Mato Anomalies: Repetitiveness and uninspiring story take away the chance of a good experience

Mato Anomalies is a turn-based RPG that is inspired by the style of Atlus games (Persona, to be exact), but that brings some new mixes to have its own differential and try to capture the players’ attention. But what does the game get right and what does it get wrong?

Shanghai in the future

The plot of Mato Anomalies takes place in a futuristic Shanghai, which is heavily inspired by the well-known cyberpunk theme. Visually, the game has a great quality, with cutscenes that try to simulate a comic book page, making a counterpoint with dialogues of characters in a text box, which even have some ideas taken from other games, in which, to give more details of what happens on the screen, it uses images that appear between the portraits of the characters that make reference to an object that is being inserted in the conversation.

But unfortunately, one of the negative points of the game is having a dialogue loaded with “Technobabble” to try to impress and convince the player that the characters are extremely capable. But this has the opposite effect, especially on a livestream, where the RPG genre is famous for being difficult to captivate viewers for a long time.

The Story of Mato Anomalies

In the game, you control Detective Doe, who at the start of the game is kidnapped and forced to investigate a series of events at the behest of his kidnapper. Right after some tutorials, you end up meeting Gram, a kind of ninja/exorcist whose sole objective is to defeat the game’s creatures. So, the game splits the tasks where Doe takes care of the investigation part and Gram gets the heavy lifting of fighting the enemies and of course, later you end up meeting other companions to help with the campaign.

In addition, Mato Anomalies also features a Card Game-style battle mode, where it’s Doe’s turn to show off the work. It’s a hodgepodge of ideas that’s nothing new, but the way the gameplay is separated could interest players and viewers alike, as it could offer something other than just turn-based battles.

The turn-based battles turn out to be another problem with the game, as they are very repetitive. Added to this we have enemies with a poorly inspired design, a very simple battle system and dungeons that are floating corridors where the greatest variety is just the look and all of this ends up becoming boring very quickly.

Although the game does not present any uneven difficulty in the RPG sections, the Card Game, like the RPG, ends up getting worn out by being too simple.

Uncertain future

Despite the problems, I can’t take the merit of the game having very good ideas, especially the visuals, with many well-detailed designs. For example, the city that serves as a main hub, which has a very unique design.

There is also a good form of locomotion that, because it evokes an idea of being a city that can become a maze for new people, visiting other areas does not require the player to walk aimlessly: all you need to do is select the desired area and you’ll be there. It would be interesting to see the developers build on these good ideas in another, more polished game.

Ultimately, the game didn’t present any performance issues and for fans wanting to check out the game, it shouldn’t present any challenges to livestream.

Katsutoshi