I don’t think anyone understands the hard time folks of the 80s had with accepting Bruce Willis as an action icon. If you had seen any of Moonlighting, which was Willis’ first big role, you knew him as a charming, smarmy but ultimately loveable dude who has great chemistry with Cybill Shepherd on screen. So to then be told that he would be this insane action star who got to throw Alan Rickman to his death, it was a nearly impossible pill to swallow. But swallow it we did, and the rest is history. Artists like Willis, Michael Keaton, Bryan Cranston and Katey Sagal have incredible dichotomy in their careers, and they exist side-by-side, not overwriting or overshadowing the other. This is the mindframe I want you to exist within as we step into Ratatan, the true blue spiritual successor to Patapon.

Let us raze our enemies…through rhythm and dance!

When I first took a look at Ratatan last year through the eyes of creator Hiroyuki Kotani, and lead producer, Kazuto Sakajiri, it hadn’t even made its way to Early Access yet. Fresh off their successful Kickstarter campaign, I was dying to ask more about the game and its mythos and mentality. However, we were all constrained by the fact that the game hadn’t really come out yet. A lot of ideas were still under wraps, but three things were objectively clear. First, this was not Patapon. Setting up a roguelike game with rhythm as an underpinning, it seemed to speak to a different category of fan and player. Second, this was something Kotani was very excited about. Even in our brief exchange, he positively bubbled with energy. And third, this had the potential to destroy my free time. Which it successfully did.

Ratatan is in an absolutely bonkers world of darkness masquerading as light. There’s a little island called Rataport, where a bunch of creatures called Ratatan live and are happy. Well, mostly happy. They all strive for the same goal: to enter The Everafter and finally meet The Goddess who watches over them all. They do this by finding these little fish called Chorus, recruiting them to their army of berserker troops (called Cobun) and running headfirst into a series of enemies and massive bosses again and again, imbuing themselves with traits of elemental damage and striving for annihilation. If they get knocked out, it’s back to Rataport to power up, reassess things, and get ready to go back into the meat grinder. With a happy little song! Remember the last time you and your friends did a funny chant and then hurled flaming, poisonous spears at your enemies? Of course!

Poison and fire roll through the ranks. This is truly the result of funky beats.

If you have played Patapon before, you need to separate the concept immediately from what you’re doing here. So far, that’s been the biggest discourse surrounding Ratatan: it isn’t Patapon. Even by the developer’s own admission, Patapon is a delightful product of the limitations of the PSP. There’s a gradual progression to it that’s also quite linear. There’s a lot of enjoyment to be taken from the action and the progressive styling, and we recognized that the Remaster was an excellent, nostalgic trip through the world that was built nearly twenty years ago. They’re wonderful games and no one is trying to say otherwise.

Ratatan, by contrast, is a sidescrolling roguelike that uses the rhythms of the characters to drive forward towards finding The Goddess and I guess entering Valhalla. It’s a formula that Hades popularized, but we’ve all gotten to some degree here and there. You’ve got a stage of enemies that you defeat, and then get rewarded with some kind of loot (upgrades, coins, more Chorus members). You choose what your reward for the next room will be, then move into said room and kick some butt. Succeed and get either a benefit for this run or a benefit for your Ratatan overall, and keep going till you hit a boss. Fight boss, win, go to next biome, continue until knocked out. It’s a tried and true patterning that we’ve all come to enjoy and respect.

He seems nice.

A lot of the media aspect of Ratatan is a positive home run. The music and catchy beats were, expectedly, some incredibly catchy and universal tunes that shifted with different straight combat encounters, Interval reveals (rooms with no combat, only prizes), and the boss battles themselves. The constant tempo drives you forward in the best way, and it’s a captivating homage to how the original games sounded. There’s the classic call-and-response voicework throughout in Japanese, and it’s pitch perfect for even those totally unfamiliar with the language. Combined with small but important inserts here and there for ambience and the soundscape of Ratatan is exactly what it needs to be for the game.

Interestingly, the graphics look significantly better in handheld on the Switch 2 than in docked mode. Usually the connection to the television would boost the fidelity, but I found that my time on the big screen showed more rough edges and a lack of polish that was a bit surprising. None of it looks bad or horrid, it’s not like the game stutters and suffers. I just saw that, in handheld mode, the compressed screen and more condensed real estate lead to the cartoony drawings, wonderfully unique accessories and bombastic bosses looking and feeling better. It’s probably at least a small bit of my own mind making these semi-familiar characters look better in a handheld environment, but Ratatan is just a more appealing package when it’s in your hands.

The core roguelike mechanics work well enough, but there is some confusion, especially initially. You’ll pick up cards called Ratakaruda that bestow elemental effects (fire, ice, poison) that trigger at different points. As you get them, some get upgraded by picking up multiples, whereas others need to be swapped in and out (which you can manually do) in order to give different attack attributes. If you get a Ratakaruda that adds poison damage to your normal attack, you might need to unequip a wind card that greatly increases the critical hit rate. Some cards can be a tad worthless, which feels like a generative mistake. For example, you can get a Ratakaruda that makes the Burn effect 38% more damaging, but not have the ability to inflict burn. It’s like getting an enhanced bridle that increases your mount’s speed before getting a horse. Fine in RPGs, less so in roguelikes.

But man, when great cards arrive, the havoc is unparalleled.

I did enjoy that the permanent boons (more HP, stronger Chorus, guaranteed room spawns) are all unlocked through candy, donuts and other sweets, giving a festive, fun flair to the affair. This degree of progressional advancement felt natural and smooth, with there being a deliberate benefit to getting deep but not too deep with runs early on. While the rewards you reap from achievements (beat the first boss, clear ten rooms in one run) are excellent, you need to be encouraged to return to Pataport more often to do various tasks that you might otherwise disregard. Weapon crafting and enhancement, for example. It’s easy to forget that your Chorus members can get better, stronger weapons between runs, and the blacksmith is one of the few places where you won’t get an errant “!” to let you know something new’s available. Those unfamiliar with roguelikes can easily miss this.

For Ratatan, it all comes down to the flow of combat, which is both hit and miss. On the one hand, it’s fantastic to get back to the button combinations and staying on board with the rhythm of the game as you venture forward. Hitting the right buttons at the right time for the maximum ranking of JUST (which, okay) and increasing your Tension level is satisfying. There are a good number of button combinations, which are helpfully displayed on screen as they become available. For example, Rush techniques (which require MP) usually begin in the singular, but more unlock with the right Ratakaruda and additional Chorus members. You’ll never be able to do something you can’t do, but knowing how to do them will prepare you for when you can. The Super Fever technique is always the same buttons, but is only activated when your Tension is full.

The sheer amount of loot…including that dope head ribbon!

But there’s also the aspect of needing to keep your Ratatan active and alive, which is a confusing prospect. You need to move about the screen, sometimes as a rallying flag for the Chorus, sometimes just to keep yourself alive, and sometimes to engage in combat yourself. It’s like being a general for a battalion who also needs to fight themselves, but your troops won’t do a single thing unless you tell them to. It’s like…at some point, you wish there was a degree of automation, either for yourself or for the Chorus. Often, you need to make the choice to either sit still and potentially get murdered while tapping out a pattern for the Chorus, or to let them just languish and do nothing, dropping Tension and decreasing your own battle effectiveness, because you’re trying not to die.

Oh, speaking of Murder, the throwaway lines in Ratatan are unhinged at times. Players will generally be focused on just getting through the game and moving forward, and you might not have time to see all the word bubbles that show up over the Chorus. Some of them are incidental encouragement, like “We’re just getting started!” or “Hustle Hustle!” But others are wild inserts, such as the singular word “Murder!” or, my personal favorite was something to the effect of “It’s time to go to Hell!” I wish I had gotten a screenshot of it, because it’s shocking. Was there a Kickstarter promise to put in whatever line you paid for? I’m okay with it, but it really comes out of left field at times.

What ultimately dictates the final word on how Ratatan will be received is if the fans can separate the past from the present. Yes, we all loved Patapon. No, this isn’t Patapon. It’s a fairly competent and interesting roguelike that uses characters and mechanics similar to Patapon, and that’s it. Ratatan has a solid gameplay loop that is further enhanced with plenty of incentives to keep grinding. The weapons, Ratakaruda and accessories all have degrees of rarity, which instantly scratches the itch to keep hoping for something better. There’s a middle of the road approach to the roguelike aspects that aren’t terrifically challenging for veterans, but also not super simple for newcomers. It works and has really engaging proclivities, but I can also see people looking for something akin to Hades or Gungeon to be very frustrated by the rhythm controls.

Sorry, what?

Ratatan is an aural blast of excitement and entertainment. It has so many fantastic qualities that keep me locked in and instills the “one more run” hook that makes me want to keep going. There are parts that need improvement, and I’m curious if the online mode will be influential on the game’s longevity or merely be a curiosity. Knowing what this is, not what you hope it could be, is what makes it enjoyable and addicting. It’s a different approach to combining two of my favorite genres, and honestly has more replay, in my eyes, than your average roguelike. I’ll be continuing to zuntaka my way forward to see what, exactly, is The Everafter. It’s a murderous, messy parade, but my God it’s a fun walk.

Ratatan is available now on Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2.

A copy of Ratatan was provided by the publisher.