I often loathe to share my thoughts on a game here before I've played a good solid amount of it, but from the get-go Mato Anomalies is a bit of a mess, exceedingly overwrought and leaded with enough proper nouns to make FFXIII turn its head. Systems-wise there are some points of interest and ambition, rocking a slight twist on the usual turn-based battles and an alternative card-based system among other things, but everything framing it is erratically paced at best and completely jarring at worst. The presentation is rough too, if it were just the slightly uncanny character models I wouldn't particularly care, but with frequent random cuts to the swathes of dialogue on top of one of the worst soundtracks to a game in recent memory, I simply can't forgive it.

Maybe deeper in there is something to take away from this title, but especially now, in a sea of 2023 bangers, I can't justify putting any more of my time into it.