Roundup: Here’s What The Critics Are Saying About Biomutant

After years and years (and years!) of waiting, the highly-anticipated action-RPG Biomutant finally arrives on Xbox tomorrow, May 25. and the reviews have been flooding in this afternoon with impressions of the full game.

We've completed it, and you can find our review below and elsewhere on Pure Xbox, but we've mixed it up with some of the other reviews from across the web so you can get a good overview of what the general impression is.

CogConnected (7.5/10)

"Biomutant’s world is enthralling. The art direction and characterization will beckon players to scour the entirety of the map, discovering items that develop the lore of the universe. However, the gameplay is hindered by performance issues and bugs which make some parts of Biomutant feel like a chore. Although the game falls short of greatness, this ambitious debut from Experiment 101 has me salivating for their next release."

GameSpot (6/10)

"While combat is fun in moderation and the crafting system is bizarre in all the right ways, the flip side of this is dull and monotonous quest design, a forgettable story, and hollow morality. There's still an enjoyable game here, but a lot of unfortunate caveats come attached to that statement. Yet while it might not always hit the mark, Biomutant is an ambitiously flawed game from a small studio, and the games industry could always use more risky endeavors like this one."

IGN (6/10)

"With excellent enemy creature design, a rich and diverse world, and piles and piles of choice when it comes to combat and customisation, Biomutant has a lot of the building blocks of a top-drawer action RPG. It’s really missing only a few, but they’re big ones: its cookie-cutter approach to objectives and puzzles feels two-or-so generations off the pace of other open-world action games, and that leaves the quest to gather all of the things feeling repetitive early on."

Pure Xbox (5/10)

"Much like the character you create, Biomutant feels like a Frankenstein creation of various ideas. Some are good, some are bad, but the end result is a misshapen product which feels messy and buried in its own ideas. Areas of the game that should have received more attention - like it’s quest design - feel relatively barebones, while others feel overly complex. The repetitive nature of looting, levelling up, and looting some more never truly evolve and make the beautiful world often feel lifeless. We really wish we loved Biomutant, but unfortunately, it's a game with many ambitious ideas, but lacks the conviction to fully utilise them."

Push Square (4/10)

"Biomutant could have been something special, but the ambitious project fails to capitalise on what it does differently. Trapped in the clutches of an open world from a generation past, its own ideas are thwarted by an overload of other mechanics and overwhelming menus. By trying to do so much, Biomutant skipped the part where it built a solid basis to work from. While there's still potential here, Experiment 101's first attempt hasn't realised it."

Eurogamer (No Score)

"Experiment 101 took years to stuff a game with features instead of focusing on its strengths to deliver a quality experience half as long. Everything that exists seems to have been made so that someone could say wow, look at all this stuff, yet the sad truth is all of it is available elsewhere and in better quality, likely because you can't take on AAA open-world games in scope if you're a team of 20."

Unfortunately, as you can see, the majority of critics aren't as impressed by Biomutant as they hoped they'd be, with the scores ranging from poor to okay, although there are still some high-rated scores floating around as well.

At the time of writing, Biomutant has an average of 65 based on 18 Metacritic reviews for Xbox One, and 64 based on 19 reviews for PlayStation 4. That's the general verdict right now, but the average could change over the next few hours.

Are you picking up Biomutant this week? Let us know down in the comments below.