Biomutant Nintendo Switch Review
Summary: Biomutant has a good base and plenty of things going for it, but I think that is also its weakness. It tries to be everything and in the end it becomes a mess of half implemented features and not fully fleshed out ideas. Whilst there is nothing massively wrong with the game, you can have an enjoyable experience. I still feel disappointed that the game did not hit that next stage which takes it from an ok game to a great game. Maybe a sequel with more focused ideas could benefit this series.
3
Missed Opportunity
Before I start I shall preface – I have never played Biomutant before after reading the reviews during the original launch and with the price tag, I was put off. Now three years later I am ready to give this game a go on my favorite hybrid console. Will the original reviews be right or were they overly harsh? Let’s take a look.
PLOT
Biomutant is an open world RPG where you play as a customisable rodent/rabbit hybrid who is tasked with saving the world from the World Eaters who are hellbent on destroying the World Tree. Along the way you must explore, craft and upgrade many weapons and armours. Ally with other tribes and decide whether you will be good or evil. The game allows for you to decide the ultimate fate of the World Tree and which if any tribe shall rule over the world.
Rodent X Samurai Ninja?
Set in a post-post apocalyptic world that is now inhabited by rodent-like animals who have split into various factions and control the different biomes of the world. Everything has a Chinese/Japanese martial art theme as to why that is the case it is never really explained in the game from a lore point of view. Though it does allow the game to have its own style both in its fighting and theming.
At the start of the game you design your character, you also pick what class you want to be and what stats you want to prioritize.
I went for Commando. This meant my character liked to use melee and ranged weapons. You also have the usual magic and stealth classes. New to the Switch version of the game you were able to be due wielding meaning you could use both a Sword and gun without having to unlock that perk. My guy obviously must have been a fan of Cloud from Final Fantasy 7 as he carried a massive sword as his starter weapon.
As you explore the world and fight the myriad of creature enemies you will level up this allows you to add points to the various skills. If that was not enough you will also find chemical containers which allow you to gain mutant powers which give you special attacks like a chemical ground pound. As I said in the class system there is also a magic system called Psi, this is also another unlockable and expandable skill tree again allowing you to be unique and to customize your character to your preferred playstyle.
To help keep the story going a narrator is used for all the story beats. His whimsical tone ends up giving the game a very childlike manner even at times when the story went dark and it felt out of touch as if I was playing a Thomas the Tank engine game instead of a Fallout-esque apocalyptic game
Exploration and Collecting Everything…
A major part of Biomutant is the free and open exploration of the world, bar the Tribal outposts you are free to explore the environment with very minimal invisible walls to stop you. With an open world game you can expect a lot of hidden areas to explore like bunkers where rarer weapon parts and equipment is to be found. Here begins the first issue with Biomutant all of these secret areas and mission objective areas are filled to the brim with loot if you have ever played and enjoyed games like Far Cry or Assassins Creed you will feel right at home with the general loop of the exploration see a building, enter it, look around and find a container filled with “valuable” loot. Rinse and repeat. These containers are easily spottable as a small circle appears above them to denote the placement. Overall the world is varied with different Biomes which like the cold and hot areas in Legend of Zelda BOTW require special items in this case gasmask and oxygen mask to be able to navigate without dying. Unfortunately for as much as this is an open world it really is a world that is open but empty you can go through long sections without seeing an enemy or anything other than environments which can make for a shallow experience and an area which really should have more to do which would really mix up gameplay which after the first couple of areas becomes very repetitive and boring.
Combat
Combat is an area that I feel the developers put a lot of time into the general ideas which are all really interesting. Mixing both melee and ranged combat works very well. But there are some major problems with it. The combat feels off. I don’t know whether this is just the sound effects but everything has a soft feeling. I am hitting enemies with a large sword but yet it sounds and feels like I have hit them with a soft feather. Even the larger boss enemies attacks just sound sort of pathetic in comparison to their large size. There is a large emphasis on combo moves which I will say are easy to pull off and do the desired effect both visually and damage wise. It’s just missing the meaty sound to really hit the next level.
I also found the best strategy was to continually circle the Bosses and use my ranged gun to slowly whittle down the health all the while keeping myself safe. Effective yes but I wished that more battles felt different instead everything ended feeling the same just with different backgrounds.
Performance
The game holds up surprisingly well on the Nintendo Switch, whilst the graphics are scaled back from the main PC and Console counterparts everything remains beautiful and vibrant. I did however find that moving into new areas did cause slight frame hiccups, nothing too long but it was noticeable.
Along with the occasional stutter characters would occasionally get stuck in walking animations or would try and walk through a wall rather than then through the doorway 1m to their side.
But the most impactful performance aspect was the loading time. Both getting to the main menu took a good 30-40 seconds at times I thought it had crashed only to look at the corner and see the loading symbol move.
Dying became a real inconvenience even though you could reload at a checkpoint you again had to wait an extremely long time looking at the Biomutant splash screen before the game kicked back in again. I understand that the Switch is not the most powerful system and this game was designed for Playstation, Xbox and PC, but surely this length of wait time is excessive.
Final Thoughts?
Biomutant has a good base and plenty of things going for it, but I think that is also its weakness. It tries to be everything and in the end it becomes a mess of half implemented features and not fully fleshed out ideas. Whilst there is nothing massively wrong with the game, you can have an enjoyable experience. However I still feel disappointed that the game did not hit that next stage which takes it from an OK game to a great game. Maybe a sequel with more focused ideas could benefit this series.
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