Mato Anomalies

• HP is shared between all active party members. This has the effect of making AoE attacks particularly troublesome, so it would be best to identify and keep track of which enemies can do those so that you can hammer into them before they get to make a move.

• DoT can be stacked and each time it is stacked, the effect timer resets. So you can keep hitting someone with poison and they will stay poisoned for as long as you're able to apply it.

• There's four main attack types, although it's more like three and the fourth is deliberately rare: Crush, Pierce, Slash, and Special. You should try to have as even of a spread of these as you're able so that you can have a smoother time through the dungeons. Characters have two weapon types that also come with skills associated with it, and they can also learn skills of various attack types that can be used with either weapon equipped. As an example of the latter, Gram learns some Slash attacks, but he also can access a single-target Pierce attack. Additionally, nothing in the game has some resistance for Special, so that's always nice.

• There is no MP system in place, so all non-basic skills are set on cooldowns. Some skills have passives to reduce it by one turn and there's a rare few that can lower cooldowns further, but any skills still on cooldown when the battle ends will still be when the next one begins.

• In the case of story Lairs (aside from one specific instance, will cover that later), you're allowed to backtrack to the exit and leave to restock and the enemies will not reset. In the case of random Lairs, this does not apply and you will also have to manage a separate meter for your team. If this meter falls below a certain threshold, you will be hit with an attack down penalty. If it bottoms out, you will also be hit with a defense down penalty. There are items that can restore this meter somewhat, but the very nature of random Lairs means that you might not even get that.

• Money is not going to be easy to come by, as the majority of fights only pay out double-digit amounts. You'll be getting a lot of your funds from chests laying around or by selling weapons and gear pieces that you don't need. Do not spend recklessly as the costs for items and equipment are, frankly, really ridiculous.

• Every chapter brings a new level of equipment to pick up from the store and from the Lairs. As all equipment comes in different tiers (white -> green -> blue -> purple -> orange) and the higher tiers are more costly, you will need to decide if buying the best thing outright is better than trying your luck in a random Lair so you can get it for free.

• When you level up, everyone gets one skill point to use. Be aware that you will not be able to fill out all skills as the developers intentionally made it so that you stop getting skill points at some point around the mid-40s, which is very late into the game. With that in mind, you'll want each character to prefer one of their two weapons and you'll be able to reset skills for a small cost whenever you want.

• On the subject of ultimate skills and leveling them, they are undoubtedly very useful. However, as far as the PS4 version of the game is concerned, using an ultimate against certain enemies or within certain locations will cause your game to green screen crash. As I do not have the PC version, perhaps it is the most stable of the ones available, but you should just be prepared to pick up back from where you last saved if you intend to use these skills. If you are affected by this, you can forgo leveling the ultimate skills for each character and place those points into more useful skills.

• There are reports that you can softlock your save during Chapter 6 when you are expected to run a string of Lairs. Do not leave these Lairs under any circumstances unless you have another save to fall back onto and continue until this section is concluded. If you must, switch the difficulty to Easy (unless you're already on it) and get through it so you can continue without too much issue.

• The final boss will be the roughest fight in the game, bar none. You will need to prepare as much as you possibly can in order to stand a chance as they will hit harder than anything else, even on Easy difficulty where you can realistically auto-battle through a lot of other fights. They also have a gimmick that none other has and you need to be strong enough to deal with that. If you are someone who can't use ultimate skills because of the aforementioned crash issue, then I'm sorry but you'll need to get even more power to compensate for that loss.

• If you have purchased the extra chapter DLC, you will be warned that you cannot go back to the main story until it's over. This DLC will give you a new playable character and this character is very, very good. The fights within will be tailored to her skill set and she gets her own shop to pick up her weapons. When brought to the base game, she will most likely run roughshod on almost every fight remaining.