Arcade Spirits

A great visual novel, with intricate and interesting writing, a distinct and detailed artstyle and a catchy soundtrack. Well worth picking up for fans of the genre and newcomers alike

If you enjoy getting lost in a great story based around realistic characters, then you shouldn’t hesitate to play Arcade Spirits. Its story throws enough twists and turns to keep you captivated for its six to eight-hour runtime, and it’s hard not to get invested. It’s a shame the voice acting is inconsistent, but it’s not enough of a bugbear to ruin what is otherwise an excellent visual novel.

Dating Sims are great, regardless if they’re just cutesy romance or if they get a little more “intense”. You can just sit me down with a cast of characters that my character can smooch and I can play for hours. Arcade Spirits gives me what I want, and even has the fun bonus of being 100% way too relatable at times.

Arcade Spirits is a romantic visual novel set in an alternative future where the video game crash in the 80s never happened. Imagine: the now-infamous E.T. game was held back until a higher quality title could be produced, meaning that Atari didn’t have to dump hundreds of thousands of unsold copies in the desert. The gaming industry prospered instead of suffering an almost cataclysmic decline in profits. It seems a strange event to pick as the fulcrum of human history but it does mean that, in this timeline, arcades are thriving and are as abundant on the high street as coffee shops.

With that, I feel that I can still recommend this game despite its flaws. I mean, the key reason to play a game is entertainment, right? While Arcade Spirits may not meet my personal metric for “great visual novel,” it was still a highly-enjoyable game, and I would say it’s worth a look for fans of the genre.

Arcade Spirits is a visual novel with a very intriguing premise: "What if the 1983 video game marketing crash never happened?" Since I'm old enough to have many

No summary available