Quick Look: Legend of Talia: Arcadia (Nintendo Switch)

Originally developed, and published, by Winged Cloud onto Windows PC, Legend of Talia: Arcadia is a short visual novel story that recently made it’s debut onto Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 by the new ‘lewd’ publishing partner Gamuzumi and today we will be taking a quick look at the Nintendo Switch version of the game.

Legend of Talia: Arcadia is, unlike other visual novels on the market, simply a short story in visual form as the game requires no interaction from the player other than pressing the ‘A’ button to continue to the next page of dialogue. Ironically even this action can be made pointless (and automatic) through the games useful ‘auto-play’ feature. Personally I didn’t find this to be an issue, as it meant I could simply enjoy the story from start to finish, but it does mean that it does not offer any replay value in terms of finding alternative endings or storylines. That aside, Legend of Talia: Arcadia has a story to tell and surprisingly it’s quite a good one.

In Legend of Talia: Arcadia players will follow the adventurer, or hero, known as Arcadia; a fearless woman who has defeated monsters and demons throughout her years of service; however she has found herself rather tired of her current situation and instead merely fights if required. This story begins with Arcadia arriving at a village in search of rest, but annoyed at being welcomed as a hero she leaves the village in the midst of night and then learns to discover it was destroyed by a dragon. Fast forward several years into the future and Arcadia stumbles upon a pink-haired-woman in the forest (enter fan-service moment) and the two party up to return to the nearby village for rest, at which point disaster strikes when the dragon that attacked the village years prior reappears to cause havoc once again.

Arcadia, along with members of the village, must then team-up to defeat the dragon; but dragons aside it’s not the only dangerous thing in the village – as Arcadia learns the hard way. The village chief has her own secrets and Arcadia works with her to uncover them, of which along the way sees new friendships formed in unlikely situations. The story within Legend of Talia: Arcadia is, in simple terms, a revenge and redemption story for characters involved and while only a small number of characters are involved the world these characters inhabit are carefully built up and explored to us in detail through the descriptions of the text being displayed on screen.

Legend of Talia: Arcadia is a simple and straight forward visual novel that focuses more on the story being told then its presentation. Much like other Winged Cloud titles released onto Windows PC the game features no voice-over and simple static character designs that move ever-so-slightly depending on the dialogue being spoken.

Scenes quickly transition with no real impact or awareness either, especially during the dragon fight; but all of these flaws aside the story within Legend of Talia: Arcadia was still a good one, if not a little bit predictable, and it is presented well on the Nintendo Switch but does have a few minor translation and text displaying errors. Legend of Talia: Arcadia is well worth checking out if you are looking for short story on your console.

Legend of Talia: Arcadia is now available digitally for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 worldwide.