Recent reviews by Shyloh

At the time of this review, I am 48 hours into Biomutant and have completed 35% of all content available in this title (according to its in-game tracker) and am playing on Hard difficulty. This review will contain spoilers.


TLDR; I can't recommend this game as is, but I can say to put it on follow / wishlist and maybe pick it up on sale. If any patches are released that improve Melee Combat, Crafting, Psi Power Scaling, and/or implement additional memory scenes to patch together the story I'll likely change my "No" to a "Yes". This game is definitely worth watching.


This game is..clunky. It's fun, for sure, but it's issues are frequent and unavoidable. I plan to play this game until 100% completion regardless, as it is still very enjoyable, but it would be dishonest of me to say I'd recommend it as it currently is. I'll try to go over my grievances - both legitimate issues and personal gripes - one by one below.

- The disjointed story. The main story characters / important NPCs you meet act as if they know you, but most of them don't seem to have memory-related cutscene's tied to them. I killed the Big Bad of the game already, but all the NPCs I meet are still asking if I plan to kill him or forgive him? I feel like I'm being gaslit and the Big Bad is just going to randomly show back up. The melee combat is INCREDIBLY clunky - there just aren't enough combos for it to feel as good as it could. Some of the moral choices you have to make, like choosing people for the Ark, are forced right after completing their quests, which feels pointlessly forced. The magic system is also incredibly undertuned. After roughly level 20, most abilities you get from it don't do anywhere near as much damage as my gun.

- The balance of power for weapons is incredibly skewed. Melee and Psi Abilities feel pointless when compared to the guns in this game. You can easily find an "ultimate" Ranged Weapon that simply wins the rest of the game for you incredibly early in the game (we're talking +1000 damage per shot at low levels (15-20). I've been using this same ranged weapon since I found it, and none of the plethora of ranged weapons I've crafted since have even come close to dethroning it. Melee weapons can do more damage, but much less consistently, and open you up to nearly unavoidable (read as "able to be parried or dodged but not really") damage mechanics that will stun you or knock you away. Melee weapons also have the same issue as ranged - the "Ultimate" weapons you find will, thus far, always beat out the ones you craft. Psi has decent power to it, and can provide decent utility, but anyone who is basing an entire build around it is likely to struggle as its damage does not scale well into the later game.

- Tribe weapons are the next issue for me. Its a great concept - but the fact that each weapon is THE ONLY version of that item in the game is really underwhelming and unfun. I LOVE the Jagni Staff; its a fun playstyle, has cool animations, and is a fun "fantasy" to attach to my character. But the Jagni staff is also only 225-450 damage - which even the 1 hand's I'm crafting now can quickly surpass. I don't understand why you wouldn't just learn to craft other weapons in the same family as your tribe weapon after you unlock the weapon? This feels like wasted potential.

- Mounts are mostly pointless. Most of them are slower and less mobile than your character is on foot, and oddly being on them seems to negate your armor. I have, thus far, felt no incentive to use any of the multiple mounts I have acquired.

- Bosses are more about their gimmick than they are about anything else. By this I mean that none of these bosses are particularly interesting, nor difficult. They have all been a bullet sponge slog of "does nothing while you shoot endlessly, then does one big ability that doesn't really put you in danger". The game has a multitude of mechanics they could've used to make these even slightly more interesting, but instead the devs decided to just stick to the gimmick of making you use whatever special ride you are using this time while having you ignore everything else. None require gliding, or climbing, or anything like that. Psi is useless against them, and there is currently nothing special that can be added to the existing fights to add more flavor to them. You just shoot the boss, dodge its 5 attack animations, and then leave.

- The upgrade system is bland. Seriously, I don't know how to expand on this one. You can upgrade the "quality" and "material" of your crafted items, but this requires an ever growing number of the 5 scrap resources (which cap at 99 by the way), and do minimal improvements to the items even at higher levels. The highest tiers of upgrades require >30 of each scrap material to do - which means that my already limited amount of scrap is quickly eaten away if I try to make weapons that even come close to comparing with the Ultimate items found in the game. The scrap limit needs to be increased, or just removed entirely.

- Super Wung Fu is worthless. So the game has this potentially-fun mechanic called "Super Wung-Fu". If you've played the game for any amount of time and not seen it again since the tutorial, then that's really no surprise! To make SWF activate, you have to do 3 separate combos (without repeating the same combo twice), and then hit the activation key (on keyboard, this is V key by default). The result of activating it at late game? Sitting in the air with an enemy for ~10-15 seconds, and *maybe* doing enough damage to kill them. The alternative? Shooting them for 5-6 seconds until dead while also being able to dodge bullets. SWF is pointless, and I recommend not hitting that button.

-Wung Fu is rather limited. The game has 6 main categories of Wung-Fu; Close Combat, Ranged Combat, Basic Melee, Basic Ranged, Maneuvers, and Super Wung-Fu. Close Combat and Ranged Combat categories gain more subcategories as the game progresses and you gain tribe weapon(s) and pick up new items, though after the initial unlock of these subcategories their growth stops. The Basic Cateogories, Manuevers, and Super Wung-Fu, however, never gain anything new. This games overall lack of combat maneuvers, weapon combos, and basic movement maneuvers really decreases the fun to be had. When you meet a Tribe at the beginning of the game, and they talk about their "secret Wung Fu and Weapon" - they don't mean that they'll teach you interesting things like some sort of ninja-like jump or an air dash. They mean that that picking up their weapon will give you the Wung Fu associated with using it. That's it. Severely disappointing.

- The "common complaints everyone else has". Aka, the narrator is quirky but gets annoying. The Story is boring. There are lots of weird bugs. etc etc.

So, I've complained about all this now. Anyone that's made it this far is probably wondering what I actually enjoyed about the game. And honestly? I don't know. Most of my time has been spent exploring the vast landscape of Biomutant. At this point, I keep going just so I can see the "100%" on my completion bar, and in hopes of piecing together what the devs intended the story to be. The game is so absolutely chock full of places to see, people to meet, and stuff to explore. I feel a genuine desire to complete all objectives for every area I enter (maybe the items from this gas station will finally be good!). I want to know more about Toxinol (the actual interesting part of the story). I want to be preached at more about how the world was killed by corporations (no, really, I do. That part is important af.)


So while I can't recommend this game as it currently is, I can say its worth keeping an eye on. I'd also say its worth picking up on sale for $30, maybe even $40, but I doubt most players are going to feel that they got their moneys worth from this game in its current state for $60.