Last month, I had the opportunity to play through the preview of eXiin’s RPG-esque puzzle platformer, Ary and the Secret of Seasons. Having now played through the full game, some parts of my initial experience have very much held up. At the same time, other parts have (for better or worse) shifted. Let’s just go ahead and get into the why’s and how’s, shall we?

When last I wrote on this, I was endeared by the graphics and animation style. I was charmed by the warmth of the characters and their voice acting, and the creative central puzzling mechanic by which Ary controls certain seasonal and elemental powers.

These aspects very much still hold true; Ary shines in some of its cutscenes and especially in its level design within the dungeons or temples that make up many of the significant narrative questlines. The puzzles within said temples are fun and engaging without being punishing. They require an enjoyable amount of thought and trial-and-error, and provide enough variety that they don’t become stale.

Equally, the soundtrack is warm and uplifting even when in combat, and Ary’s character herself is lovable and easy to root for. She’s the kind of character that will inspire nostalgia in adults who grew up on Disney and the Zelda franchise. However, she also has plenty to offer to younger players experiencing some of these media forms for the first time.

Unfortunately, although I really wanted to be able to give Ary an unqualified boost for all the ways that it is enjoyable; I find myself having to qualify several of my initial reactions. This is especially the case now that I’m able to place them in the game’s full context.

When not in a temple or a dungeon, the narrative thread began to drag. This is possibly a critique that can be made of many games that make an ambitious attempt at an open-world style and don’t quite hit their stride in that respect. On the one hand, one could argue that the out-of-the-way and seemingly entirely optional side quests make it easy for players to play the game as linearly or as exploration-heavy as they please.

On the other hand, these side quests (as far as I can tell) largely consist of fetching and delivery missions. Additionally, the reward for being willing to back-and-forth repeatedly is usually a cosmetic item that, while cute, seems to have no impact on gameplay.

Is it fun to see the skullfish mask I received in the narrative cutscenes? Sure! Still, I find myself struggling to identify what would motivate a player to seek out those side quests if the rewards don’t do much to improve your quality of life or gameplay experience. There is even a Steam achievement for playing the entire game without doing a single side quest. I almost have to wonder, then, if the developers were going for a joke that didn’t quite land.

Speaking of gameplay, this would not be an honest review if I didn’t address some of the lingering bugs. I did wait to write and release this review until after an expected patch so I could respond fairly. Said patch did fix many, though not all, of the previously existing gameplay and visual issues.

The team working on the game is clearly aware of them. Despite some asking the question of whether they might have benefited from opting for a later release date to be able to produce a more polished product, it’s better than simply being left with the bugs.

However, a handful of bugs do remain. They are perhaps especially jarring because of all the issues that have been fixed. Most notably, at least on my playthrough, my excitement at unlocking the double jump command was short-lived. I didn’t get to spend much time with it before it decided to give up the ghost and stop responding right when I needed it.

I accidentally threw myself off a cliff a slightly embarrassing number of times before saving, quitting, and rebooting. I did this in the hope that it would register my keystrokes the second time around. It did, but this shouldn’t be a requisite step of narrative progression.

These kinds of control lag or touch-and-go responsiveness issues stand out, particularly, because the overall physics of Ary and the Secret of Seasons seem to be much smoother after the patch from September 8th, at least on PC. They aren’t (necessarily) game-breaking and I managed to figure out how to work around them. However, they’re significant enough that a young (or more casual) player, might become frustrated enough to give up.

In terms of combat, further on that note, it’s … fine? Individual smaller battles can be avoided if you’re not in the mood. That may be a benefit or a drawback depending on your playstyle. Assuming you do engage, though, the combat does run fairly smoothly and it’s fairly forgiving to anxious button-mashers like myself. However, the difficulty curve between these standard enemies and your first boss is more of a spike.

Unless I did something in the wrong order, there is no explanation of how to use your seasonal powers in combat until you’re thrown headlong into using them. If any players find this as frustrating and confusing as I did, I wouldn’t be surprised by seeing some player dropoff at the point of the first boss battle, either.

Otherwise, most of the enemies I encountered were (while not overly punishing) a bit repetitive, and tended to respawn very quickly if I left and returned to a checkpoint. In the absence of XP gained for defeating them, again, I struggle to understand why they respawned so often. Further, given that the skullfish providing my mask was seemingly cut from the game as an enemy to face, I have to wonder how much more variety in combat would be present if Ary had spent more time in the proverbial workshop.

Finally, our story. Oh, our story. I’ll concede that some of my question marks here do come from my own vantage point. Maybe if I wasn’t the queer non-binary gamer that I am, it might not have occurred to me. Still, I spent a perhaps inordinate amount of time wondering if Ary was meant to be a trans character. When I concluded that that probably wasn’t the case, i spent a fair amount of time thinking that the story would have benefited from making that choice.

In its absence, the narrative treads some pretty over-trodden ground. It centers on a young girl taking on a mantle previously worn by her father and brother. Fine, except she does this just to spend most of the early parts of the game being constantly compared to them. Often Ary is told that she’s doing things and going places that girls aren’t supposed to.

In what I can only assume was a nod to Mulan, Ary cuts her hair and changes her clothes to “look the part.” Unlike in Mulan’s story, this appearance change seems nearly irrelevant to the story after a few remarks about her looks. Certainly. there doesn’t seem to be any deliberate interrogation of feminine and masculine ideals beyond the point of Ary insisting she’s “not just a girl” when a man calls her abilities into question.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I think video games are an important and valuable storytelling mechanism. I also think that there are still interesting stories to be told about navigating and subverting “traditionally” gendered spaces.

However, stories that measure a woman’s or a girl’s worth and aptitude against what the men in her life do — and what the women in her life are supposed to do — without ever really committing to interrogating what that means are, by now, numerous. I had enough warmth in me toward Ary the game and Ary the character that I was truly hoping the story would question itself more. Then it didn’t, and I’m not entirely sure that this is the gender, womanhood, or coming of age story we need to see repeated.

I feel as though I’ve spent the majority of this review critiquing Ary. I do, then, want to wrap this up with a compliment sandwich. There’s clearly a great deal of love and optimism put into the game, even if I think it could have benefited from some more TLC to produce something as polished as it deserves to be.

The puzzles genuinely are a great deal of fun, and I really love the seasonal powers. It’s still deeply satisfying to watch an orb of snow and ice or warmth and sunlight spread and fan out around you. It is equally satisfying to literally freeze a sharply jutting block of spikes in place before they can hit you.

Ary, in her own right, is a truly endearing and memorable character who’s easy to care about, even if I feel that the story she’s in let her down somewhat. In other words, I’m going to leave this review as a qualified recommendation. Though the game is perhaps kind of steeply priced, it’s a good deal of fun. It is definitely worth playing, though it may require some patience for some of the lingering issues.

A PC review copy of Ary and the Secret of Seasons was provided by eXiin for this review.

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Ary and the Secret of Seasons

$49.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Cute graphics and animations
• Enjoyable soundtrack
• Solid voice acting
• Fun puzzle mechanics

Cons

• Story is a bit derivative
• Some bugs and lagging controls
• Very steep difficulty curve for combat