Ato Reviews

underrated gem

The combat in this just feels terrible. The final boss has way too much health for a game where the alternate moveset is clunky and impossible to do consistently, and you do not have time to do the input in between the boss teleporting constantly. The boss has gotten stuck INSIDE THE GROUND 5 times and I was unable to do damage while the boss kept hitting me. Aside from this, the boss is off screeen 90% of the fight so you can't meaningfully respond or make use of any of the given mechanics even with practice (parry/charge/dodge) because YOU CANNOT SEE WHERE THE BOSS IS. Just a terrible design. The exploration and felt dry and poorly developed because the game has almost no enemies throughout the map, and the art style is not minimalistic - it's just non existent. The game tries to tell the story with no dialogue.....but I am at the end of the game and I have no idea what the hell was supposed to have happened by now. Is my character dead? Did the baby die? Is my wife a demon because I joined a cult? Your guess is as good as mine. There is clearly no thought to how casual players are supposed to figure out 50% of the game material, and then it spits on you if you haven't been trying to master the clunky controls with a horribly designed final boss that would make the Nine Sols developers blush. Do not purchase this game and waste your time with it. The charm dies halfway through the game and it goes nowhere, and the storytelling also goes nowhere.

It was fun for the first hours, but the more you go forward the more everything gets casually imprecise. A shame, it had great potential, even if the bosses are easy, the only thing that needs a little focus about them is just the fact that you get a little knockback everytime you attack them, else in any other Metroidvania they would almost be mincemeat or even less. It's just some kind of artifcial difficulty, not that it was that to stop me, I just got tired after a lot of beaten bosses and going around

Loved this game. The pacing was great - you're always discovering new things and getting new abilities. The combat was fun and varied. You can't use the same approach for every encounter. The bosses were plentiful. It even had some enjoyable platforming sections which I did not expect. Something of a hidden gem. Nine Sols before Nine Sols was a thing. Highly recommend to fans of the genre. 8/10

I didn't 100% the game as I have other things to play on mind but what I played was still easily recommendable. Ato faces the typical metroidvania struggles where you can often get confused as to where you should progress, and the feeling of demotivation at the thought of back tracking to different areas where abilities now unlock new paths. The movement and platforming does alleviate a bit of the boredom from exploring these zones though and it does have a fast travel feature to skip long trips. More so, Ato heavily makes up for these periods of empty travel with quite engaging puzzles and extremely entertaining boss battles. Every boss battle I encountered in this game had a very unique feeling moveset which pushed me to explore different combat strategies will all of the movement abilities I picked up throughout the playthrough. It doesnt fall into the trap of having most bosses just be repeatedly dodge-through-attack-retaliate with a sprinkle of 'gimmick' bosses which have a very particular strategy to make it an easy win once you figure it out. Ato really feels like every boss should be beaten with your own personal playstyle. It borrows from hollow knight in the best ways possible, allowing you to pogo and dash over your opponent and just dance around them effortlessly, while also including mechanics for parrying. It's a very satisfying and responsive gameplay which will absolutely suit anybody who enjoyed the fights in hollow knight.

A wonderful metroidvania that doesn't overstay its welcome. The world is fun to explore and there's a lot of optional collectibles and abilities to keep you looking around. Combat can be a bit awkward at times due to the control scheme, but the game is at least fair about its difficulty so that doesn't become too much of an issue.

The combat is very fun. The speedrun is even more enjoyable

Truly a hidden gem. Excellent gameplay and story