I have a lot of free time. I often think about all the big games In my backlog, how well acclaimed they are and how I really should get to them. I also think about how I am still at the moment in my life where I could feasibly play all of those. There is constantly a sense of longing to be able to get into and love games like Skyrim or Tears of the Kingdom or whatever really. But, I don't play those. Instead I spend countless hours beating games like Marvel's The Avengers, Gotham Knights and well, Exoprimal. I'm not really sure why I am this way. In fact I think all three are good games in their own right. But I am constantly forsaking "better" experiences just to play a game about exosuits and dinosaurs. There are a million cool games out this year. Pikmin and Fire Emblem and Jedi Survivor and Final Fantasy and Rain Code are just rotting in my backlog, while I spent two and a half days almost entirely on this. I don't think its something I'll be able to understand about myself but hey, Its just what I do. And as one of the few people who has decided to beat this game, what better maniac to review it.

So obviously there is a reason why I spent over 20 hours playing this. And its simple, its pretty damn fun. The idea of it is so silly that its no surprise Capcom made it, but honestly its such a good mix that people should be ashamed they didn't think of it sooner. Shooting massive hordes of prehistoric raptors is peak game concept. (Most) of the exosuits are also really fun to use. There's 4 assault types, 3 tank types and 3 support types. While only 10 does feel a little small, they all have good roles. The only suit I actually disliked was Murasame the tank samurai. Honestly all three of the melee centric ones weren't good to use. But Vigilant, the hottest and of course last one you unlock, is insane at dealing high damage with her chargeable sniper rifle. Once I unlocked her I pretty much exclusively used her, except when my team decided to be chodes and nobody wanted to switch to a support class so ofc I had to play as Skywave instead, who is basically the mommy exosuit of the group. Her staff was very fun to use to both heal teammates and lay down some fire. I did dabble in the other classes a fair bit and while not all of them are really my style they're all very distinct and just fun. The enemy variety is strange, because there's actually a good amount of enemy types but so many of them you'll rarely see in your matches which can get quite annoying.

That's really the big problem with Exoprimal, most of its really cool stuff is probably like 15% of the game. When you get to the main story levels they are absurdly hectic and fun (if a bit bullshit) but for like, 45 of your 55 required matches to beat the main story you'll be going through the same 3-4 maps with the same few different objectives. You are unlocking more as you progress but its so little and so rare that it doesn't feel like much. Story progress is a little better since basically every match inbetween the big moments you'll unlock some more lore. And the story was interesting, and I found all the characters to be likeable, but its not really interesting enough for me to sit through like 60 individual glorified audio logs. After a few matches, piecing together the mystery becomes just as slow moving (and grindy) as playing the game. I think playing through matches to work your way to new story beats and getting lore along the way is a genuinely great idea for a multiplayer campaign but the sheer lack of variety in game modes and maps hinders Exoprimal more than anything. You do unlock a new mode after beating the story but its not available yet so pretty unfortunate all around.

Just because I have to mention it, there are microtransactions and there is a battlepass but these are pretty much entirely unintrusive. You can still buy plenty of good skins with ingame currency that is not held back at all. I never had an issue buying the cosmetics available that I liked without having to spend real world money. It would probably be a hella grind to buy every cosmetic on your own but I don't know why you'd even want to do that, and as far as I saw you can't buy more currency anyways.

So because of all that, I absolutely cannot recommend you buy Exoprimal right now. 60 dollars is just not enough for how feature incomplete it is. However, if you've got gamepass (also check out the new indie game Venba thats pretty good) I'd strongly encourage you to give it a try. It just might surprise you. And honestly do it soon, this game is gonna get shut down in like 2 years and it'll be very unfortunate.

So that's my review of Exoprimal. It's been quite a while since I've put up a review lol, but there are still plenty of reviews I'd like to get to. I'm not gonna do the standard "promise I'll have more up soon" thing because that literally never works so just expect a dramatically long hiatus after this so if I do post again soon its like an early Christmas. Thank you all for reading <3

Now time to play Redfall.

-----TLDR-----
+ Extremely Fun
+ some of the exosuits are hot
- Barebones content leads to the game feeling grindy

Nancymeter - 74/100
Achievement Completion - 77% (34/39)
Time Played - Xbox says 29 hours but I don't think that is possible
Completion #2 of August
Completion #133 of 2023