Arcana of Paradise -The Tower- Review: Plumb the Depths of One Mysterious Tower

I’m constantly on the hunt for the next great deckbuilder, which can honestly be a frustrating process. I regularly find promising-looking titles that get held back by glitches, balancing, or a whole other assortment of issues. That’s what makes it so much sweeter on those rare occasions that I find a truly fantastic example of the genre. Examples like Arcana of Paradise -The Tower-. Developed by Tasto Alpha and published by Shueisha Games, it’s utterly unlike anything else I’ve played. It takes the survival element from The Oregon Trail and deftly mixes it with mystery and deckbuilding to deliver a wholly remarkable adventure.

Tower of Intrigue

A huge part of what makes Arcana of Paradise -The Tower- so original is the palpable sense of mystery. It’s reminiscent of LOST (when that show was still good). The story is about a group of children that find themselves stranded at the top of a strange tower. They can’t remember how they got there, but several of them seem to be talking with gods or deities and are convinced that Paradise lies at the tower’s summit. There are also fun things like a floating whale and a tree the children pray to, which delivers miracles to them. There are a ton of questions that can be asked, but honestly, I just enjoyed the air of mystery since it lent so much flavor to what might otherwise be a bland premise. As for what the children are up to, it’s pretty simple. They want to get to the bottom of the tower. There’s just one small problem – it’s full of monsters and strange entities called Arcana. Sometimes they will help the children, and often they will harry and outright attack them.

Another aspect of the game I have rarely seen done before is the nourishment system. These are all young children, so it stands to reason they need food to live. Even a little bit. For whatever reason, the tower is also full of bread, which the kids get from winning battles and opening treasure chests. You’ll eventually also be able to open up the option to create an oven that will provide a little extra bread every day, increasing your chances of survival. Each day that passes, every child will eat a loaf of bread. It’s not immediately game over if a new day starts and your pantry is empty, but you’ll have to act fast to go and secure more food for the community.

Take Heart and Face Adversity, Young Warriors

This brings us to the actual deckbuilding aspect of Arcana of Paradise -The Tower-. While I very much enjoyed the game and found the combat refreshing, I also didn’t find the deckbuilding all that complex. At least compared to other examples of the genre I’ve tried out, such as Nadir. But that’s also a far cry from saying the combat and card system isn’t fun. Whenever you venture into the tower, you’ll need to send a pair of children, each with their own deck of up to 4 cards that get combined into your draw pile. As you explore, you’ll come across more cards as spoils that you can add to their decks for the duration of that run, including powerful Relic cards that have passive effects and activate ones. But first, each child will have to be baptized as a warrior. This will determine their traits (some helpful, some not) and general class. In my time with the game, I only encountered three – swordsmen, spellcasters, and diviners.

Swordsmen are the easiest to grasp. They can chain attacks together, protect their allies from harm, and generally come equipped with sword and shield cards. Spellcasters are more complicated. Instead of chaining attacks, you can stack additional copies of the spell they’re casting to boost its strength, and they will occasionally heal their allies for free. And then there are diviners. They use powerful both weapons and magical seals that not only can deal elemental damage but can also paralyze foes if used in a specific order. I honestly thought I would hate the diviners since they’re by far the most complicated. I quickly grew to love them the most, since their seals can do massive damage very quickly, and the paralysis bonus is the cherry on top. You also have a perfect guard technique you can use to turn the tables on foes. Just use it right before they attack, and leave them stunned for several moments.

Flip Your Perspective

One of the especially unique aspects here is whether or not a card is right-side up or upside-down. Upside-down cards can have reversed effects. For example, healing herbs might poison you instead, or a sword can’t be swung hilt first. There’s a special hangman card that will reverse the cards in your hand, which is helpful since sometimes they get turned around, both by default and by enemy effects. Cards can also rip in half unexpectedly, which is a huge problem in the midst of a climactic battle. Oh and you’ll also use the cards to solve mysteries, lighting up the darkness with a torch card, shielding children from beasts leaping out of chests and much more besides.

Something Familiar About that Wall…

As you progress through the tower, you’ll come to choke points that will force you to return to the top and find a way to proceed. Generally, this means unlocking and then utilizing the right card to get past whatever is stopping you. An example is a giant statue that I eventually got past with a Giant card. Not only did this remove the obstruction, but it transformed it into a huge, vengeful swordsman I had to defeat! To help you survive all these unexpected threats, you will gradually gain experience. Not for the children, mind you, but the tower itself.

Leveling the tower up not only unlocks new cards you can find in each run but also new gameplay mechanics. Such as auto-dealing your next hand of cards, looking at the children’s traits, and even a rough map of the tower itself. Though this does lend Arcana of Paradise -The Tower- to being a more grindy experience, this never felt unfair or unbalanced. It just required I slow down and get into the rhythm of how the game wanted to be played.

Perseverance Is Rewarded

While you don’t actively level up the children in the traditional fashion, they can grow stronger via affinity. They’ll naturally befriend other children, and if you sympathize with how they’re feeling, they’ll grow fond of you too. You can also eventually rebaptize each child for a chance to strengthen them, especially if they have traits you’re not fond of. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s always the wishing tree you can offer bread to for miracles. Offer enough, and you can make the children more durable and healthier, boosting their base health.

Storybook Visuals

Visually, Arcana of Paradise -The Tower- is attractive, with a generally retro aesthetic. It looks like it could have been a pretty SNES or PS2 game, and I’m fond of the watercolor look. However, what really surprised me is how incredible the sound design is in the game. Not only does it make great use of sound effects to signpost incoming attacks, but there’s some really vivid use of violins during combat that amps up the sense of impending danger. Put together, this is a very engaging and lovely adventure.

There’s very little about the game I didn’t enjoy. Most all of it is very well balanced. But there are a couple of minor issues that kept it from a perfect score. For one, it’s pretty clear that the UI was designed with the mouse and keyboard in mind. It’s a little annoying to have to move the cursor around before the screen pans up and down, and needing to select the right point on the map to get the game to respond. I would have really appreciated a way to jump from active points instead, not unlike in tactical RPGs such as Fire Emblem.

Also, though I generally found the game intuitive, sometimes it wasn’t very clear what certain cards did. Though I quickly grew to love diviners, it took me a while tinkering with them to fully grasp how their seals worked. It also isn’t always apparent what secondary effects a card might have. An example is grilled meat. While this can, and should, be used to heal the children, it can also be used to light fires, since the card shows both meat and fire below it.

A Winning Hand

Ultimately, Arcana of Paradise -The Tower- is still an incredible, mysterious journey, and one of the best deckbuilders I’ve played. And yes, that list also includes the likes of Slay the Spire. So if you’re looking for something unique and don’t mind a little grinding and occasionally unintuitive controls, this is absolutely a game worth your time.

Final Verdict: 4.5/5

Available on: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), PC; Publisher: Shueisha Games; Developer: Tasto Alpha; Players: 1; Released: October 20, 2023; ESRB: E for Everyone; MSRP: $19.99

Editor’s note: The publisher provided a review copy to Hey Poor Player.