Games worth discovering

Arto tries to be everything but fails to deliver

655 View2023-05-04

Arto

7.1

Action RPGActionRPGSouls-likeAdventureFantasySingleplayerExploration

Get

Arto (Reviewed)

Developer: OrionGames

Publisher: Freedom Games

Released: May 1st, 2023

Price: $20 USD

Arto is a somewhat uninteresting experience for one searching for an adventure centered on the marvelous talents of art. In this action-RPG, in which you color a desaturated empty world, while exploring biomes, each with its unique art style and mechanics ranging from hack-and-slash to stealth, puzzles, and more.

While I personally believe that the visual aspect of this game is its strongest suit, everything else presented in this game is a boring mash of ideology, egoism which seemingly tries to tackle many different types of gameplay and topics without being anything centered around the actual concepts of art and creation.

It feels like an inferior version of an attempt at the game style Evoland where the world around you alters aesthetically to reflect to the art theme or decade. While not being fun to actually play physically due to the many issues surrounding it.

Story

Chromaclysm

The world has been fractured and desaturated as a result of the Chromaclysm.

Color, the fiber of all life and expression, has been weakened by the Chromatic Divinities. The Apostles, who serve the Divinities, have proven to be inadequate to lead in the absence of their gods who are now absent from their domains.

Their Artos biomes have devolved into chaos separated from the main easel. Your job is to venture forth, and return each god back to their rightful place.

Persistent Problems

Bugs and poor performance

It made no difference if you entered a new area or returned to an earlier one.

The world will frequently stutter at a low frame rate and sometimes skip entirely, making it impossible to avoid damage if you were in combat with enemies at the time of the lag. There was also the minor issue of entering through archways, since there seemed to be a ledge or invisible wall which could only be entered through by dashing forward. This happened rather often, though as they always say "I'm sure the devs are aware and are doing everything they can to fix it."

The font styles continued to plague me

The more I travelled throughout the world and explored each biome. The more frequently I encountered errors, glitches, and other annoyances.

While it may appear nitpicky to criticize the entire game for using anywhere from 7-9 or more different fonts and colors for each character, menu, UI, and so on, I believe that different colors are unnecessary, regardless of whether it is for aesthetic reasons. The various biomes handled this well enough on their own. The entire game does not have to be visually stunning. It's just too much.

You may enter a new biome where all the deities speak in such small font, or "SpEaK lIkE tHiS" to express some form of emotion or perhaps a personally behind the text. It ruined the experience for me while also making it difficult to read without slowing down, leaning forward, and squinting.

Combat

Bland

The game itself tries to be everything at once, and as a result, it achieves very little, aside from enough to be considered anything other than an blank canvas.

You can use simple combos and dashes to escape from opponents. You can use a parry to create an opening for a combo if you time it correctly. You can obtain new weapons from the sub-menu with Chroma you acquire from enemies. But with a combat system so basic and boring, it's a wonder how anyone could stand to play through it, especially with the lack of a strong story.

Indicators & Dashes

I mentioned that you can dash to avoid damage and return a combo. However, due to the chunkiness of the dash feature, you may not be able to avoid damage in some cases.

If the adversary you're fighting had a follow-up strike after you dodged the first time, there is a small window of 0.5 seconds where you can't dash. You'd have to see the next attack coming and quickly try to parry it otherwise you'd take damage, die and restart from a nearby checkpoint.

In certain biomes when there were too many things on the screen mingling in with the background, the visuals for fighting were extremely unpleasant and annoying to cope with for a game that has a very great visual design.

Currency

You get chroma by destroying barrels, terrain, and adversaries, which allows you to access new items such as weaponry and visual effects. They are dropped at the location where you died if you die. While I don't agree with the term "soul-like," that's exactly what it is. If you want new items, you must first obtain the currency to purchase them in the submenu rather than from a shopkeeper.

Visual Aspect

Strongest aspect

Without a doubt in my mind, this is where the majority of the game succeeds. It does an excellent job at visually displaying diverse biomes with varying looks.

Cell shading, Chiaroscuro, Pixel, and Ukiyo-e are but some of the art examples.

However, it fails to apply this type of visual aspect to any other part of the game, which is a huge disappointment because it almost feels like they had a strong idea of what they wanted to do visually but had no idea how to implement it into a video game format without looking like someone threw up on the screen.

Conclusion

It lacks any fun

If you appreciate badly optimized, slow, basic gameplay, you'll overlook the lack of any actual challenging combat or gameplay and follow the tale / evolution of the world as you enter new regions and aid in the saving of the planet.

This game is more of a visual experience than a general game. What appears to be a group of artists working together with the desire to create something visual with a lack of understanding of what looks good in the world of video games.

I'm not saying the game is terrible, as in a joke. However, some steps must be taken to eliminate some irritants, chunkiness, and performance issues and to focus their attention more on the visual aspect in each department.

A more aesthetically pleasing and stable UI would be a wonderful place to start. Remove all of the color mishmashes and make things more consistent. Make battle more aesthetically appealing, especially in biomes where the art is difficult to distinguish between a threat and background effects.

This concludes my views of this game; while my opinions may be met with criticism, that is what distinguishes gamers; you don't have to like the same things as others, nor do you have to agree with them.

If you want to catch me on one of my streams or locate me on social media, you may do so at the following locations, I'm always playing something new.

Twitch

Twitter

Steam Curation

- Pawkt

Mentioned games

Arto

7.1

Action RPGActionRPGSouls-likeAdventureFantasySingleplayerExploration

Get

A colorful hack and slash goodness | Full Review - Arto

Arto is an action-adventure hack and slash game featuring a world full of — or devoid of — vibrant colors, an action-packed challenging combat, and a mesmerizing atmosphere. 🟩Pros +novel gameplay use of colors +mesmerizing atmosphere +challenging boss fights +simple but fluid combat system 🟥Cons -shoddy camera work In the world of Arto, an event known as the Chromacylsm has drained all color, and our protagonist has been chosen to restore it and save the land. Players control

lyndonguitar7K2023-05-03