You'll love it if:
- Decimating waves of dinosaurs gets your primal blood pumping.
- You have Game Pass and want some simple fun.
- Grinding is OK for you.
Not for you if:
- You want to build diverse builds.
- Hate grinding the same content for story progression.
- Don't want a live-service full price game with additional options for spending.
This calm month of July is the perfect time to release Exoprimal. Barely any releases to contend with and plenty of time to do an Exoprimal review. While the timing for the release is impeccable, I don’t think Exoprimal will hold many players’ attention beyond August. I did a preview of Exoprimal earlier this year and the feedback has improved Exoprimal, enough to warrant its 60€ price tag? Not really. A good game for Game Pass? Most definitely.
TL;DR
A mediocre story with some insane plot twists is good to peak your interest and keep you going for a while. The repetitiveness of the missions is already wearing me down towards the end of its 15-20 hour story. Some missions do vary from the usual slog but they are few and far between. The unique classes and setting of mechs versus dinosaurs is a joy at first, yet quickly loses its shine as you grind out the same missions for a cutscene.
Exo – what now?
It’s very confusing what Exoprimal truly is but the gist of it is as follows. Exoprimal is a match-based PvE-PvP-third-person-shooter-brawler with a focus on switching to the right suit for the right job during a match. Adapting to the situation at hand, whether it be the dinosaurs falling from the sky or the composition of the enemy team. Or your own team if you end up with a bunch of incompetent microphone-raging internet strangers. I hope this Exoprimal review will clear some things up at least.
Gambit with story and dinosaurs! – Story
Not only does Exoprimal deliver a match-based gambit like experience. It has a story to back it up, Exoprimal even opens up with a lengthy cutscene to get you straight into its lore and setting.
The intro scenes are like watching a newsfeed, you get updated on the world and events that led up to the start of our story. Your recruitment into the Aibius corporation. The Aibius corporation is a globe-spanning corporation dedicated to protecting humanity from dinosaur storms. Yes, you read that right, dinosaur storms. Literal dinosaurs are raining from the sky all over the world. Due to space-time distortions something has gone terribly wrong with the weather.
The Aibius corporation set out to develop Exosuits and train Exofighters to fight the dinosaurs. You are assigned to a team with the objective to patrol around Bikitoa Island. Aibius lost contact with its research facilities some time ago and your team is sent out to find out why by collecting data from a distance. Upon entering Bikitoa airspace a sudden raptor storm causes your ship to crash. You enter your Exosuit and jump out of the plane. You find the weathered corpse of a scientist clutching a device as you are suddenly pulled through space and time.
You re-appear in the year 2040 mere hours before the collapse of the space elevator on Bikitoa Island. This will be your first head-to-head encounter with the dinosaurs and our main villain, Leviathan. Leviathan is an AI created by Aibius to run Wargames for Exofighters and Exosuits to gather data and improve the suits to better counter the dinosaur threat. In order to do this, Leviathan constantly pulls in Exofighters from time and space to contend in his Wargames. Reliving the final moments of Bikitoa Island before the space elevator collapse. There is so much more going on in Exoprimal that I really cannot say any more in this Exoprimal review without spoiling anything.
Motivation for mass murdering dinosaurs
And that was the background on why you will be playing Wargames to progress the story. Each completion of a game will unlock more clues or main story elements. You will meet new characters, uncover clues of what happened in the past and slowly work on a solution to escaping Leviathan’s grasp and Bikitoa Island.
Not long after running some matches, you will also pick up hints of another faction, headhunters. Basically, headhunters represent a shadow force outside Leviathan, exerting pressure and changing events for an unclear purpose. You can see these headhunters as the enemy players you fight during matches.
Time and time again – gameplay
The gameplay loop is simple, easy to pick up and get in. Two clicks and you are in queue for a Dino Survival match. Sadly, after a few runs you won’t be seeing many new things. Some players even remembered the routes of certain maps and are rushing ahead to the next objective before the game even tells you where to go.
The newly added feature to fully opt out of PvP is a nice addition if you want to avoid any direct contact with another player. Even though playing on random gives you an experience modifier, and losses don’t get in the way of your story progression.
Every match is a race, not really a PvP match, but a speed run to complete the objectives faster than the other team. Switching mechs to counter certain threats is the way to go. The last round of a match has both teams in the same instance, but PvP only happens towards the end in the last few minutes.
Playing a match of Exoprimal is fun, I might sound overly negative in this Exoprimal review. But truly I enjoyed playing the matches for my Exoprimal preview and this review. I simply do not enjoy grinding out the exact same instances over and over for a season pass. The main drive was the story at first, but it simply isn’t enticing enough to keep me motivated.
Live Service Dinosaurs
The Live Service aspect of Exoprimal is really bugging me out as well. And a reason why I don’t rate it any higher as a 6 for this Exoprimal review. As I mentioned in my Diablo IV endgame review, you only have time for one Live Service game in your life. Exoprimal brings with its release the following things: Season Pass, Premium Pass, Skins to buy in the shop, Head-start unlock for three mechs and multiple DLC’s. While the skins look amazing and detailed it makes me wonder if Exoprimal was better off being free to play from the start.
My biggest guess is it is done to avoid cheaters going rampant in the game from the start.
It’s no secret Capcom will be doing crossover skins, probably events and build upon the basis we have before us. There will be new game-modes, more mechs to choose from, balancing and more maps. But will they come on time?
Exoprimal review conclusion
To sum it up, get Game Pass for a month or two until the big end of the year release season hits. This will cost you way less than the retail price of a whopping 60€ and if you grow tired of Exoprimal you can play some Naraka Bladepoint instead.
If you do own Game Pass already please check it out and decide for yourself. Having it included in Game Pass is going to be a win for Exoprimal in the long run, as it is fun to shoot, jump and plough through hordes with awesome looking mechs.
Thank you CD Media for sponsoring us with a key.