Arietta of Spirits

Meh.

Look, there is nothing wrong with Arietta of Spirits. It plays well, I did not encounter any bugs, the story was sweet, the pixel art cute. Which is the problem in this case. It is a Zelda-like top down adventure of a girl who goes on vacation with her parents. Her father gives her a wooden sword to defend against nasty wasps (dad of the year award, clearly), she encounters a spirit which tells her she is very special and can see the afterworld and must help spirits out, etc. Like retrieving the lost ring of her grandmother who just died: It’s the first vacation without her. Her spirit will be very happy.

There is a plethora of games like this. Nothing is wrong with it, but nothing stands out either. The game feels fine, plays fine. Sometimes Arietta doesn’t seem very responsive with her sword, but that’s a known issue for a lot of games. It was annoying enough to not want to play the game with 1 life for the last achievement (and how I hate only having 1 achievement left. I don’t care if it’s more, but 1 feels bad). I am sorry Arietta, I will not remember you for long. The video game market is filled with games like this, sadly, so I felt kinda indifferent about it. Yes, I have played you before, under a lot of different names. It is a bit sad, because it has been done with a lot of love and care, but I was happy to be done with it.