I fell hard for the intro cinematic. These characters, the duck and the pig have so much .. character. I just love them.
The intro cinematic doesn’t show you what the game is like to play. I didn’t know anything about the gameplay before I started it. Turns out it is a lot like X-COM, tactical turn-based RPG, with a world and story like Fallout.
I assume this game was made for the PC, because I played it on Nintendo Switch and it sucked. The graphics where very muddy, which I also experienced on The Witcher 3. Most likely because they’ve just taken the PC version and got it to run on Switch without adjusting for reduced performance. All the text on screen was way to small to be read undocked. When you release a game for Nintendo Switch, I think it is required to test your game handheld, as it is a handheld console.
At times it was also very laggy, which I think is a crime when you release a game on a system where you know and can test every system spec. In the case of Nintendo Switch, there is only 1 system spec, so the QA people must have noticed the lagginess without fixing it.
If I played the game for prolonged time, it would get progressively slower until it would crash. Most likely due to some memory leak. I also ran into problems where the AI wouldn’t end its turn, so I would have to reload my last save. I had unreachable loot, because a robot blew away the floor where the loot was. Yeah, this is a buggy mess.
The game also gets off to a very bad start. When you start a new game, you get to choose difficulty, and the options are
- Normal
- Hard
- Very Hard
This has a smell to it, that the game will punish you and expect you to “git gud. The first 20 levels were really hard playing on normal and I doubted that I would be able to finish it. However, after level 20, my characters caught up with the world’s difficulty which made the game much easier.
Each level is like a puzzle. You have a map where enemies are carefully placed, and some are patrolling, giving you the opportunity to thin their ranks before you attack the bulk of the mobs. This is necessary or you will get overwhelmed pretty quick.
Some mobs are extremely strong, and can kill you with one shot. You will need to use a plethora of tricks, so they won’t be able to shoot at you. At the same time there are medbots going around reviving enemies you previously killed. These constraints cause each scenario to have one correct solution. It’s not like X-COM where each map is a unique battle experience. Here you need to set your mind to the level designer’s, and figure out in what way they expect you to win.
This is also one of Mutant’s strengths, that each scenario is crafted instead of randomly generated. It makes the world so much more interesting compared to X-COM and you do not tire of the tactical fighting as quick.
World building is Mutant’s strength. It gradually introduces you to the world by slowly widening your horizon. You get to know new types of enemies that have their own backstory while some enemy arcs stay with you for the whole length of the game. When the last fight comes, you know what it’s about and it really is the last fight. There is no secret boss by the end. That I really appreciate.
The game is very addictive because of the way it steadily introduces new weapons, new armour and new enemies. You want to play just one more scenario because you want to know what you will find there. Another thing that adds to the addictiveness are all of the Swedish culture references that act as an extra reward when you notice them.
By the end I think the game was just the right length. I had fun all the way through, and the fun let me disregard all the bugs. As long as you save often, play on a large screen (so you can read the text), I think a lot of people could enjoy this as I have.
I rate this game as GOOD.
Replay 