Ariana and the Elder Codex

Genre: Action-Platformer / Action-RPG

Players: 1

.

Review:

Ariana and the Elder Codex is an Action-Platformer with Action-RPG elements released in 2026 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch. Set in a fantasy world where humanity has been gifted with magic made possible by the existence of multiple codices (the plural of codex, a fancy word for “book”), but this resource that everyone depends on has been threatened because someone has vandalized these books. As a librarian and the only one capable of repairing codices by entering the magical stories contained within them, Ariana takes it upon herself to undo the damage to these books and restore harmony to the world.

It’s not an inspired fantasy story, and this is made worse by each of these books containing their own similarly uninspired story that’s not directly related to the main plot. But I suppose it gives us an excuse to have a magical adventure with a character whose move set is pieced together from these multiple magical sources.

The rest of the presentation is a mix of good and bad. On the good side of things, Ariana herself is gorgeously detailed and animated with an anime-style cel-shaded look. However, other characters and backgrounds often don’t get the same attention, with shadowy enemies looking generic (comparable to Kingdom Hearts’ Heartless enemies), and the locales within each book looking blocky and anything but organic. These visuals are backed by a typical but not especially memorable soundtrack and joined by decent voice acting for the major characters during cutscenes.

For a game themed around books, it’s a bit surprising that the main focus here is on combat, and on the good side of things, Ariana will increasingly come into possession of a wide array of abilities that players can mix and match to their heart’s content, with each individually upgradeable. The potential for customization here is promising, and I would argue this is probably the best part of this game.

Unfortunately, the combat itself is pretty lacking. Each attack apart from the standard melee attack is on a cooldown, but even when this isn’t the case it still frequently feels like your moves aren’t as responsive as you’d like, which can be particularly frustrating when it’s important that you continue a combo to keep an enemy stunned, but the game fails to register one of your attacks. Also, enemies increasingly become damage sponges, making combat tedious and time-consuming.

Things are made worse by performance on Nintendo Switch, with some absolutely nasty slowdown at points, and that’s even after you go into the game’s menus and select for the game to emphasize performance. At times, this game can slog into a slide show, which certainly isn’t conducive for maintaining your rhythm to keep a combo going.

In the end, while Ariana and the Elder Codex has some strong elements for a solid game, the execution is just too lacking in too many areas. The story isn’t very interesting, enemy designs are forgettable, locales are repetitive and dull-looking, the combat isn’t responsive enough, and enemies are damage sponges making things unnecessarily tedious. Some players may still find the variety of customization possibilities here enough to entice them to keep going, but for most players I think there are more satisfying alternatives out there.

tl;dr – Ariana and the Elder Codex is an Action-Platformer with Action-RPG elements about a magic-wielding librarian hopping into the magical stories contained within important magic books called codices in the hopes of repairing the damage done to those books. There’s some good customization here, and Ariana herself looks great, but virtually everything else about this game has problems, including nasty slowdown on Nintendo Switch. Some players may find the positive qualities of this game make it worthwhile to slog through the bad stuff, but most are better off playing something else.

Grade: C+

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Jamie and His Cats, Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Johannes, Jaka, Jared Wark, Gabriel Coronad-Medina, Francis Obst, Kristoffer Wulff, Seth Christenfeld, and Vince Verrinoldi. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}