Review of Ary and the Secret of Seasons: A Zelda that is not a Zelda

Ary and the Secret of Seasons is a real action adventure, as a game in this genre it has to compete with the Primus Zelda genre. You can find out how Ary compares in this comparison and if it is an alternative to Zelda in the test.

When you see Ary and the mystery of the seasons, you have to think of the large model from The Legend of Zelda. Because Ary is a true action adventure that is heavily inspired by Zelda, but Nintendo has not only taken on a lot here. The developers also confirmed Legacy of Cain: Soul Reaver was a great role model for Ary. You will now find out how all these inspirations work together and whether we can transmit a walk through the seasons.

Aryelle, or Ary for short, is a brave girl who can be followed as the main protagonist in a great adventure. We live in the Yule winter region, our father is the keeper of the winter crystal, who has to act after strange events. Because the seasons are out of whack, our father and brother are gone. So it is up to us to bring Ary's Winter Crystal into the Dome of the Seasons in order to achieve equilibrium.

It sounds easy, but it isn't. During the journey we are greeted by all kinds of enemies, many visits and traps of confused tides. As the adventure progresses, we will have the opportunity to improve our combat skills, equip Ary with new beauty items and complete all kinds of side quests. The discovery of new landscapes awakens adventurers in us, even if the world is not as open as it is used by Zelda. Boundaries are shown, but you can always find something new. For example chests that contain gold that we can use for these cosmetic items or character upgrades.

The whole game of Ary and The Secret Seasons feels great. A special highlight of the game is the manipulation of the seasons, because we can control all four. In this way we can create winter balls that turn water into ice. This is necessary in order to reach previously inaccessible areas. Summer melts ice, spring plants grow and autumn brings rain.

All of these skills must be skillfully used to melt, for example with summer ice shields from enemies or to solve ecological puzzles. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the test, the combat system felt a little immature, but it has already been passed into the patch, which made it much more accurate and fluid. There's nothing wrong with that, unfortunately the real weakness of the Ary and The Secret seasons is graphics.

The style fits the setting perfectly, but too often there are editing errors that are especially noticeable in the cutout scenes. In addition to the clipping errors, the loading time between the individual regions is also sometimes very long, so that we can traverse the region in a minute, but the loading time to the next region also takes almost a minute. Hopefully a patch will be added here.

The story in Arya and The Secret Seasons is beautifully executed, many interesting side effects fit seamlessly into the story. Of course it doesn't have to be done, but if you don't like to help and lose yourself in the misguided discovery. This way you can easily count 13 hours of game time to play. Exceptional playtime for an indie action adventure. Unfortunately, the playing time can unintentionally be longer, as you can often lose track and not know whether you are on the right track.

Likewise, some things are not explained well enough or puzzles leave you confused in search of a solution. Puzzles are always associated with seasons, they are well executed, but sometimes they are difficult to understand right away. Above all, this makes it difficult for us to keep the camera running, many important elements for solving puzzles are not visible at first glance because they are covered. The bosses' first fight also required me to have a lot of skill, figuring out how to beat him.

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Conclusion

Improved game, ingenious puzzles and wonderfully designed world face clips, translation and camera issues. We have to admit that at some point during the test we were able to overlook these aesthetic issues because we were fascinated by Ary. German subtitles have always been useful, even if there were sometimes translation errors.

There's a lot to read so you know what to do too. Once you understand the basic mechanics, the game is almost a self-running game and you will have it through in no time. If you want to circuit boards the game, for example, you have a couple of additional tasks that can stretch the game up to 18 hours of total playtime.

If you hope that the voice will be disappointed over the hand, only a few video sequences will be set to music in English, most of which come with pseudo-voice-sound during the dialogue. Access to the huge action-adventure was there, but many aspects were not fully exploited.