Arcana box art

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Arcana

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Arcana

Mar 27, 1992

Main game

2.89 average rating based on 37 ratings

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In this game you play as a young boy named Rooks. He's the only one that can save the world from the evil Galneon. With the power of the cards he begins his adventure. All of the people you fight with and against are displayed on cards. They can have an elemental attribute or not. Rooks is able to summon an elemental to aid him. He can only summon one type at a time, and he must find them before being able to summon them.
Developers
HAL Laboratory
Publishers
HAL America Inc, HAL Laboratory
Platforms
Super Famicom, Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Genres
Role-playing (RPG)
Themes
Fantasy
Release Dates
Mar 27, 1992 Full Release (Japan)
Super Famicom
May 1992 Full Release (North_America)
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
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User Stats
82
In Collection
18
Wish Listed
0
Playing
27
Backlogged
How Long Is Arcana?
No playthrough data yet
Croyd_the_Third
Croyd_the_Third gave Jun 12, 2014
Croyd_the_Third gave Jun 12, 2014
Croyd_the_Third's review of Arcana

As a weird card game / dungeon crawler, I have a strange fondness for this game. I have no idea how or why I ever ended up with a copy, but it was surprisingly enjoyable. Either that, or I was young enough and knew that I was only getting so many games a year and I might as well play the ones that I had.

2 Show Likes
scoopings
scoopings updated their status Mar 29, 2025
scoopings updated their status Mar 29, 2025

Preliminary: I'm not sure why I'm enjoying this as much as I am lol, maybe if the dungeon crawling gets more complicated my tune will change. But I'm oddly hooked to the simple RPG gameplay so far, and the press-left-to-roam-through-town was used in another game I can't think of and it's sort of nostalgia-inducing for me. In many ways it feels like a PC/PC88/PC98 type RPG so far, even with the UI. Oh and it helps the music chagnes often and is pretty good. The card factor doesn't seem that involved yet, but so far I'm getting the RPG hook. We will see if it sticks.

Gotta love an automap feature enter image description here

Well it's fun in fast forward.... but it's so slow in the dungeons without fast forward.

Welp when I got to a whole wall of like 12 Jelly enemies at once, reminding me of the DQ style battles where there are countless of each enemy, I figured it was time to move on. Part of me wants to give this an arbitrary 3 star but not sure why I feel like overrating it.

2 Show Likes
Chovus
Chovus updated their status Jan 6, 2020
Chovus updated their status Jan 6, 2020

Beat the game. It was interesting enough as an average experience. The dungeon crawling was not too obtuse and the combat decent. I liked the non standard elemental weakness wheel and the summoning mechanic. I did not like the useless magic names and that if any human party member dies the game ends. It would be bad enough getting game over if just the main character dies, but I understand why some games do it. This game's game over rules are simply stupid. The game is also too short and the story is lacking.

1 Show Likes