Blade Runner with all kinds of mechanics

Mato Anomalies is a strange one. It has a lot of mechanics in it and it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what genre game this is. It’s one-part visual novel, one part turn-based RPG dungeon crawler, and one part card battle game. All of these play out throughout an interwoven story featuring two main protagonists. It has a lot here, but sometimes it hits the mark while sometimes, it falls short.

Players take on the roles of both Doe and Gram. Doe is a private detective that is tasked with figuring out the seedy happenings in a Blade Runner-esque world. He discovers that there are two worlds, one that runs through a different dimension that is also affected by the “real world.” This is where he meets Gram. Gram is a hunter who is trying to rid the world of this “Bane Tide” that exists in the other world. They decide to team up to meet their goal together. Along the way, they meet others that have been affected by these rifts in worlds and must uncover what is happening.

MSRP: $39.99
Price I’d pay: $30
Platforms: PC, Switch, Xbox, PlayStation

Doe uses his investigation skills by gathering information. This is where the card mechanics come into play. When Doe reaches into the mind of a person he is interrogating, he uses a card battle system to break their mind defenses. It can get complex with both keeping defensive buffs on Doe while trying to dish out damage on the person he’s interrogating.

Gram is the RPG dungeon crawler. When entering lairs, players will take over as Gram and move around these dungeons taking on Bane Tide enemies through turn-based combat. This combat plays out a bit differently than your standard RPG affair. Every skill is set with a turn cooldown. So, it is really important to keep in mind which attacks and skills are needed for certain fights and save their cooldowns for when they are needed. Also, the entire party shares a health bar. So, there is no need to keep up with multiple party members’ health. This also makes the battles slightly more difficult since losing one party member means the entire team loses.

Along with levels, players can upgrade party members with both a skill tree as well as weapon upgrades. There is even a node mechanic that can change the entire party’s effectiveness in combat by equipping gears into nodes and connecting them together for boots.

All cutscenes play out in a visual novel style with some being more cinematic with comic book style visuals. In fact, the entire game gives off a cell shaded look. This is a very dialogue heavy game that really pushes that visual novel aspect, and I’ll be the first to admit, some of these conversations can get rather long in the tooth.

While having a nice art style, the game comes off a bit…unpolished. That’s really the only way I can describe it. For instance, after leaving a cutscene, it can be a bit jarring when the game just throws you back into the overworld without a fade out or even a pause. It always felt like there should have been a small transition that just wasn’t programmed into the game. Even leaving certain menus just feels abrupt.

At the end of the day, Mato Anomalies feels like a budget title with a lot of things going for it. It has some decent mechanics and some interesting story bits if you are willing to read a lot. The RPG side of the game can have some difficulty spikes and level grinding side dungeons will be needed in some instances, but for RPG fans and visual novel fans, if you can get past the different mechanics and are willing to learn some unconventional ones, this could be a decent experience for you even with the lower budget feel.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.