Arietta of Spirits
There's nothing particularly bad about this game. I just found it...boring. It's sort of a Zelda clone but with boring combat, boring exploration, and zero puzzles. I keep waiting for the game to give me some cool upgrades, or different types of weapons, or for the enemies to get more interesting...never happens. The storytelling and characters are pretty decent and the environments have nice attention to detail for a 2d, retro game (seeing birds in trees fly away as you come near, seeing butterflies fly about some flowers, hearing the sounds of wind near a beach, or your own feet as you walk through a puddle) but I hate to give the game a pass because of these things. Gameplay should be the main focus for a game of this type
The game is described as a game with an "emotion-filled narrative" and "no-filler" gameplay. Let me translate that for you:
"We put all of our effort into the story, not the gameplay"
The Artful Escape
This one's even worse. It's a borderline walking simulator. It has some cool characters, some witty and funny dialog, and some amazing, trippy visuals but...I don't care. I want to play a video game, and this feels like something that should have been a TV series or animated movie. Why they thought video games were the right medium for this is beyond me.