Ary and the Secret of Seasons - Review
Adventure games are as varied as the seasons, which is a good thing, because with each new take on them, something new is generally added, be it story or gameplay. With Ary and the Secret of the Seasons, the latter is where the new additions come and the ability to change the seasons at will are great, but does it make for a game worth playing overall?
The game tells the story of Arielle, or Ary as she is affectionately known, the younger child of the of the Guardian of Winter, located in the town of Yule. As the story starts off, her brother Flynn has been missing for a few weeks and she is aiming to help out her family, but as she starts to help out, a Hyena bursts into town, carrying Flynn’s sword. While attempting to explain what happened to her mother, massive red-hot stones land throughout Yule, turning the season of Winter into more like Summer. The game kicks up the story as the Guardians have been summoned to discover what is going on and with Ary’s father being to sick to travel, she takes it upon herself to fill that role and discover just what is going on. The quest to reach where the Guardians are located, The Dome of Seasons, is more of a tutorial than anything else and the story exposition is very limited here, but the game still helps fill the world in; once you reach the Guardians you are given another quest and things go from there.
The story is very much something you might find in a Nickelodeon show, there are some humorous moments, but it is predictable. That is something that I was hoping was not the case, and while I can understand why, they had the chance to do something very different and telling the story they did, was just frustrating. There is nothing inherently bad about the story, the story beats are just something that you can see coming from a mile away. The other issue with the story is the characters, while the story beats are predictable, the characters drag it down, mostly due to them constantly filling stereotypes and not being anything new.
Outside of the story the gameplay is mostly a take on The Legend of Zelda series, but with seasonal powers and that is all you really need to know. That structure that comes from the Zelda series means that access to areas are limited, until you get more powers or new upgrades, and that loop is satisfying. The first temple, or what they call a Shrine, guides you through most of those standard gameplay components and helps provide context to the actions you will need to understand, in order to push forward, it also helps that you get a double jump at the end of it. The games puzzle solving is pretty light, at least compared to old school Zelda titles, but it makes up for it with more quests and interactions with folks of the world. When you bring it together, the game could have been fine with that on its own, but it is the addition of the season controlling powers that take things a little further.
As the game starts you are in control of Winter and then soon after, you claim Summer for yourself as well, and both are pretty quick in defining just what they can do. Winter is great for letting you gain access to new locations, for example freezing a lake or freezing pockets of air to make platforms you can climb around on. The platform and progression is not limited there, there are some trees and vines that will wither away in the colder climate, so if you understand the basics of how the seasons work in the real world, they behave the same way here. There are puzzles later on that require you to start using multiple seasons, but there are catches, you can’t have them overlap, so you can’t come up with the new season of Sumter or Sprumn, but you can make use of the multiple spaces. For the most part you can only create a space of a particular season in your immediate surroundings, but you can expand it, if you cast your seasonal power at some magic stones that are all around the place. While early on you can get by pretty quickly in discovering where these stones are, once the big bad is revealed, you will need to start hunting them down.
The season powers can also be used in combat, should an enemy be used to the warmth of Summer, throwing down a Winter dome, will cause them to move slower, the flip side also works, if they are rugged up for the cold, instant heat will cause them harm. Outside of combat via powers, the basic actions are you can lock onto enemies and then attack, should an enemy be about to land a big hit on you, you can dodge it, or parry it, leaving them open for your own attack. While you start the game with a wooden sword, you will eventually find people willing to sell you stronger weapons, but each one has its own strengths and weaknesses, so ensuring you enter into combat with the right weapon is very important. The downside to all of this is simple, the menu and navigation for all of that, sucks and with that, you can’t just swap weapons out with ease, it is a bit of a saga to do so.
The games presentation is also a little weird, it is not bad, just weird, basically if you think of the style they went for it, is Avatar the Last Airbender meets a Dreamworks movie. The developers have taken a lot of influence from Asian cultures and you will notice it from the first time you step outside your house and then as you explore the world, you will see more and more of it. That is not to say that things are exclusively Asian influenced, there are other locations from the world that have been borrowed and while each stands fine on its own, as part of the larger world, there is a disconnect to them. Each region prides itself on their known season, head to Lammastide and they love Summer, but deplore Winter, making Yule a place most of them couldn’t imagine living in, a Melbourne Vs Sydney sort of deal. The problem is while one location is Asian and another Greek, there is no central point that blends them together, which makes the world feel disconnected.
The other issue with presentation, especially on Switch is just how rough everything looks, the game at times struggles to display most things within a very short distance from Ary, even in areas that are pretty bare. The problem is that a lot of the world is not bare, especially once you start to encounter towns, enemy camps or shrines, there is much detail in each and seeing it pop up looks bad and it is constant. The other visual issue with the Switch is that the cutscenes, which look beautiful on PC, end up looking more like an animatic, or a animated movie, that has not be rendered correctly. These blemishes, along with the slow and jittery performance, as well as very long loads, make it a very difficult sell on Switch, other versions, specifically the PC release don’t have these issues, so if you are wanting to play the game, play it elsewhere.
Audio is a bit weird, the voice work, when it is present is solid, but nothing to special, it just is nice, the games ambience effects and solid, especially the sounds of activating seasons, but the music is a letdown. The melodies are not horrible, but there was something about the music that honestly didn’t click for me, I can’t put my finger on it. Another aspect was that some of the tunes felt really familiar, as if they were sampled from other things and while not something I can point to definitively, it kept coming to the front of my mind, whenever I heard them.
Ary and the Secret of Seasons is an ok game, it takes the concept of seasonal manipulations and manages to make it work in a fun and interesting way, but that is about it. The story is predictable and characters feel locked into stereotypes, which means that very rarely will anything surprise you. If you get the game, you need to avoid it on Switch, is almost unplayable and if it were somehow able to run smoother, it looks pretty bad.
The Score
6.5
Review code provided by Modus Games
The Pros
+Decent gameplay loop, keeping you engaged
+Season powers add a fun layer to the standard ‘Zelda’ inspired gameplay
The Cons
-Predictable story and characters leave a by the numbers experience
-Switch version is near unplayable at times
