lost.
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KEY NOTES:
-Fully voiced dialogue in JP
- About 30-40 hours
- Single Story Route, but with multiple Character Endings
- Numerous Bad Endings
- Standard VN gameplay
Archetype Arcadia was developed by Water Phoenix who has developed a few Visual Novels over the past few years, but none of them have been officially localized for the west. Most of these Visual Novels including Archetype Arcadia were published by Kemco.
STORY
The game takes place in a distant post-apocalyptic future where mankind has been mostly wiped out by a disease called Peccatomania. The disease is contagious and can be transmuted through blood and saliva. The symptoms starts off mild, but eventually the victim will fall into a state where they are driven by the urge to harm themselves and the others around them. Becoming very much like a feral being.
There aren't any known cure for the disease, but there is a way to keep the disease in check by playing Archetype Arcadia (AA), a VRMMO (Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online) game. At the start of the story, the young siblings Rust and Kristin are traveling the world in their motor home searching for other survivors. Kristin is infected with the disease and would routinely play AA throughout the day.
Her brother on the other hand is not infected and has yet to experience the game until one day, Kristin falls unconscious while logged in the game and would not wake up in any circumstances. Believing that the source of her dire state was related to the game, Rust takes her game headset and dives into AA for the first time. From there, he is able to locate an amnesiac Kristin and experienced first hand the horrors of the game. These included fights with Monsters and other Players where death in-game can lead to serious repercussions in the real world.
AA's story has a good mix of sci-fi and fantasy elements. The setting was intriguing which combined a post apocalyptic world and a VRMMO game. Despite most of the story taking place within the game, the real world remains important and will shift back to it throughout the story.
The story is very heavy on the details and does a good job weaving such details and foreshadowing them until later on. Early minor story bits that seem forgotten would get brought up later on as a relevant plot point.
It is also like being on an emotional roller coaster ride. There were many moments were I connected emotionally with the game and felt very sad, angry and even delighted by the story developments. It kept me engaged and drew me into the world.
The story is however on the predictable side and quite formulaic as well. After getting a feel of the game's story structure and plot points, many of the bigger story moments weren't very surprising. The story is also quite long with some parts dragging on longer than I'd liked and is partly repetitive in general. One of the early chapters in particular could've been reduced much more.
Overall, I enjoyed the story and was really invested where the story was going and where it would end up. It is a roller coaster ride of emotions with many ups and downs before reaching a strong and satisfying destination. This is true even though many of my predictions were spot on.
WORLDBUILDING
One element that I thought Archetype Arcadia did really well was its implementation and execution of the in-game mechanics to create a dynamic game world. There is no leveling system whatsoever and there are no character stats that are common within such games. This prevents characters from within the game and within the story to simply grind and defeat their opponents due to being overleveled. With that in mind, people within the game can still become "stronger" by training.
Player characters are not able to harm each other directly. Instead, they utilize avatars that fight in their stead that can attack players directly. This is where AA's creativity comes in. Certain memories of the players get formed into actual beings called Avatars. Their attacks and appearance are based on the memories. For example, one of Rust's Avatars is formed from his memory of him and Kristin playing with rocks. The Avatar's appearance is a chibi version of Kristin and her attacks revolve around throwing rocks at her opponents.
A player can get stronger by improving their sync levels with their Avatars which improves their abilities and getting use to different combat situations. This may include utilizing the environment and understand their opponent on a psychological level to predict their actions. Through the concept of Avatars and memories, this allowed AA to create a lot of different battle scenarios with varied conditions so that it never becomes boring to read through.
The stakes are consistently high since defeat can lead to the destruction of a player's Avatar and by extension, a key memory for them. This made it so that every battle are taken seriously considering that the consequence lingers even when logged out into the real world.
CHARACTERS
The cast size is somewhat large, but not too large that it gets difficult to track who is who. There's a good amount of main recurring ones and supporting ones so I never thought it was lacking here. The characters are all tropey in general, but there's a lot of depth to them despite how they initially seem. Nearly all of the main characters get a sizable amount of time to flesh out their character and backstories. It helps that a key element of the story deals with understanding and actually learning about the characters. This also extends to some of the supporting ones which have surprisingly interesting and emotional backstories.
As the main character, I am somewhat mixed on Rust. Despite how he seems early on, he is a very idealistic character with goals and actions that seem unreasonable and extreme at times. It is a character trait that I'm not particularly fond of, but in this very bleak ugly world, his role is very much needed. Fortunately, he doesn't have a one-track mind and will accept that not everybody will follow through his ideals. There's some room for compromise which makes it easier to connect with his character.
Overall, the characters and their development carry a lot of the game. Getting to see their backstory and seeing how they grow over the course of the game kept me invested. By the end, it's the character moments that I remember most fondly.
GRAPHICS AND PRESENTATION
Visual Novels aren't generally known for their graphics and Arcadia Archetype is pretty much similar in that regards to many others. The backgrounds don't have a lot of variety with many repeating throughout, but they look decent and have sufficient detail. There are some that actually have random unnamed minor characters in them that made the world feel more alive. The character portraits are good and the main characters come with a decent variety of poses and expressions.
There's a good amount of CGs that are used pretty well to better illustrate the more powerful moments of the game. The CG designs look great and even beautiful at times.
One part that AA does pretty well are the battle moments. It doesn't have any full action anime cutscenes or even a very dynamic style like Witch on the Holy Night or Anonymous Code, but it does feel engaging and provides a good visual of the moment by moment action sequences. The character sprites are essentially static images, but they get moved across the screen to emphasize movement and attacks. Visual effects like fire and wind do see some short animation to help create the scene. The overall effect does look nice when compared to static fixed portraits that many other visual novels use during action scenes.
MUSIC AND AUDIO
The game has about 30 tracks although many aren't heard very much. The soundtrack overall sounds good and suit the scenes. Nothing egregious and out of place that I could remember. The highlights were probably the ones used during emotional defining character moments. The songs capture the scenes so well that it help connect me with the characters.
The game is fully voiced from main to minor unnamed characters which is a nice touch.
GAMEPLAY
Archetype Arcadia is mostly a kinetic novel meaning that there's isn't really any other gameplay than reading through text. There isn't any interaction with the backgrounds or points of interest. No puzzles to solve and so on.
The game does however have dialogue choices you can make and these are somewhat frequent. There is only one main story route, but there are 20 Bad Endings in the game. These endings occur throughout when a dialogue choice appears. One choice is always the correct one that continues the story while the other choice will lead to a Bad End in just a few minutes. There are a very few exceptions where certain Bad Endings require picking specific dialogue choices throughout one or more chapters. These are special ones that are actually hard to get unless you are actively trying to get them.
The Bad Endings themselves aren't particularly great and are very predicable based on the choices themselves. They don't add much extra story, but since it doesn't take much time to see and get back to where you left off, they are nice extras.
One nice function that Archetype Arcadia has is a chapter select. This allows jumping around the story at various points to revisit certain scenes. You don't have to start at the beginning of the chapter either and could jump to some specific key scenes. This function is available at the start.
FINAL REMARKS
Archetype Arcadia has solid writing especially with the way it handles the characters. Nearly every character with a portrait gets a detailed backstory. This extends to even seemingly minor character characters. The characters have good depth and their emotional event moments serve as a highlight to the game.
While the main story isn't anything new and can be predicable oftentimes, it is an entertaining one with a intriguing premise. The way it combined a post apocalyptic setting with a VRMMO one was well done. There are a lot of interesting twists despite also being predicable at times. The details in the writing was another highlight where even the seemingly small and minor ones can get referenced later into something important which showed great planning and execution.
The in-game world has good and interesting worldbuilding. This helped made battles and combat scenarios fresh and enthralling to read.
The game is on the longer side of an average Visual Novel. While there isn't an in-game timer, I estimated the game to be 30-40 hours. A few hours of story content could've probably been cut for better pacing though.
There isn't much on the gameplay side, but the Bad Endings are a nice extra touch for more CGs and outcomes.
Completing the game will give access to a music library of the game's soundtracks as well as some bonus concept artwork of the original prototype game.
While I didn't expect much going in, Archetype Arcadia ended as one of my favorite Visual Novels of all time. There aren't many games that can get me emotionally invested with the characters like this one.
-Fully voiced dialogue in JP
- About 30-40 hours
- Single Story Route, but with multiple Character Endings
- Numerous Bad Endings
- Standard VN gameplay
Archetype Arcadia was developed by Water Phoenix who has developed a few Visual Novels over the past few years, but none of them have been officially localized for the west. Most of these Visual Novels including Archetype Arcadia were published by Kemco.
STORY
The game takes place in a distant post-apocalyptic future where mankind has been mostly wiped out by a disease called Peccatomania. The disease is contagious and can be transmuted through blood and saliva. The symptoms starts off mild, but eventually the victim will fall into a state where they are driven by the urge to harm themselves and the others around them. Becoming very much like a feral being.
There aren't any known cure for the disease, but there is a way to keep the disease in check by playing Archetype Arcadia (AA), a VRMMO (Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online) game. At the start of the story, the young siblings Rust and Kristin are traveling the world in their motor home searching for other survivors. Kristin is infected with the disease and would routinely play AA throughout the day.
Her brother on the other hand is not infected and has yet to experience the game until one day, Kristin falls unconscious while logged in the game and would not wake up in any circumstances. Believing that the source of her dire state was related to the game, Rust takes her game headset and dives into AA for the first time. From there, he is able to locate an amnesiac Kristin and experienced first hand the horrors of the game. These included fights with Monsters and other Players where death in-game can lead to serious repercussions in the real world.
AA's story has a good mix of sci-fi and fantasy elements. The setting was intriguing which combined a post apocalyptic world and a VRMMO game. Despite most of the story taking place within the game, the real world remains important and will shift back to it throughout the story.
The story is very heavy on the details and does a good job weaving such details and foreshadowing them until later on. Early minor story bits that seem forgotten would get brought up later on as a relevant plot point.
It is also like being on an emotional roller coaster ride. There were many moments were I connected emotionally with the game and felt very sad, angry and even delighted by the story developments. It kept me engaged and drew me into the world.
The story is however on the predictable side and quite formulaic as well. After getting a feel of the game's story structure and plot points, many of the bigger story moments weren't very surprising. The story is also quite long with some parts dragging on longer than I'd liked and is partly repetitive in general. One of the early chapters in particular could've been reduced much more.
Overall, I enjoyed the story and was really invested where the story was going and where it would end up. It is a roller coaster ride of emotions with many ups and downs before reaching a strong and satisfying destination. This is true even though many of my predictions were spot on.
WORLDBUILDING
One element that I thought Archetype Arcadia did really well was its implementation and execution of the in-game mechanics to create a dynamic game world. There is no leveling system whatsoever and there are no character stats that are common within such games. This prevents characters from within the game and within the story to simply grind and defeat their opponents due to being overleveled. With that in mind, people within the game can still become "stronger" by training.
Player characters are not able to harm each other directly. Instead, they utilize avatars that fight in their stead that can attack players directly. This is where AA's creativity comes in. Certain memories of the players get formed into actual beings called Avatars. Their attacks and appearance are based on the memories. For example, one of Rust's Avatars is formed from his memory of him and Kristin playing with rocks. The Avatar's appearance is a chibi version of Kristin and her attacks revolve around throwing rocks at her opponents.
A player can get stronger by improving their sync levels with their Avatars which improves their abilities and getting use to different combat situations. This may include utilizing the environment and understand their opponent on a psychological level to predict their actions. Through the concept of Avatars and memories, this allowed AA to create a lot of different battle scenarios with varied conditions so that it never becomes boring to read through.
The stakes are consistently high since defeat can lead to the destruction of a player's Avatar and by extension, a key memory for them. This made it so that every battle are taken seriously considering that the consequence lingers even when logged out into the real world.
CHARACTERS
The cast size is somewhat large, but not too large that it gets difficult to track who is who. There's a good amount of main recurring ones and supporting ones so I never thought it was lacking here. The characters are all tropey in general, but there's a lot of depth to them despite how they initially seem. Nearly all of the main characters get a sizable amount of time to flesh out their character and backstories. It helps that a key element of the story deals with understanding and actually learning about the characters. This also extends to some of the supporting ones which have surprisingly interesting and emotional backstories.
As the main character, I am somewhat mixed on Rust. Despite how he seems early on, he is a very idealistic character with goals and actions that seem unreasonable and extreme at times. It is a character trait that I'm not particularly fond of, but in this very bleak ugly world, his role is very much needed. Fortunately, he doesn't have a one-track mind and will accept that not everybody will follow through his ideals. There's some room for compromise which makes it easier to connect with his character.
Overall, the characters and their development carry a lot of the game. Getting to see their backstory and seeing how they grow over the course of the game kept me invested. By the end, it's the character moments that I remember most fondly.
GRAPHICS AND PRESENTATION
Visual Novels aren't generally known for their graphics and Arcadia Archetype is pretty much similar in that regards to many others. The backgrounds don't have a lot of variety with many repeating throughout, but they look decent and have sufficient detail. There are some that actually have random unnamed minor characters in them that made the world feel more alive. The character portraits are good and the main characters come with a decent variety of poses and expressions.
There's a good amount of CGs that are used pretty well to better illustrate the more powerful moments of the game. The CG designs look great and even beautiful at times.
One part that AA does pretty well are the battle moments. It doesn't have any full action anime cutscenes or even a very dynamic style like Witch on the Holy Night or Anonymous Code, but it does feel engaging and provides a good visual of the moment by moment action sequences. The character sprites are essentially static images, but they get moved across the screen to emphasize movement and attacks. Visual effects like fire and wind do see some short animation to help create the scene. The overall effect does look nice when compared to static fixed portraits that many other visual novels use during action scenes.
MUSIC AND AUDIO
The game has about 30 tracks although many aren't heard very much. The soundtrack overall sounds good and suit the scenes. Nothing egregious and out of place that I could remember. The highlights were probably the ones used during emotional defining character moments. The songs capture the scenes so well that it help connect me with the characters.
The game is fully voiced from main to minor unnamed characters which is a nice touch.
GAMEPLAY
Archetype Arcadia is mostly a kinetic novel meaning that there's isn't really any other gameplay than reading through text. There isn't any interaction with the backgrounds or points of interest. No puzzles to solve and so on.
The game does however have dialogue choices you can make and these are somewhat frequent. There is only one main story route, but there are 20 Bad Endings in the game. These endings occur throughout when a dialogue choice appears. One choice is always the correct one that continues the story while the other choice will lead to a Bad End in just a few minutes. There are a very few exceptions where certain Bad Endings require picking specific dialogue choices throughout one or more chapters. These are special ones that are actually hard to get unless you are actively trying to get them.
The Bad Endings themselves aren't particularly great and are very predicable based on the choices themselves. They don't add much extra story, but since it doesn't take much time to see and get back to where you left off, they are nice extras.
One nice function that Archetype Arcadia has is a chapter select. This allows jumping around the story at various points to revisit certain scenes. You don't have to start at the beginning of the chapter either and could jump to some specific key scenes. This function is available at the start.
FINAL REMARKS
Archetype Arcadia has solid writing especially with the way it handles the characters. Nearly every character with a portrait gets a detailed backstory. This extends to even seemingly minor character characters. The characters have good depth and their emotional event moments serve as a highlight to the game.
While the main story isn't anything new and can be predicable oftentimes, it is an entertaining one with a intriguing premise. The way it combined a post apocalyptic setting with a VRMMO one was well done. There are a lot of interesting twists despite also being predicable at times. The details in the writing was another highlight where even the seemingly small and minor ones can get referenced later into something important which showed great planning and execution.
The in-game world has good and interesting worldbuilding. This helped made battles and combat scenarios fresh and enthralling to read.
The game is on the longer side of an average Visual Novel. While there isn't an in-game timer, I estimated the game to be 30-40 hours. A few hours of story content could've probably been cut for better pacing though.
There isn't much on the gameplay side, but the Bad Endings are a nice extra touch for more CGs and outcomes.
Completing the game will give access to a music library of the game's soundtracks as well as some bonus concept artwork of the original prototype game.
While I didn't expect much going in, Archetype Arcadia ended as one of my favorite Visual Novels of all time. There aren't many games that can get me emotionally invested with the characters like this one.
50 hour epic about the importance of fun