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.