Biomutant Review for Xbox Series X

Check Out the Biomutant Review for Xbox Series X:

Biomutant is an open-world RPG developed by Experiment 101 and published by THQNordic. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans are extinct. Adorable, fluffy, hybrid rabbit-cats fight to protect the Tree of Life from monsters called World-Eaters. These monsters are slowly gnawing at the roots, threatening to destroy all remaining life.

Gamers play as an unnamed, one-eyed, Wung-Fu vigilante who has returned to his homeland to…maybe avenge his parent’s murderers, maybe stop the end of the world, maybe just wander around the area? It’s a little unclear.

But that’s how the whole game is, a little unclear.

Biomutant wants to be a little bit of everything: an RPG, an explorer, a crafter, a shooter, a choose-your-own-adventure. It’s as if Fall-Out, Mass Effect, Devil May Cry, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had a cute baby. This baby has a lot of good intentions, but the lack of focus creates a game where every aspect of it could be more impressive.

Character Creation

The main character (who I’m going to refer to as Vigilante for this review) is a master of Wung-Fu, (and also swords, and also guns, and also psychic powers). This is nice for gamers because it allows players to lean into their own play style. Still, it takes away from the game because it creates an overly complicated upgrade system.

Players choose their class and skills before beginning to play. The Vigilante’s physical appearance will change depending on the number of points put towards a particular skill. So more points in intelligence mean a bigger head, and more points in strength means bigger muscles.

While players might be tempted to spend time hemming and hawing over the different classes and skills, none of it actually matters. If a player takes a strength bonus in the beginning, this doesn’t keep them from maxing out their psi-powers for the rest of the game.

For some reason, the most overpowered system in the game might be the charisma system. If a player’s charisma is high enough, then there is no need to bother with storming the tribal bases. You can just walk up and say, hey, I want you to surrender, and bing-bang-bloop, the tribe has joined the cause. If a player goes this route, it will cut off hours of gameplay, which might be helpful if you’re getting bored, but, like I said, it is a weird choice by the developers.

Crafting

Crafting is a key part of Biomutant. Players can craft personalized weapons and armor to the nth degree. Most things players find while exploring can be used to craft. This statement includes bananas. Players can use bananas as weapon handles.

This level of craftability encourages exploration, as loot can be found throughout the world. Crafting can easily take up 5-10 hours of gameplay, depending on how deep players are willing to go into it. Thankfully, Vigilante has no weight limit, so feel free to grab absolutely every item. Glory in all the garbage you can pick up and sort through to design super sweet armor.

Exploration

The Biomutant map is about 6 x 5 kilometers, according to developers (roughly 4x 3 miles), which is a lot of area to explore! Players will see a lot of the map while pursuing the main and side quests, but there is plenty to wander off and uncover. There are some pretty sweet bonuses for players who aren’t in a rush, including psi-power level-ups, ridiculously overpowered weapons, and a glowing green pool that will unlock extra mutations.

Beyond the loot, this game is just gorgeous. The environment textures are impressive. I spent a solid minute just staring at a tree’s bark because it looked so good. The light fading at the end of the day caused me to stop and watch the shadows. And keep an eye on the characters’ fur. Whenever Vigilante would get wet, they would look like they were wet, with fur matted to the skin. As Vigilante runs around, their fur will slowly dry off and regain its light, fluffy appearance.

Narrative

The narrative for Biomutant is by far the weakest aspect of the game. I will talk about it in two parts: the overarching narrative and the quest narrative.

The overarching narrative is interesting and engaging. The world is post-human, and in our absence, just like at the end of the dinosaur age, small mammals are rising up to become the dominant species thanks to mutations caused by the toxic waste littering the land. In addition to this, World-Eaters are destroying any hope for the future.

Unfortunately, the main-story quests players go on to complete the main quest are repetitive. And not just in the, “oh, I have to go get a helmet for this tribe leader, and that tribal leader wants me to get them a sword” repetitive. I mean, the dialogue, actions, and exploration are almost exact copies of each other. Once a player completes the first quest, they know how the rest of the game will go.

Throughout the game, there are morality checks, moments when a player can choose a dark action or a light action. The most important morality check in the game is deciding whether to fight for the Myriad or Jagni tribe. The Myriad wants to defeat the World-Eaters and save the tree of life. The Jagni want to let the World-Eaters destroy the tree so the world as it is known can die and a new, maybe better world, will be reborn.

No matter what choice players make, these morality checks have almost no implications in-game. Yes, choosing to side with the Myriad means players can’t side with the Jagni, but this doesn’t have any actual consequences and doesn’t affect gameplay. The cut scenes at the end of the game differ depending on the player’s choice, but the road to the end is almost exactly the same.

Narrator

The story is narrated by a single voice actor, who speaks for every single character. Experiment 101 calls the narrator a Storyteller because the voice actor literally tells the story to players.

This is a weird choice.

First, the narrator speaks almost entirely in the third person. In fact, what happens in the game narration is more like translation. When players are engaged in dialogue, the characters will chitter unintelligibly at each other. Then the narrator will say something like, “He wants you to know that he is on your side,” or “She will not tolerate disrespect.”

Second, the narrator interacts with the main character, commenting on what the player does, as well as asking the player questions or offering advice. This started to bother me as I played, and I believe having the narrator act like a translator is a stylistic error.

This choice takes away the player’s sense of immediacy in the game. Being told what happens makes all of the action feel like it’s happening at a distance from the player. It kept me from being able to place myself fully into the character.

Crafting the dialogue like this is the exact definition of telling rather than showing, and it interferes with players making empathic connections to the characters and actions. During a cut-scene, when the main character’s Mooma and Popsi die, it is not compelling storytelling to have some Stephen Fry-sound-alike describe what’s happening rather than let the characters feel what’s happening.

How Long is this Game?

Based on how quickly I’ve been moving through the game, focusing on just the main quest will take me between 10-15 hours. Completing the side-quests and adding in exploration means cheBiomutant offers about 45 hours of gameplay.

Overall

I have to give Biomutant a 7/10.

The game has a lot of high points. Thanks to the complicated crafting system and my own completionist playstyle (I must find every Bleep-Bleep Cupboard and Fry Sparker), I will be logging many, many more hours.

But the truth is that the story gets stale. The tribal war plot is on a loop, and the morality checks make no real difference in the plot. The Storyteller’s narration repeatedly took me out of the game.

Biomutant is currently available for PS4/5, XboxOne/X/S, and Steam for $39.99, which feels high to me. I would pay that much for a game I could log hundreds of hours into. This is more like a $19.99 game. It’s good for one longish play-through, but the repetition in the story means I already feel like I’ve replayed it, so I won’t ever need to again.

Related: Reviews by Michelle Jones

Michelle Jones

+ posts

I'm a completionist gamer who just needs to find that one last object and clear that final dungeon. I love all video games, from open world sandboxes on a console to a mindless match three on my phone. In addition to gaming and writing, I am a graduate student working on a thesis about the ancient Icelandic Sagas. Feel free to ask me anything about Vikings.