You must like this game more than me.
Atone is an interesting beast, combining aspects of the adventure, puzzle, and rhythm genres with a surprising amount of edutainment (about Norse mythology) and a surprising number of cutscenes to create a tragic but rather corny story. telling stories. I see it a lot in games these days. Atone is a refugee in his Apple Arcade, which helps explain the simplicity of the visuals and gameplay, and within his first 20 minutes, you’ll essentially go through his entire loop of gameplay.
Talk to NPCs and sometimes choose your own response. Walk around the overhead map talking to people that unlock conversations with others. Go from house to house and read interesting information about Norse mythology. Solve environmental puzzles. Once you’ve completed everything, a lengthy cutscene will play. In the meantime, take part in the unique combat gameplay of his Atone, an interesting guitar hero-like rhythm his game.
In that tutorial phase, you play as Thyon, the leader of a village chasing a monster that killed its inhabitants. Winning the battle or not, Tion falls to the monster’s blade. It is witnessed by his young daughter Estra. Estra is a young adult who lives alone, but when the monster reappears she sets out on a journey to meet her demise (the violent kind).
From here on we do the same thing we did in the tutorial section but with some really interesting visual puzzles that are my favorite part of the game, but sometimes too abstract and not for their own good will not be Some were very easy (pressing these symbols in the correct order), others quite difficult (translating this numbering system to unlock the door), but I enjoyed them all. I got a little tired of talking to people so I could talk to others, especially since a lot of the dialogue was a little too long and the characters other than Estra aren’t particularly memorable. The cutscenes continue to weave into the story, and if I had enjoyed Atone’s art his style could have been more forgiving, but alas I didn’t.
Atone’s character design is clearly inspired by Gendy Tartakovski (Samurai Jack, excellent Clone Wars cartoon, Primal). Thin, angular characters tend to look better in animation than in static images, but unfortunately Atone doesn’t have many animations. During combat sequences that are more moody than action-packed. Tartakovsky’s works have a stronger mood than action, but I think Tartakovsky’s works are superior in terms of timing, sense of scale, and sense of atmosphere. The environment is similarly barebones, which is both good and bad. It’s peculiar, but it can be difficult to determine where you can go and where you can’t.
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I enjoyed music in the Overworld area, but not during combat. The synths are a little too heavy, barely hitting the toes or driving the beat as much as you’d expect from a combat encounter. I don’t need “Through the Fire & Flames,” but I do want something with a solid beat. This particular rhythm mini-game is also not as visually distinctive as you’d like.There are 1-4 buttons to press as the notes come down the highway, but the notes themselves are all the same color, like Guitar Hero or It’s often a staccato pattern like what you see in DDR, but there’s no visual difference. , it can be difficult to tell what the order is. To be fair, Atone seems to be aware of this shortcoming and offers a fairly wide window for success, but I blame the interface as much as my own timing for the times Estra hits. I felt. Different colored prompts and notes could be used to allow a tighter success window, making these combat encounters much easier to track.
The cutscenes are fully voiced, but they happen far too often and tend to center around Norse gods and leave Midgard after quarreling with humans. did not have (especially the anuran relatives of Estra). The overall story didn’t do much for me – my mind fell into darkness again – but it’s well told and well-paced.
But personally, the Atone’s biggest hurdle is that it just isn’t that appealing. Note that I’ve been using the game for about a month now. A typical review takes him a week, but for larger games he can take up to 10 days. I found it hard to find motivation to grind here and there for an hour.My wife watched me play her Atone for a while, but at some point, what I was doing was a person She said nothing wrong just by talking to and solving puzzles. That may be enough for some of you, dear readers, but I was not satisfied.