Biomutant is a major project from a relatively small studio. It has been in development for a very long time: in 2018 we already had an early opportunity to play the game. Now, more than three years later, the game is finally released and we have already started working with it extensively.
Biomutant takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. Humanity has dumped way too much waste and all those chemicals have created mutated animals, of which you are one. You have been away from home for a long time and when you return you are faced with two major problems. Firstly, people eat at the Tree of Life by the so-called World Eaters. If they can just keep doing this and the Tree of Life is destroyed, the world will end. At the same time, there is also a Tribe War going on between the six different Wung-fu tribes. The game is all about solving both problems.
What Biomutant try to make it clear pretty quickly is that you have freedom in how you play the game. You may think about letting the world end and which of the six tribes will assist you, that too is up to you. Your dark side is not necessarily bad, and too much of the light side can be dubious: that is the message to make sure you really feel free to choose the path that seems most interesting to you personally.
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The game starts very strongly, partly thanks to this principle. In fact, in the first few hours, everything is great: the environments are breathtakingly beautiful, the fights are tight and exciting, characters are funny, it is interesting to learn more and more about the world you are in and you can go very quickly do what you feel like doing instead of having one mission to follow. Let’s highlight all the points a bit more.
Combat is kind of a mix between the Batman Arkham-games in Devil May Cry. You can beat around you and avoid attacks and opponents get a sign above their heads that indicates that you can repel an attack at that moment for a strong counter-attack. The timing for this is pretty forgiving, so don’t worry about a massive punishment Dark Souls of Ax to do.
In addition, you also have a gun that you can easily use and you have access to all kinds of magical powers to alternate with. So the fights are a smooth knit of all these elements and they feel interesting. If you have quick fingers and can be a little creative with your arsenal of options, you can get through entire fights without getting hit just once. At the same time, it is absolutely not too difficult if you are a little slower.
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The world and its inhabitants are interesting. It’s quite a different way of looking at all the post-apocalyptic stuff. Instead of you as a human being sad about what happened, you now view it as a mutated animal that lives in a world without people. There are several characters that you will encounter in the beginning that give the game a lot of charm. They also don’t speak English, so you can understand them through the narrator who translates everything for you. This gives it all a special atmosphere. Add to that Biomutant is breathtakingly beautiful and it would be weird not to fall in love with everything you see around you.
There is also something to be found in every corner, from whole helmets or vests that are better than what you are wearing, to parts that you can use to make other objects stronger. It continuously invites you to explore a little more and because of the beauty of the world, you do too. For this you will not only be rewarded with parts and the like, but you can also encounter one of the four World Eaters very early in the game and you can immediately compete with it if you want. This contributes to the feeling that you are really free to come and go wherever you want.
So far we have been extremely positive and that is how you experience the game for the first three to five hours. Had we written our review after the first few hours, it would get the full five stars with nothing but praise. However, comes Biomutant after those first hours in quite a bit of trouble: it will be much of the same.
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Your hundredth fight feels the same as your tenth fight, with pretty much the same pair of tiny creatures you defeat with a larger, troll-like creature next to it. They have the same kind of attacks as the first time you had to fight such a composition and it ensures that you no longer see battles as a welcome change, but as a repetitive job. The balance is also very wrong, because with our character we had bet a large part of our points on intelligence, which should make our magic stronger. Even then, it pays a lot more to just wait for the signs above someone’s head to fend off the attack and launch a counterattack: it is simply much more powerful than any other fighting method at your disposal and this adds to to the monotonous experience.
The third time you take an enemy settlement, you unlock exactly the same fortress with the same walls and layout as the first two times.
Characters are also becoming less and less unique and funny. After a few hours the charm is gone that the creatures of the world speak in an incomprehensible language and that you first have to hear their sounds and then wait for the narrator’s translation. It’s nice at first, but later you just get annoyed that it makes every conversation much longer unnecessarily. This is further enhanced by the fact that you can clearly hear the same pair of sounds being repeated, sometimes even twice in a row. For example, you hear a creature pronounce the same sentence twice, but it supposedly should be a completely different story.
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The urge to investigate also disappears like snow in the sun. You get way too many parts wherever you go, and the difference between the effects is minimal. It’s not interesting enough to get wild when you find a new part that could make your weapon a little stronger. You will be inundated with various parts and therefore you will soon not be drawn to discover every ruin or every corner of a forest at all.
So watered down Biomutant slowly from a great open-world RPG that we would recommend to everyone, to a pretty clichéd game that is actually only really worthwhile for the breathtakingly beautiful environments.
Biomutant was played on PC for this review. The game is also available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and for the next generation of consoles through Backwards Compatibility.
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