A colorful hack and slash goodness | Full Review - Arto

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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 Liv, an apostle of Goya, the chromatic Divinity of the Painted Arto. Liv is unaware of what is happening, and is unraveling the plot's mysteries alongside the player despite being destined for this task.

Liv, as the chosen one, possesses the ability to imbue vibrant color into anything she encounters: the surrounding land, trees, water, and the entire landscape. This novel element provides a deeply therapeutic and satisfying experience, drawing players into a state of addiction as they traverse the world around them, the urge to bring colors to just about everything and see it come to life. Additionally, this remarkable feature serves as a secondary function, acting as a helpful indicator for locations that have already been explored.

The gameplay experience of Arto is a highly mesmerizing one, with a great combination of a soothing soundtrack as well as a vibrant world full of beauty, wonder, as well as mystery. The actual gameplay is more of a third person action-adventure hack and slash, with fixed isometric camera angles. It has platforming and souls-like elements with regards to the movement and combat.

Arto’s combat is simple, but highly challenging. Liv can dash, block or parry, and attack a simple melee combo attack with her magic sword. The whole combat motion of dodging, parrying, and hitting enemies is very fluid and highly satisfying to perform. There are other weapons later on in the game, as well as the ability to shoot beams of paint.

Defeating regular mobs is easy enough and can be repetitive, but the visual effects are impressive enough that it never fails to be gratifying every time.  The boss fights on the other hand are very challenging, requiring timing, great reflex, and mastery of the bosses telegraphed attacks in order to best them.

Dying respawns you back to the last checkpoint, but it's not without its drawbacks, as you will lose all your “Chroma” which is a resource you accumulate in the world via progression, exploration, and killing enemies. You use chroma to upgrade and unlock abilities, such as an increased health flask capacity, or an additional dash. Fortunately, going to the last place you died gives you the opportunity to recover your lost Chroma.

With the game’s dash/dodge, healing, and death/resource mechanic, the game very much feels like a Souls-like game in many respects. Especially with how some of the boss fights will turn out to be like. However, it's not frustratingly hard and it’s not necessarily a hardcore type of game. If something is frustrating in this game, it’s the bad camera work. Sometimes blocking your view of the combat or just plain hiding the characters and enemies behind world objects.

Arto also takes the players on a colorful and delightful journey across various biomes with differing art styles and brings different mechanics to the equation. There are some slight platforming and puzzle elements to the game, but nothing really extraordinary with it. Most of the magic comes from the highly satisfying ‘color everything around you’ gameplay, as well as the fluid combat.

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Conclusion:

Arto is a stunning game that masterfully employs color as both a central gameplay mechanic and a narrative driver. It’s loads of fun and I highly recommend this indie gem to anyone looking for a fun and beautiful action-adventure title. It is currently available for an affordable price of $20 (20% down to $16 at time of writing), and it probably deserves more attention than it is currently getting.