I love books. I spend an inordinate amount of time reading and teaching about literature, so it’s safe to say that I’m not afraid of text, and Ariana and the Elder Codex immediately appealed to me with its library setting and fusion of books and magic. What I didn’t realise, however, is that the game contains so much dialogue that it is pretty much a 50/50 mix of action platformer and visual novel at times. I point this out at the beginning of the review not as a complaint per se (although that will come later) but more as a simple statement of the game’s nature.
In a world that usually benefits from magic, a mysterious curse has sealed the magical codices and Ariana must use her special ability to enter the books and restore the connection to the magic within. This perfectly perfunctory narrative essentially provides the background for the library being a hub world from which Ariana can travel to the various levels.
The elemental nature of the Codices does mean that the levels each have a feel and style of their own, from the four base elements to more complex fusions of science and magic later on. Every level contains a number of tears that must be repaired in order to restore the magical connection, with most having to be revealed by vanquishing all the enemies in a given area. A boss battle at the end of each level will restore the codex’s link back to the library, whilst finding all the hidden tears will reward you with character upgrades and materials for crafting spells and items.
Alongside upgrades to health and attack, progress through the levels will provide Ariana with passive skills such as dashes and double jumps, each one necessary to completely restore each level. I appreciate the very light search adventure aspect this gave, but the game forcing you to go back and fully finish each level felt a lot like padding just as the story was coming to a head – especially as enemies were just annoyances by this point. This ability unlocks could have lent themselves well to a Metroidvania progression, but when I finished most levels with over 80% completion, it wasn’t as significant an aspect as I was expecting.
Combat is reminiscent of Ender Lillies in that even melee attacks are a spell, whilst you can equip six different abilities to customise your loadout to your personal preferences. This does offer some interesting potential for strategic combinations, but I soon found that a mix of water bubbles and standard magic was enough for every situation, aside from the final boss. This made the bulk of the game a fairly brainless process. Even boss battles proved to be little challenge by spamming magic attacks except for the final one that was a pretty significant difficulty spike. This may be because I was too reliant on the skills that had seen me through the rest of the game so I fully recognise this might be partly on me but the rest of the adventure provided little incentive to mix things up.
Aside from the repetitive combat and negligible search adventure aspects, the sheer amount of lore and dialogue proved exhausting to me. It’s not particularly badly written, but the characters talk so much that I quickly resorted to skipping conversations as they revealed little of interest and, again, felt like padding. The central story is relatively straight forward and the endless chatter added little of consequence.
It is nice to look at, though. Ariana and the Elder Codex is bright and colourful, benefiting from a striking comic book artstyle and some nice character designs. Enemies are not as varied as I would have liked given how much combat there is to wade through, but the various levels are distinctive in their elemental characteristics. Magic effects are flashy and often fill the screen with bursts of colour and hordes of damage numbers which does make you feel like a badass for a while; at least until the repetition sets in.
