can die and the game will continue. Their card will be torn, and they can be rotated out for a live elemental. If Rooks is incapacitated, however, the player can be stuck with a dead elemental. Spirits can be resurrected for a fee by the Spirit Healer who resides in each town, or by a spell Rooks can learn at a high experience level. The game's difficulty is determined by various factors: Easy Game Overs: In contrast to the norm for RPGs of the era, which dictated that the death of one character in the player's party was usually a recoverable loss, in Arcana, the death of any character save an Elemental results in Game over. This means that an unexpected confrontation could result in a speedy demise. Little forewarning: Due to the convoluted nature of the passages, a common cause of death for a player's character is the sudden discovery of a boss character. The gravity of the situation is not apparent to the player until the fight begins. The presence of these boss characters is not always deducible in advance, and in many cases results simply from the player's movement onto a particular tile. Scarcity of save points: Saving the game is limited to the town area of each level. As such, it is possible to be in a difficult situation without any restorative items. The player must escape to the solace of the town before further engaging monsters. Limited inventory: The party's inventory is limited to forty-two item slots. Unlike other RPGs, where multiple copies of the same item can "stack" in one slot, the items in this game do not stack, providing a very strict, and often small, item limit. Linearity: Having completed a dungeon, the player cannot subsequently return. The dungeon explored is determined by the player's progress in the story and not chosen. This prevents players from returning to a dungeon with easier monsters, and risks being stuck in a dungeon whose monsters are too strong to overcome. Plot The ancient land of Elemen was rife with chaos under the tyranny of the evil Empress Rimsala (Rimsalia). A group of powerful wizards called the Card Masters combined their abilities to defeat Rimsala and seal her away. But her legacy would not be forgotten. Decades later, political unrest in the kingdoms of Elemen turned into bloody civil war. As armies slaughtered each other on the