Welcome to The Arcana, a thrilling world full of mystery and romance! Immerse yourself in this beautiful otome-inspired visual novel. You will become a tarot prodigy, wander the hidden alleys of an ancient city, and mingle with seductive figures. Choose your story carefully to decide who you condemn and who you desire!
You take the role of a prodigy tarot card reader employed in your mentor Asra’s magic shop. You wake up confused and with no memory of what took place before. All of a sudden, someone is knocking on the door. Three characters appear who wish to speak to your mentor, but you offer them a tarot card reading instead. Nadia, the countess of Vesuvia, is intrigued by your reading. She offers you an invitation to her Palace, however for a price - you must first uncover the mystery of her murdered husband!
Immediately you are thrust into a mystic story, where you rendezvous with a mix of sultry characters on your path to uncovering the mystery. Each character has many hidden secrets that you discover through your choices. Will you fall in love? Be careful, your choices impact more than just yourself!
In this LGBT-friendly game, you pick your pronoun - then romance to your heart’s content! If you play mystery games, otome, or anime games, you will love The Arcana! Are you ready to fall in love?
More along the style of traditional visual romances, The Arcana is well polished in visuals, music, and writing. And when you're looking at something free-to-play, I don't think you can really ask for more.As with most free-to-play apps, The Arcana does have currency that lets you interact with the game. First, there are keys, which allow you to play through chapters. You freely generate up to 3 keys, each taking 3 hours to refresh, but can purchase more if you're impatient. I've been more tempted to purchase time-savers in this app than most, especially during later chapters when the action is heating up...but I've yet to actually open my wallet. Actually, I did enjoy a free key event during the long MLK holiday weekend (it was pitched as celebrating a character's birthday), so if waiting is too much for you, you might keep your ears peeled for another one.
The other currency is coins, which allow you to purchase premium choices in the stories - usually to unlock bonus scenes and artwork - and outright buy parts of the characters' stories. Each character's story is divided into books and chapters, so you can read each chapter with one key apiece, or you can purchase a book for unlimited access and unlock all paid choices for between 300 and 500 coins, depending on the length. With 100 coins costing $2, that's pretty expensive if you want to unlock everything... In fact, to purchase everything up through one of the endings for Julian, I'm calculating 6550 coins for all the books, which is 'on sale' in the store for only $100. Uh, that's a REALLY expensive book, even with all the artwork and music and interactivity. So if you do choose to purchase anything, maybe just the chapters which do include extra artwork? Or just save up over time? I know you're given a starting amount of coins around 150? 200? Then you're given a daily login bonus of 5 coins. There is also a daily free spin on the Wheel of Fortune, which can gift you coins or trinkets. Additional spins can be bought for 20 coins each, but I don't see the point. Trinkets unlock more bonus content, but only when you have a full set of them, and you can get duplicates (which unlock more content when you have multiple complete sets...). So yeah, maybe not the most straightforward for paid content, but the free stuff is stellar.
*JUST* this week, they suddenly started offering me coins for ads. I've gotten 3 or 4 sets of 15 coins per day so far. I assume this is part of a recent update, but it might just be a timed thing since I've had it downloaded for about a month now? Hard to say, but I'm surprised it's taken this long to have any ads in the game.That brings me to the app itself. It starts with a free-to-play (key-free, too) Prologue of 5 Books which introduces you to all the major players/lovers and the general mystery afoot of who killed the Count and how? After the intro, you then choose which character you want to romance and progress through their storyline. Choices you make in the story will not only open new scenes and artwork, but also lead you toward the Upright (good) or Reversed (less good) endings. None of the paid choices affect your ending. Each character has one of each, though I found Julian technically had 2 subtly different endings in his Reversed route.
There are 6 possible characters to romance, though only the first 3 have complete stories so far:
Julian - An exciting and dangerous doctor accused of a vile crime
Asra - Your magical mentor with a wealth of secrets
Nadia - The powerful and intriguing countess of the city
Portia - Nadia’s favorite and most trustworthy handmaiden
Muriel - A mysterious outsider
Lucio - The dead count, and husband of Nadia, who once ruled Vesuvia
I went with Julian first, and I loved his quick wit and sense of humor. Plus, check out how mysterious and dashing he looks! He's very self-deprecating and quick to self-sacrifice, which played into his ending if you don't knock some sense into him, but he always seems to have others' best interests at heart. Great for a doctor or a boyfriend.Asra's story was next, which helped to flesh out more of the intricacies of the past. He's a magician, so is more knowledgeable about the general goings on of the Arcana and the mysteries surrounding the crime you're set to investigate. He also has a direct link to your own foggy past, though his motivation is unclear when he isn't your romantic interest. Asra's is more aloof and he's also hesitant to make decisions, but once you get him to stop running away and commit, he is extremely loyal and he knows a trick or two to keep things interesting.
Nadia shows a surprising lack of emotion in regards to her recently deceased husband, but is very passionate when it comes to justice and those she does care about. I'd definitely say she's the most confident and leans heavily toward seductive most of the time, no doubt bolstered by her high status, but her weakness lies in truly opening herself up to help. I hesitate to call her prideful, more like she's been burned too many times and doesn't want to be found vulnerable. You, however, are essential in supporting her in whatever path she takes, and she won't hesitate to show her appreciation.
My favorite story so far has to belong to Lucio. Yes, you can choose to romance a dead guy (I'm not dead, I'm right here!), though if you've played through any of the other stories you may not think he's worthy of your time. I, however, am a sucker for a good redemption tale. Julian scratched a bit of that itch, but Lucio is truly a soul that needs some work done. He's the epitome of pride and greed, but there's a hint of naiveté and a lot to unpack when you get further into things... I'm trusting that the writing team will figure out some way for this completely abhorrent character to put things to right, but for the moment I'm stuck at a little under half-way through, waiting for an update!For that reason, I haven't started Muriel or Portia's stories yet, cause they're still unfinished as well. In the meantime, there are still plenty of things to explore in my freetime. There are currently four bonus Tales, three set before the story proper that help fill in details previously alluded to (along with an extra romance with one of Nadia's sisters). I've been going back through the stories with the coins I've started collecting to unlock paid extras, plus getting in my daily spins in for trinkets - I've just unlocked another bonus scene with the first full set of them! And then there's the Heart Hunter minigame.
Heart Hunter has you chasing three of the romantic interests through various locations around the game, trying to romance them into giving you hearts. During each turn, the romantic interests move first, then you spin a wheel to see if you can move 1, 2, or 3 spaces. If you finish on the same space as a character, you get a quick dialog snippet and earn a heart. Over the course of 6 turns, if you successfully earn 4 hearts from one character you win a postcard from them. Postcards are grouped into sets, and once completed you earn coins, keys, and boosts for the minigame. You get 3 games per day. Each game takes a couple minutes, mostly because you can't skip any dialog or animations, so I admittedly haven't played as religiously as I could, but its by no means a bad way to spend your time waiting for new updates.So, yeah, that's The Arcana. If I had to pick just one game/story to pick up, this would probably be it. Between the artwork, the strong storytelling, the seemingly panromantic nature of the characters... Oh, right, I forgot to mention that. Yeah, you can pick whatever name you want to go by, and the pronouns he/him, she/her, or they/them for your character and the other characters don't really care. Actually, when left to their own devices (during the Upright endings) I've noticed most characters seem to pair up in same-sex couples, but whoever you're romancing at the moment will love you no matter what you've got in your pants. I personally changed my name and gender for each story, keeping my romances hetero for every character, but obviously that's just one option. I'm just happy with the variety and inclusivity that's offered.
On the topic of endings, I don't want to get too detailed for fear of spoiling people's first experiences. It really is a great story, but once you've gone through once, it's easier to see which choices get you which endings. The choices aren't always black and white in their wording, and both typically are loving toward your romantic interest, but the endings are built on a simple tally system with one choice going toward good and the other toward bad, majority wins. That's not to say that every choice in the game builds toward the endings, but it's kind of a bummer to see such a detailed experience rely on elementary mechanics. But then, it is free.Ultimately, this is probably my most highly recommended app to try. If you're at all interested in romance, fantastic artwork, or tarot-based fantasy, this is definitely the app for you. With the new coins for ads feature, paid choices are looking a lot more obtainable, and time isn't too tough of a trade off when reading is involved. I'll be keeping with this one to the end, and I'm eagerly awaiting the next updates for the unfinished stories.
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