Progress on MATM has for all intents and purposes not stopped :D. The games share the same world/setting, as well as many enemies and characters. Malise and Neon will even make an appearance in PO (see the concept art below).
Before we shifted focus to PO, we were still stuck in Daz and making pre-rendered still images using kit-bashed and edited store-bought / licensed assets to create character designs from. We were severely limited, to the extent we couldn't even add animations to the game due to tech. PO has, among other things, given us an opportunity to customize character designs from the ground up without being so bound to our tools, as well as to iterate on our once-fledgling real-time 3D pipeline while simultaneously providing fully animated H content.
The shift to PO was not simply because we had a new idea -- it was a necessary change for the survival and growth of the project. And once MATM is completed, it will be a far more consistent and developed experience than anything we could have accomplished with the first attempt.