Arietta of Spirits

Arietta of Spirits is a short action-adventure title I got on sale on steam as a recommendation from a YouTuber who wanted to point out a good chunk of games that have very little steam sales but felt needed a bit more attention.

The game plays like a cut-to-the-chase form of Zelda, specifically The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap [ゼルダの伝説 ふしぎのぼうし] with its roll dashes and graphics. You swing a sword you collect things, you are Link...i mean Arietta.

The game doesn't quite sink its teeth into a big adventure as a Zelda one so that's an initial disappointment and there isn't too much exploration. Some caves have walls you can stab at with your sword to find things, but otherwise, there are many very similar-looking paths of trees and caves. You meet some unique characters along the way but as the game is so short they don't really leave an impact but aren't exactly annoying either.

The main thing that helped the game stand out was its mini-boss and boss battles which have some unique properties and stand out. I especially liked the mini-boss that turned invisible and zoomed around the room (figuring out how you can catch it is part of the fun).

The game tries to offer a bit of incentive in collecting items around the map as a payoff, and while it's cute, I don't think the payoff is worth it.

Would be curious to see what the developers do to flesh this out into something more grand and full because there are elements of good things, it's just too short to emotionally hook you with its characters, and doesn't have enough variety in the environments or actions to make you feel like you are doing a proper adventure.