ATONE: Heart of the Elder Tree

Atone is a short and sweet little narrative adventure, and the rhythm game combat is a joy. Seeing the tales from Norse legend told by short animations throughout the game is fascinating, and the rhythm game combat is both fun and challenging, made even better by the fun animations in the background as the combat actually occurs.
The story itself is good, telling Estra's tale well, and involving a few choices throughout the game that can change the player's course and the voice acting adds so much to the already engaging story.

I enjoyed my time with ATONE quite a bit. The general aesthetics (visuals, audio) is very unique and sets an off-kilter tone that serves very well the engaging story.

Story is where the game shone for me. Heavily inspired by Norse mythology, it is served by a cast of interesting and relatable characters, with interesting arcs and some surprising development. The story is branching and has several endings. I'll definitely want to play some more to explore different branches and their consequences.

Gameplay-wise, the game alternates between puzzle-exploration and rhythm game-style battles.

The puzzles are the weakest part of the game in my opinion. The difficulty is a bit all over the place, with some being obvious alongside some very cryptic. Some mechanics are repeated in several puzzles, but they don't come with an interesting twist. Once you figured it out, the subsequent ones are a lot less interesting.
Some puzzles give you only a fixed amounts of attempts (sometimes only one!). I liked the idea of it, because it forced me to really think instead of going by trial-and-error. However, in practice it felt a bit perplexing when after a good long hard thought I try a solution, and the game just tells me I got it wrong and moves on without a hint at what was wrong about my solution.

The rhythm game battles are super fun. I enjoyed the music a lot - an obvious requirement for such gameplay! The difficulty is quite permissive, even in hard mode. But that allowed me to stay focused on the flow of the music rather than a punishing die-and-retry loop. There is a mode where you can replay the songs you found in the story mode, and I spent quite a bit of time there.

Overall, it reminded my a bit of Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, in the best way.

If you're looking for a beautiful, moody narrative experience and/or enjoy rhythm games, you might like this one. If you're after good puzzles, this might not be the game for you.

they thought they were cooking, in the end its just cringe with mechanics that are not ergonomic

Good story. animation style, and music. I was never a Guitar Hero player but enjoyed the battles nonetheless. I played on normal mode and had no problem winning the fights despite my lack of experience with that kind of play. Loved all the puzzles

Great little indie game that has a bit of charm and cleverness. Don't expect anything too deep, but I enjoyed it.

The story really exceeded my expectations by a lot. I really wanted to keep playing to know what would happen. The Norse mythology was excellently woven into the storytelling. I especially loved all of the little secrets you can find (quite a lot of them!). The rhythm combat adds a nice layer to the game, with good music. In fact, it's a soundtrack I'd buy if that was available. You can change the difficulty of combat in the story, but not in the arena, which is just playing the combat scenes (I found normal fairly easy, but hard is definitely hard to get perfect at).

The only downsides are that there is no key rebinding- I couldn't even get it in a round about way through Steam (not only is this a critical accessibility function, but also very useful for everyone else); and no separate saves, so if you want to see how a different choice impacts the story, you must replay the entire game. I think saving wherever whenever should be mandatory in this digital age of gaming. That being said, this game is actually worth replaying from the start.

This was... Hm. I don't know how to explain what sort of game this is. Rhythm combat, story-rich, puzzle based. Some of the puzzles were ridiculously easy and felt great to accomplish, and some were like getting hit with a sledge hammer.

The art design was a little off-putting... it felt like a Nordic version of Teen Titans where some of the portraits were done in a zany! anime-esque style, but then there would be some incredibly smooth animations / cut scenes, only to have another blocky sort of... weird... picture? I don't know how to describe it. It wasn't BAD just... jarring.

Really liked the mythology/lore tidbits, and I'm glad to have played it. Though since you have to replay the whole thing multiple times to get all the achievements and endings, I probably won't (I just don't have the time for it).

Overall, I actually enjoyed it and hope you do, too.

Very underappreciated game. It has some rough edges, but overall is very good.
A very interesting look at the North mythology, solid writing, likable characters and engaging story. Even multiple endings!

Love it.