Arcana of Paradise —The Tower— Reviews

Generally enjoyable - the real-time card playing is a nice twist on the usual formula, the light puzzle elements are nice, and the kids are all adorable. That said, runs can start to feel a bit sameish after a while - although I'm not quite halfway through yet, so that may change. Disclosure: I know someone on the production team.

Really wonderful vibes. The music especially is A+, evoking spiritual ecstasy and otherworldly danger both. It has a similar sort of uncanniness to things like Shin Megami Tensei and things like that. The mystery of the nature of the tower, the characters, and Paradise are compelling. There are some nice character moments that dovetail with the metaprogression, and you do get to care for the little children that climb down the tower. Gameplay-wise, pretty simple, and maybe too simple for dedicated fans of the card-battling genre. Most enemies have varied gimmicks that you have to learn to exploit, and on deeper floors especially you can't just brute force your way through. But I think there are too few random events and enemy types, at least as far as I've gotten, making runs feel a bit too samey. The real variety comes from your team and their loadout, but you'll always want to, for example, keep one fire card on you at all times because you'll probably get an event that needs one. I want this game to be chunkier than it is. Overall, this is a recommendation for me, with the caveat that you should go in for the whole package, not just the gameplay.

The graphics and music is so charming, really lovely atmosphere. Gameplay is excellent, really enjoy how they've combined elements of different genres, I'm hooked.

Really interesting spin on the deck-building rogue-light genre. Has a great soundtrack and artwork with a majora's mask esque dark theme. Plays like a more active Slay the spire with puzzle elements and story weaved throughout. Overall having a blast with this one. Got to save those weird ass kids.

I've played several card-based roguelike games lately, and often there's more to the game than just how the cards themselves work. While some other games focus on external systems for getting cards for the main usage of those cards, Arcana instead focuses on very simple cards with an interesting depth of use for individual cards inside and outside of combat. Most of time time this results in a puzzle, where certain cards solve a problem presented to you. Don't have a light? Use a Torch, or if you're using magic, Fireball. A lot of cards do this, which is honestly pretty amazing. I think this is one of the more interesting games I've seen that does more with the concept than "here is a card game you can't play in paper" and does some really interesting stuff with it. Absolutely a good game if you want to explore how the system works, not too difficult either! Highly recommend.

It's not polished. There is a lot of great things about this game, but it feels like few of the strings to connect all of those things were tied up nicely. Instead, they were just triple knotted to make sure the game was playable. There is a _lot_ of randomness in the encounters, but there should have been more tying together of what is possible to encounter. The different stages have some unique enemies, but the special chests that you encounter feels truly random, and that's extremely difficult to plan for. So instead you just have hope, or gather anything and everything you can to unlock the chests. And there are a lot of instances much like this. The game feels too loose when there should have been more cohesion. Is it worth a buy? Maybe. If you really like rogue-likes, and are will to deal with, what feels like to me, too much random, then sure. But for most people? Probably not.

Really cool so far. The children have a lot of character, and the card combat system is inventive and fun. Love the art and music as well. I'm not sure how much it'll hold up as a long-term game after finishing the story, but it's definitely more than enjoyable enough to complete a full playthrough. E: Turned out there really wasn't much new past what I saw in the first session. The game becomes kind of routine and tedious before you finish the first round of children, and you'll have to grind a fair bit beyond what you want to if you want to max out relationships with them to get their unique ending pictures and information. I think this could have been a lot better with some additional event and enemy variety.

Dev needs to add more replayability. Its good for one playthrough though.

[h1]A very pleasant surprise[/h1] I really love this game, from its presentation with wonderful visual and musical aspects, to its roguelike deck-builder mechanics with depth and variety of events that make it so entertaining and addictive. Its story may be somewhat obtuse (with some... interesting revelations) and with a (kind of) resource management that, due to the randomness, can be undemanding or convoluted. And in general I am not surprised that there are people who say that it is easy, not because it is simple, but because the base cards are usually enough to practically finish the game (although the additional ones make it more fun). Now, there are a couple of things that I don’t like: The game has three types of combat forms (weapons, seals and magic) which work great exclusively for each one. Each child is assigned either one or a combination of two, and that’s when there is a conflict, each type is designed to be used together in combos, but if cards from another type are used, they are sometimes cancelled or lose effectiveness. And, because of how the game is, you are sometimes almost forced to choose two characters with different styles, making the game slower and more complicated than necessary. The other thing is that some events can repeat several times, and some are more annoying than anything else. It really is a charming experience from the beginning, full of charisma and affection in many areas, quite satisfied with everything, highly recommended. Spa: [h1]Una muy agradable sorpresa[/h1] Realmente me encanta este juego, desde su presentación con el apartado visual y musical maravillosos, hasta sus mecánicas roguelikes de cartas con profundidad y variedad de eventos que lo hace tan entretenido y adictivo. Su historia puede que sea un tanto obtusa (con ciertas revelaciones... interesantes) y con un pseudo-manejo de recursos que, debido a la aleatoriedad de las partidas, puede resultar engorroso, o sin complicaciones. Y en general no me sorprende que haya gente que diga que es fácil, no porque sea un paseo, sino más bien porque las cartas bases suelen ser suficientes para pasarse el juego prácticamente (aunque las adicionales lo hacen más divertido). Si hay un par de cosas que no me terminan de agradar: EL juego tiene tres tipos formas de combate de cartas (armas, sellos y magia) las cuales funcionan estupendo de forma exclusiva de cada una. A cada niño se le asigna ya sea una o combinación de dos, y ahi es cuando hay un conflicto, cada tipo está pensada para ser usadas entre sí en forma de combos, pero si se usan cartas de otro tipo, a veces se cancelan o pierden efectividad. Y, por como es el juego, a veces estas casi obligado a elegir dos personajes de estilos distintos, haciendo la partida más lenta y complicada de lo necesario. La otra es que los eventos pueden repetirse varias veces, y hay algunos que son más molestos que cualquier otra cosa. Realmente es una experiencia encantadora desde el principio, lleno de carisma y cariño en muchos ámbitos, bastante satisfecho con todo, muy recomendado.

Instead of a roguelike deckbuilder, it is more like a puzzle story game. The deck building part is barely there, and game difficulty is quite easy. Battles and events quickly become repetitive and boring, some settings are just counter intuitive. There are plenty of characters for different play style. However, around 20 characters, there are about only about 3 styles of playing. Overall, this game feels like a RTE battle with puzzle story.