I believe this is a failed Kickstarter project and as a backer I was tossed to the side while devs struggled to keep the minimal requirements of the promised project, now resulting in a bare minimum concept of a game rather than an experience with this full release. Still missing features promised without stretch goals and plenty of stretch goals never even touched.

As the game seems fun at first it quickly becomes insanely repetitive and a chore to play, as it's more of a rogue-lite than rogue-like. Meaning permanent progression gives you way more power and makes starting a run barely a challenge at all, while you finish the run with a brick wall that just is impossible to defeat because you lack upgrades. Multiplayer comes unbalanced and annoying to play as LAN play is not available. While whatever server is used to connect two local PCs together still fails more often than not, without reconnection options. Random lobbies only connected me to wildly different power levels, meaning I was either carrying and died early because of no support or was carried myself and didn't play at all because of that.

Despite the fact that the chill and repetitive loop can be forgiven in a game that is nothing but grind, what can't be forgiven is the lack of variety in the music tracks in the background. Making you listen to the same song on repeat more often than not, despite the game offering many biomes and styles. You either love it or quickly forget that it's there, just hearing the metronome.

I believe the devs failed to deliver their promise and vision, eventually burning out and not wanting to work while greedily keeping the overflow of money that they got from stretch goals and good faith, now completely crashed.

I'll still play since I can't refund a Kickstarter, but I'm not fully happy with this at all. In the end, this is more of a mixed review as I enjoy playing it occasionally but I just don't see how this can come anywhere close to a wide variety that Patapon 2 or 3 gave us in the past.

It pains me to not recommend this game.

I wanted to love it.
The art is great.
The music is wonderful.
It's a Patapon successor.

But man does it suck.
The art, while great, meshes together that it's hard to see what's going on.
The music, while wonderful, is extremely extremely limited. 5 songs. And for the most part you'll be listening to just 3 of them. Over and over and over and over.

It's Patapon's successor, but I don't think it's a success. They claimed to have heard the community, they claimed to have pushed back the release date to fix things up.
The community overwhelmingly said "it's too much of a grind, we hit a brick wall in the runs, we need variation". The devs only seemed to have added more content to the END of the game. So stuff that requires more grind to get to.

Patapon had button combinations.
Ratatan is just choosing a button to hit 2-3 times.
Patapon would have mobs execute attacks after your troops had executed your command.
Ratatan just has mobs execute your troops because the attack lands mid command.
Patapon has variability.
Ratatan is streamlined. And not in a good way.

Let's break it down.

The grind-
Skill matters, but stats matter more.
You WILL need legendary weapons.
These are gained (randomly and not always) from grinding end level bosses, or sacrificing you max hp or mp to a lottery system. You need hp and mp, so you essentially forfeit the run for a shot at a weapon.

Music
Be prepared to listen to the same track over and over again until you break through to the second level.
Then you'll have two tracks to listen to over and over again, until you break through to the third level.
There are 5 levels in total. So 5 tracks. The bosses also have a variation. So 10 tracks. Kinda.
Multiple tracks played randomly per area per run would have largely alleviated this issue.
Music shown in the trailers has never shown up in the game for me and I'm writing this with over 24 hours played.
It's disappointing and as much as I love the music (although I'm not a massive fan of 4 or 5 tracks) I'm pretty sick of it now.

Rhythm
You choose a button and you hit it on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd beat. Sometimes you mix it up and choose a button and hit it on the 1st and 3rd beat.
There is an advanced mode where the fourth beat is introduced, and you have to press more than one button. Initially I was excited until I realised that you're still more or less locked into a certain command from the first beat.
For a game like this I would have loved to see multiple combinations for the same command so that you could change your strategy mid play to adapt to what you see (see the point about the art meshing together).
It's so underwhelmingly mundane.

Runs and powers

If you could somehow stand everything above, which I almost could, then oh boy, get ready for disappointment.
Each run you collect elemental powers. Randomly. And when you collect the power you choose a skill. Randomly.
Through many runs I've noticed that only a few powers actually benefit your run and if you don't get them then you'll hit a wall. If you do get them you better hope you get the ones you want, for the slots you need. If you don't, well enjoy that wall.
The devs tried to make this special with "duo" powers. Basically, you need to pick up many power ups of two different types and you'll get a super power. Maybe. Sometimes. Some powers aren't even that great. Are you ready to kiss a wall again?

A rhythm game could have so many unique ways to have powers. Maybe you learn different rhythms to play for bonus moves. Maybe I do get the electric hustle power, but I want to keep my fire hustle power, so I have two combinations of notes that choose which one I want.
Maybe I pick up a stat stick that helps my run along.
But no, we went Hades style for a game that does not work with Hades style mechanics.

This game is lost in the mechanics of what it is and how it plays. It presents as a patapon successor but internally it's a grind, it's a time sink. It's like they wanted to make Patapon while also not wanting to make Patapon. So made a rogue like with all the grinding parts so that their story would stretch. It's got a few wonderful flavours, but they get old really quickly when you realise that there aren't any more.

The biggest kick in the teeth, and why I'm finally writing thin review, is the delayed release time was there so that the devs could polish the game.
But all they did was place more content behind the grind.
Many games come out of EA and require you to start again due to the overhaul. Ratatan just added the end to their game and said "ship it".

I loved playing it. I may even play it on occasion still. But I was waiting for the full release to alleviate the grind so I could enjoy the story. Yet all I can see is that now is even MORE grind.
And I don't want to play that.

We wanted patapon. But too much is missing from this game. No minigames, no distinct missions, no overarching story, no skill tree, no status effect customization, no praying chants, no random events.. the things they added are active skills and roguelite playloops. but to reach further levels you have to beat all previous ones which can feel VERY boring. It is way too barebone compared to patapon 3.The good things about this game are the music and art.

It scratches the patapon itch, but doesnt satiate the patapon hunger. If you are seeking a truly deep game, play patapon 3 with emulator. oh well, i guess it isn't a very expensive game, but so wasn't patapon 3