Anno Mutationem stars a woman named Anne with a deep dark past living in a cyberpunk world that has been ravaged by a virus that turns people into robot zombies. Anne's initial objective is to find her missing brother, but along the way gets sucked into a larger world altering conspiracy of crazy nonsense. The game borrows heavily from other properties like Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner, and Evangelion and by the end it's just a huge mess.
It's charming, though, and funny. And occasionally kinda sexy. Anne looks great and you can change into a number of different outfits. It's all chunky pixel art, but kind of perfectly presented and looks truly amazing. The lighting is fantastic, the characters look great, and the world is nice looking as well. The presentation is definitely what caught my attention in the first place, and it doesn't disappoint.
The gameplay on the other hand ... yeesh. The game is split into distinct 2D and 3D sections where 3D is for exploration and lets you freely move around the game world but for combat and platforming you are locked to a 2D plane. This setup works pretty well, actually. You get to freely move around small chunks of a cyberpunk city and go into the shops and night clubs and talk to everyone and do side missions and it's kind of great.
The 2D combat and platforming is where things eventually fall apart, though. It's fine at first. Platforming is simple and in Metroidvania-style you get a double jump and an air dash and a wall climb and it's kinda fun. Combat wants to be a sort of 2D Dark Souls where you have to dodge in and out to get your hits in and parry where you can, mixed with Devil May Cry because you use a combo of swords and guns. Different enemy types need different tactics, etc. etc. etc. You get new weapons and can upgrade them over the game. It's fine. It's OK. You don't actually do that much fighting for the first 2/3rds of the game.
The closer you get to the end, however, everything steadily gets worse. The game introduces putrid horrible platforming puzzles where you have to dodge instant kill laser walls that are some of the most vile garbage I've played in a while. Combat also has a major difficulty spike towards the end where you're suddenly fighting multiple boss-level enemies all at once and the gameplay isn't nearly good enough to keep up. It just ain't fun. Literally every few minutes over the last chunk of the game there will be some new horrible bullshit you'll want to rage quit out of. The gameplay was only ever just OK up to that point anyway, but then it turns into absolute garbage at the end.
So by the end of Anno Mutationem the story is a hot mess of absolute nonsensical gibberish, and the combat suddenly expects you to "git gud" by spiking the difficulty far, far past the point where the gameplay can even keep up. This is not a stylish character action game where you have all of the tools you need to overcome any obstacle. It's a clunky, awkward, poorly balanced, shockingly limited 2D action platformer that can't decide what it wants to be and ultimately gets it all wrong.
I have to say I really hated it by the end, which is such a shame because when it's good, Anno Mutationem can be really good. Exploring the city and talking to all of the people is fun. And the game is absolutely gorgeous looking. It's seriously really impressive visually. But the story is so messy and convoluted that you just stop caring well before the end, and the gameplay gets worse and worse the further in you play. I definitely can't recommend it at the full $25 MSRP, but if you can get it for less - I paid $12 or something on sale on Xbox - consider giving it a try. You'll hate it by the end, but I'd say the 8-10 or so hours before the last chunk where it turns to crap is still worth experiencing.
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