Experiment 101's Biomutant is an open-world action RPG in which an anthropomorphic mammal, customised down to the smallest detail, crosses a world devastated by pollution, between choices of light and darkness signalled by a little angel and a little devil, and environmental hazards such as cold, heat and contaminated areas. The world is vast and the character agile, but the menus are awkward and the size of the world is used as an excuse to recycle assets, so much so that you seem to explore the same place over and over. The main problem is the plot and the dialogue, weak and unclear, with flashbacks that could be better and only a few music tracks. Extraordinarily promising, it remains a nice experiment that, especially in its dialogue, could have been improved enormously.
Biomutant is an open-world action RPG developed by the Swedish studio Experiment 101 and published by THQ Nordic on May 25, 2021. You play as an anthropomorphic mammal, created and customized by the player down to the smallest detail, who wakes up in a world ravaged by pollution: plains, wrecks and tribes fighting one another around the Tree of Life.
The main character has to face a thousand dangers and, above all, a great many choices between good and evil. The first stands for light and all the abilities tied to it, the second obviously for darkness. The narrator recounts every action the character performs. You work out almost immediately which actions lead to good and which to evil: they are marked with a little angel and a little devil.
As you move on across the map, the mammal runs into dangers that are mostly environmental: bitter cold, suffocating heat, heavily polluted areas and some so contaminated that you risk hypoxia from the lack of air.
The world is extremely vast and varied, with plenty to explore. The character is extremely responsive and agile, except when swimming. The same cannot be said for this game's menus, which are hard to use: it took me ten hours of play before I finally managed to build a ranged weapon.
Biomutant in itself is extraordinarily promising. The most obvious problem is that it used the vastness of this world as an excuse to reuse a lot of assets. At times it felt like I was exploring the same place over and over. Oddly enough, that choice could even have worked, if the game had been built on its choices and if collecting loot had counted for less.
The main problem is the plot and the dialogue: really too weak and too hard to follow. Some choices are unclear, since I can only tell them apart by where they sit, on the right or on the left. For example, when you rescue a prisoner two options come up: "I already feel good" and "I'll help you". If you pick "I already feel good", the character throws a Street Fighter-style beat-'em-up move at the prisoner.
The flashbacks could have been improved enormously, because they are the part that best told what the world was like before. The ones about Toxanol are missing: who they were and why they caused all this.
The last criticism is the soundtrack: nice and catchy, but with few tracks. Even though the game is fairly weak, I still find it likeable. Like the name of the studio behind it, I see it as an experiment; but be aware that with a little more care, above all on the dialogue, it could have been so much better.