Posted on: August 30, 2024
kenadrian
Verified ownerGames: 353 Reviews: 76
Great concept, but lacking in execution
Arto is a hack-and-slash game with RPG elements, where you play as a girl named Liv, a Chosen One with the power to restore color to a chaotic, desaturated world. To do so, you'll have to recover artifacts called Oeuvres from several worlds, guarded by bosses as you would expect. The worlds are the strong point of this game, each one looks beautiful and different. Like there's one in the style of Andy Warhol's pop art, another inspired by Japanese brush paintings, and a vaporwave-inspired one. By "lacking in execution", I mean it mainly because of how unoptimized it is. Some, usually smaller, areas play very smoothly, but the more open ones are a lag fest. Especially dangerous when the area happens to be one with many enemies. I had difficulty with the spider boss partly because of its attacks, but mostly because of the lag. Also, while it never crashed, sometimes I got stuck in loading screens which, even normally can take quite a while to load. Combat-wise it can be kinda hard, especially early game, so I recommend prioritizing in unlocking max health and healing skills first. Then it gets a lot easier. But one thing that annoys me is how the enemies constantly respawn. I like the combat in this game even though it can be a bit clunky, but fighting enemies over and over again gets tiring. Better to just run away from them if you can. Overall, I think Arto's a pretty fun game with unique and beautiful artstyles, but sadly poorly optimized. If you can handle the lag and kinda difficult combat, it's a unique, enjoyable indie game. Honestly the poor optimization's not too bad, still playable, just not really smooth.
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