Ariana and the Elder Codex

Tales of Magic Books...

+ nice effects
+ cute idle animations
+ simple Jump and Run x hack and Slay with a bit of Metroidvania-like
+ kinda no quests, but still good dialogue
+ different kind of dungeons
+ different Bosses
+ superb japanese VA
+ nice easy story
+ different magic gameplay options
+ nice dungeon design and cool Background
+ fantastic art direction

- minor things
- short gameplay
- limited spell options on buttons

Conclusion:
The Gameplay in Ariana is nothing new, but still feels magical. The devs used simple animations and Background to create a astonishing, yet interessting world with different environments. The short stories in the books were interesting and teach about many facets of Human life and magical encounters. Gameplay is fluid and nearly fully voiced. Entertaining but short game. This game is good enough to make you curious to play! Long live the "Ohohohoho" Ojousama style.

Score:
90

13/10 Fairy of....what are you?
13/10 Like a Fire
1337/10 Multi-Elemento

The game is not terrible but has some major flaws.

The story is actually interesting, I like the short stories format for the codices. Experimenting with the different spells is fun. The visuals and music are also pretty good. This is where the good things end, sadly.

The controls are pretty clunky. You can get by most of the time, but you specially feel it against airborne enemies. The difficulty curve does not exist, the game was from trivial to complete nightmare with no inbetweens. The difficulty spike is so high at the end, with the amount of random ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ flying your way it's impossible to tell, where everything is coming from or even where you're actually standing. The games ask for too much dodging and quick reflexes for what the controls can actually allow you to do. Even though the story is interesting, the pacing is abysmal. I get stopped so much by characters rambling incessantly, it honestly gets way more annoying than engaging.

Unfortunately these issues have killed any enjoyment I could have had with this, at this point I'm just trying to defeat the final boss because I'm already here so might as well. If you still want to play this, just put it in easy mode and try to enjoy the story.

This is my opinion After playing for less than two hours, the art style is pretty, the voice acting is solid, and the music is nice, but the gameplay just isn't doing it for me. It was good at first, but fighting enemies gets repetitive and boring really fast. Plus, there’s barely anything to explore rather than just opening chests.

I started on hard mode at first, but I ended up switching to easy mode just to go through the story. tbh, the gameplay was the main reason I bought it in the first place. The story itself is fine, nothing crazy.

Overall, it’s not the worst 2D game I’ve ever played, and there are definitely things I liked about it, but I just don't have the will to finish it.

The story is somewhat predictable, but I like the gameplay enjoyed every second of it.

This is a pretty decent game, and I love Ariana's voice.

However, the controls are rather unoptimized, as I get 0.5ms delay after clicking a button; and that simply slowness could kill me... but the self-heal is cool. Nonetheless I'm using a 8bitUltimate controller---which is good.

The story has potential to be great, but playing a 3D model for a 2D Platformer is rather, cool, but then again, I was expecting an efficient power gameplay...

Lastly, DO NOT EVER BUY THE BASE GAME ONLY, as there's no way to get the Deluxe items afterwards unless you pay for the Deluxe version outright. But if you don't care about the DLC, just buy the Base Game.