Ratatan - The More I Played It, the Less I Enjoyed It

Ratatan initially makes a convincing case for leading a small army through music. Its colourful creatures, lively performances, and oversized bosses give this spiritual successor to Patapon plenty of personality, while equipment and permanent upgrades ensure that another expedition rarely feels wasted.

After spending time with its repeated battles, however, I struggled to feel that rhythm was doing enough to support the experience. Too often, musical inputs became another routine to maintain while grinding toward the stats needed to overcome the next obstacle.

Ratatan follows eight musical leaders travelling toward Everafter to meet the Goddess. You command their Cobun soldiers through side-scrolling encounters, choosing temporary upgrades along the way and returning to Rataport to strengthen your army. There is potential in combining these systems, but the uneven balance between them gradually turned an appealing adventure into a chore.

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Keeping time without enough variation

You move your Ratatan directly while short rhythmic phrases tell the Cobun to attack, regroup, guard, jump, or use Hustle Techs. Precise inputs improve command effectiveness and MP efficiency, with basic actions helping replenish the resources spent on special techniques. Maintaining your timing also develops Fever, connecting successful commands to a more energetic musical performance.

In practice, most of my time went into the same three actions: moving the army, attacking, and using special techniques. Jumping and guarding became more relevant against particular bosses, but ordinary encounters rarely disrupted that routine enough. Although rhythm governs the inputs, I seldom felt like I was playing a rhythm game. The phrases increasingly seemed to exist to keep my hands occupied while the army performed familiar actions.

More frustratingly, enemies do not consistently appear bound to the same rhythm that restricts your responses. Some attacks arrive just after you have started another phrase, leaving almost no opportunity to issue the appropriate defensive command. Learning patterns helps, but being punished before you can meaningfully react makes that learning unnecessarily irritating. The best encounters provide enough warning to consider both your next order and your leader’s position.

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Progress measured in equipment

Eight leaders offer different abilities and initial troop combinations. Soldiers hold the front with swords and shields, Rangers attack from a distance, Bombardiers provide explosives, and other classes contribute heavy strikes or support. Their different Hustle Techs and equipment offer reasons to experiment, although I eventually settled around two or three leaders I preferred. The others became difficult to justify alongside those established setups.

Ratakaruta cards shape individual runs through effects such as poison, electricity, burning, freezing, and barriers. There are opportunities to develop related bonuses, but many pickups felt insignificant beside the power supplied by equipment and permanent upgrades. A collection of status effects could not reliably compensate for an army that simply lacked the numbers to handle a boss, and the random rewards added uncertainty about whether a promising build would actually come together.

Back at Rataport, gathered materials fund improvements to health, revival, guarding, and other benefits, while unwanted weapons help upgrade stronger equipment. I liked earning and developing that gear, and each attempt usually left me with something useful or a better understanding of a fight. Defeat seldom felt completely empty, even when the next meaningful breakthrough remained several attempts away.

Unfortunately, permanent progression creates an awkward difficulty curve. Earlier encounters eventually become barely challenging, while the end of a run can present a boss whose health and damage feel far beyond your current strength. Some could kill me in two or three hits while absorbing considerable punishment themselves. Repeating easy sections to reach another equipment wall does little to make the journey between them more interesting.

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Strong bosses behind a slow opening

The bosses themselves are generally among Ratatan’s strongest features. I love their designs, and learning a moveset can be rewarding when positioning your leader and recognising a tell produces a better result. Hard-mode bosses provide a serious challenge, with fights that ask more of you than simply maintaining the attack routine used against ordinary enemies.

Dark Ratatan add particularly welcome personalities, preserving the humour and extravagant presentation while introducing rival commanders with their own instruments and armies. Their arrival gives the adventure a different energy, which makes the repetitive earlier chapters feel especially weak. I wanted the game to reach that material sooner, rather than spending so much time establishing loops it would continue repeating.

Progress also depends on reaching specific encounters and satisfying story conditions, so winning fights is not always enough to move forward. Combined with equipment farming, those requirements stretch the adventure beyond what its variety comfortably supports. It will take you around ten to fifteen hours to complete the story, but difficult bosses, encounter requirements, and additional grinding can prolong that considerably-

Even these stronger encounters suffer when a dangerous attack gives you almost no warning. A few Dark Ratatan punish an order already underway before there is a practical chance to change your response. I can accept taking damage while learning, but I want a clear opportunity to understand the threat and act on it. Higher stats cannot fix an attack that feels unfairly telegraphed.

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Too much noise on the battlefield

The 1.0 release also falls short of the polish I expected. On raised ground and slopes, my melee companions sometimes became stuck, unable to move or attack while ranged troops continued dealing damage. Watching part of the army stop functioning makes an already demanding fight feel worse, especially when progression depends so heavily on its damage output.

Visual clarity creates further problems in four-player multiplayer. Enemies, allies, and overlapping effects become difficult to distinguish, obscuring boss animations and making dodging unreliable. Fire zones and poison clouds are particularly confusing: I have taken damage because I could not tell whether an effect belonged to an ally or an enemy. 

Kemmei Adachi’s music is good, yet the limited variety within repeated journeys weakened its impact for me. Despite the different biomes and styles, hearing the same background tracks so frequently eventually pushed them into the background. Rather than remaining a memorable part of each battle, the soundtrack often faded into a metronome accompanying the same commands.

I tried to like Ratatan, and its expressive bosses, entertaining rivals, and worthwhile equipment upgrades gave me reasons to keep returning. Those strengths could not overcome the repetitive opening, excessive dependence on permanent stats, unclear battles, and frustrating technical problems. Those who enjoy a relaxed grind may tolerate its familiar expeditions better, but I found the rhythm and roguelite progression poorly balanced against each other. At its current asking price, this feels too average and too uneven to recommend.

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THE VERDICT

Final thoughts

Ratatan’s imaginative bosses and rewarding equipment upgrades give it an appeal that its repetitive encounters struggle to sustain. I enjoyed collecting better gear, but the limited command variety and uneven difficulty made that progression carry too much of the experience. When visual clutter and unclear attacks also interfere with your reactions, success becomes less satisfying than it should be. There is still something here for players who enjoy equipment grinding alongside rhythm-based action, although anyone hoping for battles that keep developing through new tactical possibilities may find it wears thin.