It’s been a while since I’ve dedicated any time to a visual novel. In essence, they are very similar to the JRPGs I love, minus the action. So what happens when you add in world hubs, card battles, and traditional turn-based combat to the visual novel storytelling? That’s what Mato Anomalies seeks to explore.

I don’t love the visual novel format. I’ve enjoyed it from time to time, but I’ve never eagerly anticipated one of these, regardless of the associated IP. In theory it should be up my alley, but it’s often times too boring to me. The visuals are generally reused ad nauseam, and the main point of gameplay is making decisions with branching paths and multiple endings. This opts for streamlining that aspect with two endings, and adding more traditional gameplay for those that may not be keen on the visual novel aspects.

The game uses a combined health bar for your party, which is interesting. It makes things a bit easier when it comes to health management. There are standard attacks that you can use indefinitely, and then there are special abilities that need time to cool down before being used again. However, that’s the only cost to using them – this of course becomes tactical when fighting bosses, but it’s a fairly simple system to pick up. Only ultimate attacks require a fully charged energy bar, and these are overwhelmingly powerful and a great way to turn the tide of any battle. The game is very keen on providing different types of drops, but all of these become overwhelming rather quickly. Between weapons and gears that boost stats, I found myself just auto-equipping the best gear. It’s generally a good idea to keep weapon types spread out amongst the party, as the battles uses the rock-paper-scissors format of attack types with weaknesses and resistances, and you don’t want to be caught in a battle with mostly resistant attacks. Weapons will bring their own set of abilities, so it’s a good idea to look at these in addition to that stats.

In addition to the dungeon crawling combat sequences, there are mind-hacking encounters that focus on card combat. You’ll unlock different decks as you progress, and while preference is encouraged, there are clearly better decks for certain battles. Honestly speaking, I didn’t quite get this. While I never lost enough to skip a round, I didn’t quite get how Persuasion worked, as it’d pop up on cards at times when I thought they wouldn’t, and vice versa. Essentially, you want to get the health bar of the enemy to 0 before s/he does the same to you. However, they’ll have demons (additional targets) with varying abilities making it more difficult, and they oftentimes require dispatching first. However, they respawn after a few turns, so tactics will vary based on the deck and cards available.

I found myself drawn to the random lairs, similar to the optional battles in Monark. There’s nothing overly exciting there, but it’s where I found the most enjoyment in the game. It proved to be the fastest way to level up the party, as well as find the best equipment. Walking through the hubs is a bit of a drag, as the world seemed mostly worthless, simply traveling to the next marked location. And the dungeons themselves aren’t especially inspired, although there are obstacles to avoid as you progress, adding some variety. This game is mainly going to appeal to those that enjoy the grind, while never becoming overly complicated.

The big problem with the game is that it doesn’t do any of its aspects particularly well. And it seemingly caters to that possibility. While it could be argued that everything essentially has a skip feature in case you don’t care for it or for accessibility sake (visual novel allows skipping everything, combat has auto battle, card combat can be skipped after a few failures, and even travel can be done directly from the map regardless of location), it feels more like it lacks confidence in itself. I do appreciate that combat has different visual speeds, and even lets you skip battle animations if you get tired of them. But for the sake of saving time, I found myself skipping a lot, and eventually had me wondering why I was playing at all. It’s a fine line to walk.

In addition to the standard dialogue boxes and profile images, the game uses motion comics and traditional cut scenes. Early on, it was clear the experience was in desperate need of patching. Cut scenes, which are likely pre-rendered, were running at 30 frames or less, while others looked like they were 480p. It was as if someone bootlegged early alpha footage on a camera phone from 10 years ago. It is wildly inconsistent. The English voice acting is also all over the spectrum, both talent wise and in terms of performances. You can see this from the launch trailer posted with this review. The lip sync issues (also seen in the trailer) only make matters worse here. I ended up playing in Japanese, because that’s what sounded the best to me throughout. The voice acting isn’t even too prevalent, unless you count the couple of repeated phrases in battle from everyone you acquire.

While Mato Anomalies doesn’t execute any of its pieces exceptionally well, I appreciate the fact that there’s variety available, and the ability to quickly skip to the next thing if you desire. There are interesting ideas here, and I’d be interested to see how the team does with their next game, but this feels mildly undercooked.

6 out of 10

Pros

• Able to Skip Almost Anything
• Some Interesting Narrative Choices

Cons

• Dialogue
• All Gameplay Aspects Seem Half-Baked

Mato Anomalies was developed by Arrowiz and published by Prime Matter. The game is available on NS, PC, PS4, PS5, and Xbox. The game was provided to us for review on PS5. If you’d like to see more of Mato Anomalies, check out the developer’s site.

 

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