Ato is a strange one in that it has a hand to play but refuses to show you it for the first hour of its ~5 hour runtime. You're dropped into a world with a blocky early-NES samurai guy who has to save his child from a clan of ninja, and it feels stiff at first.

You have no abilities, and without even a double jump you kind of have to ride the promise of stellar audio design and gorgeous parallax scrolling in order to make it past a somewhat tedious intro. Eventually you beat the introductory bosses (which are fun but somewhat similar) and the game shows its Metroidvania hand. There's weird mystical stuff? Hollow Knight and Sekiro vibes? Crazy bosses? Woah!

In Ato, you explore a managable map, do some platform challenges, grab some collectibles, and beat some bosses through parry or cheese. The post-intro bosses are all extremely fun (outside of maybe the very last one -- Tip: use the dagger!) and the platforming challenges are fun and well designed, The story goes a neat place or two as well, so at the end of it all I thought hey, this is pretty nice!

Little friction points here and there. The intro is, as mentioned, a bit tedious; the parry/charge slice is a bit awkward to navigate and doesn't keep you in the moment as much as, say, the Sekiro deflect; and the world feels a bit lifeless at times. A few villages, a shop with consumables, and a few sidequests would have went a long way, though that's easier said than done and maybe contrasts with the lonely feeling Ato tries to convey.

Still, quite good. Excellent audio and use of parallax, fun boss fights, doesn't overstay its welcome.

Wow what a game. Probably the most hidden gem game I’ve played in terms I’ve never heard anyone mention it other than a few passing Reddit comments. Really fast fluid metroidvania, with little combat outside of boss fights. But the boss fights are fast and intense but manageable. Imagine maybe an easier hollow knight without enemies or corpse runs. And lots of platforming challenges that are all very fun and short. Really wish this was more well known and hopefully this review will lead others who like games like this to check it out

A game I have very deep respect for. Loaded with passion and creativity but it's never enough to compensate for some aspects which needed more testing. Core concepts such as the dash slash move are scarcely tested in an interesting way, and can be largely ignored for the duration of the game. Many bosses can be absolutely destroyed by pogoing above them and quickly ducking out of the way. The platforming that takes up so much dead space between bosses is at best, mildly entertaining and at worst - well, just dead space. By the end of the "Demo" section of the game I was thoroughly excited to see the rest of it, but the illusion of scale and adventure ends up being just that. It's hard to be satisfied in attaining a new health piece when enemy damage scales compared to how much health you have left - defeating the very purpose. It's hard to be satisfied in getting a new charm when few of them are better than the one or two you found half a game ago. The crux of these problems comes down to balancing in the long term. It's very evident that the strengths of this game lie in its boss fights and it knows that very well. It would've been nice if it could've played better into that, and played down the metroidvania aspects that simply distract from it all. Overall - should you get this game? Absolutely. Please, please do. Because more than anything, I want to see what this developer is capable of after a small bit of self reflection, and a small bit of refining.