ANNO: Mutationem (PS5)
The story of the cyberpunk action game ANNO: Mutationem feels a bit odd, because while it puts in a good deal of legwork to tell its tale, it also feels like it becomes far more interested in a brand new direction over halfway through the adventure. It’s not a completely unrelated or overly stark shift in subject matter, but it certainly feels like whoever was behind the writing suddenly encountered a new idea and spent the rest of the game exploring that more than what they had already established. That the game can still hold together despite it does speak for some of its strengths, but it also leaves behind a mess that taints what could have otherwise been two perfectly fine stories told separately.
ANNO: Mutationem takes place in a far future of a world a lot like ours. Cities have fully embraced the next wave of technology, bright holographic tech easily found on buildings and in businesses with cybernetic body modification treated almost casually despite there having been an outbreak of a virus not too long ago that forcibly transformed people into mechanized beings. The game itself uses 3D environments but characters and imagery are brought to life with detailed and often fluidly animated pixel art. ANNO: Mutationem’s look ends up distinct and effective in establishing the futuristic feel but also gives some life to its characters who still emote well even when their pixelated faces are a bit simpler in presentation than the action elements.
Our protagonist Ann Flores travels through the world of ANNO: Mutationem as she aims to rid herself of a disease known as Entangleitis. At unexpected times, Ann will completely lose control of her body as it goes on a violent rampage, Ann herself drifting off into a dream-like state where she sees a dark red world. Her brother Ryan has taken it upon himself to investigate the sketchy rumors of a cure though, Ann spending most of her quest for a cure also following clues about her missing brother. Aiding Ann throughout is the game’s standout character, Ayane Misuno a pink-haired hacker girl who projects herself near Ann with a tangible hologram. Ann’s best friend, Ayane is a welcome injection of high spirits, Ayane’s playful flirtiness able to get more involved interactions and reactions since Ann herself is fairly stoic and would keep most her thoughts to herself otherwise. The pair’s dynamic makes for some of the more fun and memorable cutscenes that helps flesh out who Ann is underneath her careful composure and Ayane begins to reveal some of her own hidden depths as more serious situations require her to focus on things beyond joking around and teasing her buddy. Ann’s father also ends up being a fun if not totally consequential character, this cyberpunk future able to have its more solemn realities but then Ann’s father has willingly replaced his entire body with robotics and become a bit of a quirky absent-minded sort who is too busy thinking about what he wants to do to notice the world around him much.
Where things get a bit testy though are the game’s antagonist organization, the Circle Consortium. When you first see them start to play a part in the plot, they play the role of an ominous organized scientific group fairly well. Their reliance on naming members with a single letter does make it hard to keep track of the many relevant players, but in the cutscenes you first get of them, they also dish out many unexplained terms and ideas that show why other stories do keep certain things vague until they can properly provide context. It’s a bit difficult to follow what they’re discussing in these looks behind the curtain because they talk about things you’re not privy to, which makes it a bit realistic admittedly but also it doesn’t lay down as much intrigue as scenes more catered to an uninformed listener could be. Thankfully, there are still a good deal of elements that raise intriguing questions as you start to find them cropping up more and more in investigating Ann’s Entangleitis, and simpler things like why one of the scientists is a cybernetically enhanced monkey certainly make you eager for answers you can properly interpret.
However, it’s when you start getting some answers on the Circle Consortium that things really begin to shift away from what ANNO: Mutationem is initially about. In fact, it feels like the game starts to care a great deal more about its antagonists than its heroine, but at least part of it is intentional. Even before you start learning more about the Consortium, there are moments that exist to show that Ann’s struggle is just one of many, the player sometimes only briefly interacting with another complex layer of this cyberpunk world before moving on. However, the Consortium in particular feels like it starts stealing too much attention and abandoning a lot of that build-up elsewhere, its broad ideas not incompatible with this setting but not feeling too connected or like they build on it that well. Ann is definitely meant to seem like she’s gotten swept up into something bigger than her, her problem still important but her issue is just one event in a longer history.
It seems the creative team realized they had shifted things too far away from Ann though, as a post-release patch added in a more personal finale to the plot after it had become more about the Consortium than her. It’s an effective ending because of it and helps the game better stick the landing on the idea that she’s brushing up against something far bigger and more important than her concerns without discarding them as trivial. Unfortunately, ANNO: Mutationem is also a bit of a messy game in other ways, such as fairly regular issues in the text conversations. Be they typos, referring to a character by the wrong name, or misattributing who is speaking, the story-telling does hit hitches here and there but it may be just a symptom of the game’s translation from Chinese to English. Elsewhere though, there are actual problems, such as the notes you find that are meant to explore the world’s lore a bit more sometimes not getting registered for later reading. Admittedly, the notes can also hit on the same issue of being written too realistically to the point it’s pointless jargon at times, although perhaps unsurprisingly it is mostly Consortium documents that lean that way while papers explaining the world of ANNO: Mutationem feel more focused on conveying information to make you more interested in the world. Ultimately, it feels like the setting as well as characters like Ann and Ayane would be nice to see again in a story that kept its eyes on them, but it seems the developers would rather follow the Consortium’s adventures more based on the strange pivot.
This has been a lot of discussion about the plot and ANNO: Mutationem does ultimately focus most of its attention on that element. There are city exploration segments and a good deal of side quests that focus more on fleshing out the world and later the Consortium, some droughts between meaningful action making it clear the priority lies with the storytelling. However, the action here isn’t just an afterthought, Ann a capable combatant with a range of battle options. Beginning with a laser sword and pistol, battles with cybernetic thugs, machines, and strange creatures from this world’s less technological underbelly will ask you to mostly figure out your opportunities to execute short combos and then dodge as necessary. Your dodge roll is incredibly useful for movement and safety even before you start getting additional movement tools like a double jump and air dash to further increase your flexibility, the game actually devoting a fair bit to platforming as well since your skills also work for climbing about while avoiding dangers like moving lasers.
In a fight though, your dodging options can be a bit too effective, even some late game bosses not able to respond to the moments of invincibility or the speediness you can wield to avoid their big flashy attacks. It doesn’t make the fights too easy in general though, partly because some foes come with heavily damaging moves to punish a failure in your dodging or have back-up to split your attention. Your gun is mostly good for pinning down flying foes or maybe shaving a little health off a foe from afar, but your laser sword and its future variants that can swing harder, faster, or pierce barriers better are important for the main element of the combat. Most foes won’t take much damage until you break through their defenses, after which you try to score as many hits as you can while your attacks deal additional damage. It’s usually not too difficult to crack the shield regularly so fights don’t get too slow, and the upgrades you can purchase with the fruits of fighting will allow you to chain together skills better or utilize special techniques even though some of them only work on the weaker regular baddies. ANNO: Mutationem does give the impression its combat system will be far more robust when you first see the wide range of options it provides, chips for customizing weapon stats and multiple places to help craft trash you find into better equipment not as crucial as you might expect and often being something worked towards as a later reward rather than something that requires much thought or frequent tinkering. In some ways it also feels like ANNO: Mutationem’s combat is not fully conceived, not because of any outstanding issues but because it doesn’t go as far as its systems seem to imply it will. You can still get impressive fights with big bosses where you’ll definitely want to have healing items on hand, but there are also a lot of stat boosting items and the like that don’t feel like they’ll bridge a skill gap since dodging is always king and other options are too short-lived compared to the reliable and simple tool you have from the start.
THE VERDICT: ANNO: Mutationem feels a bit like a first draft that didn’t quite get the editing it needed, pursuing whatever ideas it found most interesting but not always connecting them into something cohesive. The story introduces an intriguing cyberpunk setting and Ann and Ayane make for interesting leads to experience it through, but the Consortium makes the plot more about them once they stop being the villain group in the background. The fighting system feels like it wanted to be more advanced than it truly is, but the dodging focus and flashy sci-fi fights still have a nice flow and some tough challenges despite not going as far as it systems seem to want to go. ANNO: Mutationem can be actually messy when it comes to some technical and translation elements too, but thankfully it feels like its more a team passionate to realize a good set of ideas that just didn’t get that once over after to refine them properly.
And so, I give ANNO: Mutationem for PlayStation 5…
An OKAY rating. ANNO: Mutationem kind of feels like you started reading a comic book series that eventually reveals it villains are actually a group that headlines another comic from the same company. You can get the necessary context and all and it will fit together in the end despite some inevitable confusion, but it can feel like that first standalone story is lost in the shadow of what is added onto it. There is nothing wrong with the inherent idea of the Circle Consortium as a concept, other works of fiction eagerly explore very similar organizations and it feels very likely the creative team here might have stumbled across such stories partway through their work on this game. However, the pivot nearly makes us lose out on where our initial investments lie, and the post-release patch definitely feels like it did a good bit in making sure the heart of the plot isn’t lost after Ann’s tale starts to become a piece of something bigger instead of the main focus. You still get the emotional catharsis you’d hope for and the general setting isn’t sullied by the concept shift, but that disconnect does make it feel like details weren’t properly distributed here. The game almost feels like it would have been best served cut in half, an initial adventure exploring Ann’s search for her brother but the greater mysteries of the Consortium would be saved for a second adventure where you can focus on it instead. Characters like Ayane, some of the more interesting battles, and a generally solid aesthetic with a sometimes excellent soundtrack for pushing its vibes further don’t feel wasted here, in fact, they buoy it despite some of the more legitimate issues. While I hesitate to call the clear talent shown at parts the work of amateurs, it does have that appeal of an amateur work, where you can see the exciting ideas trying to be realized by passionate people who still need to figure out how to hone them properly into something clean and coherent.
A bit amusingly, even the game’s small free DLC feels like it again captures ANNO: Mutationem’s main issue. The DLC takes the form of a game system delivered to Ayane where you play a small top-down rogue-like shooter where the guns are satisfying to use but the enemies too easy to overcome to really make the rogue-like elements matter. A quick little adventure where things play fine enough and it has a nice look and a little plot with some intrigue, Mysterious Game Console also feels like the team trying to make something work but not having everything come together as nicely in the game as it does in their head. ANNO: Mutationem in general is unrefined but stylish, creative but easily distracted, fun but a bit confusing. What might make some players quit captivates others, but it is the sort of roughness that can be eventually cultivated into the kind of game that could be a beloved classic to the masses instead of a niche title where you have to look past some problems to see its potential.