ATONE: Heart of the Elder Tree

I hate games with multiple endings and no manual save. If you want to see another ending you have to replay the whole thing. Sure, it’s short, but the walking speed is slow and boring, and nothing in the game feels exciting enough to replay. Puzzles are average, the story is dull most of the time, and the rhythm battles had a cool idea with nice music but the timing is bad, unclear, and it doesn’t really matter if you hit everything right, just keep pressing and you’ll win. The ideas are cool, but the game just doesn’t pull it off and gets boring fast.

[h1] А вот это уже ритм игра с сюжетом под скандинавский душок и своеобразным игровым дизайном [/h1] Оформление и суть конечно на любителя, но хотя бы авторы здесь не тянут резину и сюжет с игровыми вставками подаётся дозированно. Рисовка квадратная, но стильная. Хоть и хотелось бы что-то более приближённое к реальности. А то тут опять магия и нордический стиль со всеми этими Биврёстами, Йормунгандрами, Иггдрачилями и т.д. Понятно, что атмосфера в этом своя есть, но реализация не особо настраивает проникаться всем этим. Плюс опять же в дозированности - тут поговорили немного, тут немного мультика, здесь чуть головоломки, там маленько ритмовой игры и т.д. Так что опять же на любителя, но и случайным проходимцам может понравиться. Озвучка только английская, русскую бы сюда от Gamesvoice и было бы шикарно. По плюшкам полный набор и поддержка игровых пультов. [i] По занимаемому месту - 1,3 гб [/i]

This game caught my eye for its unique art style and setting, so I gave it a try. This game is Incredible, the Norse setting is just so cool. This is pretty much a rhythm based, explore the world/lore type of game. It works. If you are not a fan of rhythm games, you can turn it off and take in the story instead (which is great) I would LOVE to recommend this game at full price BUT unless its in one of its many game bundles for cheaper, you are paying £12 for a 4-5 hour story which you can complete in one sitting. Other than that, I cannot think of a flaw for this game. Characters are fleshed out and interesting, story is great, hidden exploration secrets/references are funny and the game looks great for what it is. Pick it up in a bundle for cheaper, it's a great experience.

Glad I stumbled upon this unique indie game and underrated gem. The hand drawn art style, emotional story, and relaxing exploration mixed with rhythm-based combat create a really unique experience. The soundtrack is great and the rhythm battle music is amazing. The arena battle achievements are extremely difficult and I had to get my wife's help to complete them :D

冲着是女主买的，但是故事含男量超级大给我劝退了。一直在父父父子子子，有点权力的都是男的，神和npc都是男的多，主神是男神，故事也是去救爹。文本阅读体验很不舒服。 北欧神话大概就是这样，轻轻松松把任何一个有一丁点爱女意识的人熏吐。没法忍着玩下去

Pensaba que era más un juego de ritmo o de ese estilo, y terminó siendo más de puzles. Ojo, que no es para nada malo, solo aviso por si pensaste como yo al verlo (tiene un modo arena donde hay varias canciones, pero hablo del modo historia). El juego es bonito de ver; los puzles son retadores, más no te llevará más de 5 minutos completarlos. La historia es buena, tomando la mitología nórdica de por medio tiene un buen argumento, pero al momento de ir a las batallas, las canciones no pegan tanto con el estilo de juego: es como si tuvieras un Ferrari pero con claxon de taxista. El lore es interesante: eres la encargada de proteger el Árbol de la Vida (Yggdrasil) después de que ciertos sucesos acontecen, dejándote en la búsqueda de respuestas del porqué de ciertas cosas. El juego es bueno para despejarte de tantos shooters o juegos de presión continua; te da más para pensar en los puzles y adentrarte en la historia.

$14.99 is the whole price. No microtransactions or DLC. This was much better than I expected. I wasn't a fan a first but it slowly grew on me. I may revisit another time to 100%. The audio sounds a bit crusty (unsure if an intended effect), some of the puzzles were lame, and the hair wrapping around the tree early on made no sense at all. I think my biggest gripe was the blood censorship. It's white for the most part, which makes it seem like a very different bodily fluid. But in some scenes it's blue and others even red. Very inconsistent. But those things aside this was very playable for a genre that I'm not typically into. Quite a few funny and charming moments with the frog character held things together.

lots of heart in this one

Beautifully stylized with a genuinely interesting branching story, mainly driven by the characters. The rhythm-combat sections are fun, but relatively easy if you've played other rhythm games. Running around/traversal doesn't 'feel' great, but the environment is atmospheric, so there's always something to look at.

WEAKLY recommended - it offers an extremely tame and stale telling of an extremely watered down Norse mythos original story that some casual players might enjoy. In short, if your life mission is not to play through every casual game out there, you are best of just watching a cutscene compilation on YouTube. The maze levels and the level design in general is a big enough incentive. UPDATE: Having seen most of the game and the ending extra scenes, it is not worth any investment. There is no character development during the gameplay and all relevant events happen either in the intro sequence (that will be repeatedly flashbacked) or during the final confrontation. Everything you do during the gameplay is highly inconsequential. The script is quite awful. Your character motivations are unclear even to the character itself. The extra ending sequence is just a rehash of the what you have already seen and provides no new information. That exemplifies how much this game is about wasting your time, the slow movement speed aside. Most of the "content" is the player walking around, completely unchallenged. Due to the pixel art graphics style, there really is not much aesthetic graphics to look at, making it not work as a 2D walking sim. That also means most of the gameplay time is largely unsatisfying. The control designs reek of console port. Case to point, check out these default rhythm game inputs on the keyboard: 1, 2, 0 and 9 - basically the number keys on the number row because 0 and 9 would be pretty far apart if played with the num pad. I wonder how little playtesting it would have taken to pick any other controls. They could have gone with the Unity standard of Z, X, C and V and it would have been better. This game probably allows rebinding, though I do not consider sucking-out-of-the-box to be something to keep and value. It is a rhythm puzzle game. It has secrets that you are likely to miss unless you use a walkthrough. Yeah it lacks some serious design polish to the point it is barely getting a passing grade. If you are looking for a bang for your buck, you should pick any other game. The game tries to tell an epic emotional revenge story of sorts, though it uses such comical fantasy trophes that it is impossible to take seriously. A couple examples: 1. player's father gets done in by a dark specter (Skeletor much). 2. You fight a skeleton (Skeletor) that insist on fighting and offers no reason for it. Not to mention all of the anime references ("Black Swordsman" AKA Guts from Berserk in the intro village and "Kamina" from Gurren Lagann on a gravestone). When Ubisoft's Valhalla offers a more serious take, your narrative needs help. The reason for why I emphasize the narrrative is because most of the game content is contained in its form. If removed, all there would be left is bare-bones puzzle and rhythm game segments not unlike what you can see in some one-dollar indie games. This one is priced close to the 20-dollar, grade A indie game level. Games like that should have some serious replay value. This one doesn't. I do not want to talk about the rhythm game. It is enough for me to mention that it can skip frames at times and possibly deny you the vision of the right timing. The puzzles are something a second grade school kid could beat. If they dragged on, I would consider the game to be worse due to there being no believable world-building integration of those puzzles. I have not beat the game yet, though the general boredom, a general lack of hope about things improving and apathy have already set in. I expect myself to like the game even less once I have trudged trough it. It embodies a lot of the "nontent" styles modern indies like to utilize. I would take a game with much worse assets and no voice acting over this one if it was simple and fun to play and not just endlessly wandering from point A to point B, hoping for something interesting to happen for the first time. I got this game as a Fanatical Mystery Game, mostly because of lemmings upvoting it like crazy. It is telling that practically everyone in those reviews is saying it is good and none of them are mentioning any specifics or why it is "good" and whatever they mean with it. It seems like a bunch of mass sunken-cost cope to me. A game held together by vapid praise is likely to have a dead community and no sales just a couple of years after the release. I have looked through enough SteamDB and Gamalytic stats of various games to confirm the pattern.