I'm counting this as mastered even though I didn't do 100% (I'm not gonna complete every area to get all the useless loot and a few quests glitched the fuck off but I did all quests that didn't break).

Anyway, this is a game that just seriously needed to trim the fat. It vastly overstays its welcome, with lots of repetitive bloat that would make even Ubisoft blush. That is, by far, its biggest flaw.

The first few hours of the game sucked, at least before the patches, as you mostly have to go through some extremely boring dialogues and story pieces that I frankly didn't care about. You're railroaded hard for a while. Also, your combat abilities are extremely limited, which makes the janky combat feel absolutely dreadful.

After that rough start, though, about 3 hours or so in, it really picked up for me. The exploration was fantastic, with SO MANY PLACES to check and explore. I didn't even fast travel, because I kept finding new places to explore and it was great fun. Similar to my experience with BotW's first dozen or so hours. The combat eventually got fun enough (although still very simple and janky) once I had some abilities to play with. I had to constantly vary my skills and switch between melee and ranged options (until guns started to grossly outdo my melee weapon's damage). I was having a pretty good time for a while there, not gonna lie!

That said, things like the writing never got better. The story is absolutely whatever, and the characters' personality is highly diluted by the fact you have this annoying repetitive narrator "translating" for you. This kneecaps the charm of the game, since all the varied weirdos you meet end up feeling samey due to the narrator. This is another massive flaw of the game. Not to mention the way conversations go sometimes feels like an AI pulling random lines that are barely related, trying to make sense but failing to do so, which makes the game hell very bizarre and uncanny (though I kinda dig that a bit, it gets old). Also, the stupid "cute" terminology that sounds like Mad Max for mentally deficient babies is grating as fuck and I hope I never have to hear terms like "motojus" ("motor juice", as in gasoline, duuuh buuhhuh) or names like "Porky Puff" again.

Now, talking about presentation... the game actually looks fantastic most of the time. It's actually impressive for such a small team. But the high fidelity is loss sometimes due to this game having some absolutely fucking hideous designs. Like, holy shit, most of the gear you find is baffling in how ugly it is. Which is even more fucked because if I don't wanna get oneshot by the janky ass enemies, I have to cover up my nice-looking character in garbage. I eventually just wore whatever looked passable and still gave SOME defense, but damn is most gear ugly. The music is okay but there's like 10 tracks you'll hear throughout the whole game so they get mad old.

Anyway, back to the stuff I did enjoy. During the good times I had with the game, exploration was fantastic as I kept finding new loot, constantly upgrading my gear and making using of the pretty nice crafting system (you mix and match weapon parts). This was pretty cool! But eventually I stopped caring about loot, because about midway of my playthrough I crafted a pair of guns that just carried me all the way to the end of the game, with barely any upgrades. This is an issue that other people bring up constantly, so it's not just me. I dunno why this happens, but obviously loot stopped mattering because I just didn't find anything that would be remotely as good as what I already had anymore.

Speaking of pointless, the tribe war and morality systems could've been completely removed from the game and it would barely matter. Tribe war is just a bunch of boring missions related to characters that all dress the same and look like fucking shit. Morality changes nothing except some dialogues and your ending, but I do like being able to rescue characters just to FUCKING PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE FOR NO GODDAMN REASON because that's what you do if you pick the "dark" choice, it's so fucking stupid that I love it.

Now, let's address the game's title. Biomutant. You'd think you'd mutate a lot throughout your adventure as you acquire abilities and what not. In fact, we were told as much a while back in some marketing materials, being promised crab claws and whatever nonsense. I hear the boxart of the console version even still mentions that! But no such thing is in the game at all. Mutations are just an increase in resistances (like fire and what not, allows you to stay in certain areas more) and some skills like creating a mushroom to use as a jump pad or a mucus ball to roll inside for both traversal and combat. Things like that. But there's also psi abilities, which serve a similar but more "magical" function. These abilities are all fairly fun, mind you, specially using them to break exploration by going to places you weren't meant to or in ways not intended by the devs. But they're nothing particularly special. Leveling stats also doesn't "mutate" your character in anyway, it's just standard leveling up.

I'll just quick fire some thoughts before I finish up, now: the bosses are kinda neat but they also fucking suck at the same time. The many transport options are cool but they're too damn limited arbitrarily. Sidequests suck. Puzzles are neat but too damn basic. Enemies are as repetitive as locations despite all the varied skins (it's like 5 enemy types reskinned a hundred times, kinda better than BotW there ngl). NPCs barely exist outside of towns and the dozen of named characters, and thr interactions are nearly nonexistant. Game has a lot of glitches but nothing too bad aside from the quests that broke.

Ultimately, I feel like this game fell victim to its own scope. I really really enjoyed it for a good while and obviously still cared enough to finish it, but the game overstayed its welcome and the repetitiveness made it just some mindless game to play when I didn't feel like playing anything that required me to actually turn my brain on. If they had trimmed the fat and focused on things like the combat and MUTATIONS instead of half-assed tribe war and morality systems and copypasted repetitive locations, the game would have been so much better. There's too much fucking filler, too much padding, and since this game was by such a small team (which is still impressive ngl), I imagine the rest of the game suffered as devs focused on just adding yet another building with pointless loot to make the game's world seem less empty than it is.

UPDATE:
I actually feel somewhat ill whenever I get reminded that this game exists I dunno why.