It’s been about three months since we told you about Mato Anomalies, a JRPG that will arrive on Xbox next year and promises to be one of the revelations of the genre. Arriving hand in hand Prime Matter and the Chinese studio Arrowiz, some unknown within the genre, the game gave us a real surprise, and although some aspects are quite crude in this period of its development, it has plenty of potential.
Now, we have had the possibility to continue playing a little further than where we got in his day, immersing ourselves in another of his chapters. Once again, we have played its PC version through Steam, although in this case we have also had the opportunity to try the game on Steam Deck, Valve’s portable PC on which, we have to say, Mato Anomalies works perfectly. wonder without the need for any extra configuration.
At a playable level, this new chapter does not present us with many new features compared to what we tried on the previous occasion. Before us we find a JRPG with turn-based combat and a cyberpunk setting that isn’t too out of the ordinary.
We continue to feel that the combat system is too basic for a turn-based title, where variety and forcing the player to think is one of the most important aspects of delivering a fun and satisfying experience. It is to be expected that the combat system will progress and gain some complexity as we progress through the adventure, but at this point it leaves a lot to be desired.
The story picks up where it left off in the previous chapter, advancing through Detective Doe’s journey. The plot has mysteries that make us want to know more and goes to great lengths to establish his world. However, on this occasion we felt that the dialogues are often excessively long in an artificial way (giving a lot of detours to the same topic) and some somewhat strange sentences, which seem to be the consequence of a bad translation into Spanish (which might not be definitive, since the game is still actively in development).
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In addition, many transitions between scenes and dialogue are so abrupt that they make us feel a bit out of place, almost as if we have just teleported from one environment to another (which, essentially, happens in many scenes). This is one of the aspects in which we most hope that it will improve between now and the release of the title, since it tarnishes the good artistic presentation that it presents in its other areas. Even with everything, history continues to be one of the clear focuses of Mato Anomalies, and talking to all the characters that populate its world feels satisfying, as they give us glimpses of the current situation in the city of Mato.
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Broadly speaking, there are not too many new features compared to what we told you three months ago, so we want to dedicate a few lines to what we have been able to test in a new way, and that is the gameplay in Steam Deck. Mato Anomalies maintains a totally stable 60 fps on the portable platform, and the controls are perfectly adapted to the platform. It is something that has caught our attention, since we expected that, being a title that has not even finished its development, it would show problems or not even work properly. Also, being such a leisurely game, with long dialogues in a graphic novel format and turn-based combat, this is another one of those JRPGs that is greatly enjoyed in portable format.
