api gateway for microservices: essential or overkill?

hey everyone, ive been architecting a new microservices-based system and keep going back and forth on whether an API Gateway is truly necessary at this stage. were starting with only a few services, and direct client-to-service communication seems manageable for now. but, i know gateways can help with things like rate limiting, authentication, and request aggregation down the line. for those of you managing microservice architectures, when did you find an API Gateway became a must-have, rather than just another component to manage?