Multiplayer games can live or die based on first impressions, with many games putting their best foot forward by immediately showing off the variety of content they have. Exoprimal takes the opposite approach, only sharing a slice of what it has to offer for the first few hours of gameplay, risking people bouncing off due to a lack of content. It holds back its best moments and more interesting missions for anyone willing to put in the work. Intense and exciting surprises await those who put in the time to reach them–something that it’s well worth doing.
Exoprimal is a 5v5 shooter, except that the majority of your time will be spent shooting hordes of AI-controlled dinosaurs and not the enemy team. Players race to complete a series of objectives, culminating in a final one that sometimes has PvP elements. Most missions follow this structure, with a few special missions taking place later in the story that deviate from this formula.
The gameplay itself is primarily about fighting off hordes of dinosaurs, utilizing your suits specific loadout. The different Exosuits can drastically change the feel of combat, with damage focused suits utilizing a regular machine gun, grenade launcher, or melee weapons. The tank and healer classes each have their own weapons and feel, but with the addition of either a shield ability or healing ability. But the difference between Exosuits, like the counter-focused tank Murasame and the machine gun wielding Krieger tank, is more than enough to make each suit feel fresh in combat. All this brings a nice variety to gameplay, with the shooting itself feeling solid and the different enemies and weak points rewarding accurate shooting.
While it’s a multiplayer-only game, Exoprimal has a story, but it implants this differently than most, with cutscenes tied to completing matches and special story-based missions appearing at certain milestones. The tone is similar to a low-budget sci-fi movie, with all of the main characters talking and acting like it’s an ’80s action film, with eye-rolling one-liners and unearned bravado. While the story and dialogue is extremely cheesy, it does mostly work in the context of its ridiculous story. The story is doled out in a series of cutscenes that unlock by finishing a certain number of multiplayer matches and small codex entries that are awarded at the end of each match.
The story of Exoprimal is overly complicated, with time travel and different dimensions drowning out the ongoing problem of dinosaur storms. It does a great job of not boring you with the details, saving that for the codex system, which contains smaller bits of information that you can engage with if you want to. Instead, the main cutscenes deal directly with the drama of your team seeing future and alternate versions of themselves, as well as the main conflict against the AI named Leviathan. It won’t emotionally move you, but it’s good enough that you probably won’t skip the cutscenes when they do pop up. The convoluted story of a rogue AI forcing Exofighters from across different dimensions and timelines to fight simulated waves of dinosaurs in order to build the perfect exosuit isn’t super compelling, but the way it impacts the actual missions is.
The first example of this is when Magnum, an NPC Exofighter, goes rogue to enter one of your multiplayer instances to collect data on Leviathan, prompting the AI to get angry. Leviathan ups the difficulty, literally, spawning in the first appearance of a massive raptor storm. In previous missions, you would be tasked with taking down a few hundred raptors in a single instance, but this time you need to take down over 1,000 to clear the mission. This difficulty spike came as a welcome surprise nearly a dozen matches in, especially as the repetitiveness of those early missions begins to wear on you, and Exoprimal continues to mix it up regularly from there.
The variety of objectives in multiplayer increases drastically, with capture points and barriers that must be destroyed with giant hammers you charge by killing dinosaurs. There are also special co-op missions, where both teams work together to fight massive waves of special dinosaurs and even raid bosses against a neo T-Rex. The co-op missions are where the gameplay of Exoprimal truly shines, unleashing an overwhelming number of dinosaurs to fight against. While the first few hours of Exorprimal could use more variety, there is plenty of new content to see later on.
The tone is similar to a low-budget sci-fi movie, with all of the main characters talking and acting like it’s an ’80s action film, with eye-rolling one-liners and unearned bravado
In addition to the new missions, you get more customization options for your Exosuits based on how long you play and your match performance. There are 10 suits at launch, split into the damage, tank, and support categories. Each category has one suit to unlock by reaching a certain player level and spending the required in-game currency, and each suit has its own individual level. While you can’t customize the majority of abilities each suit has, you can choose one rig, which offers a specific skill. In addition to that, there are modules that you unlock that can improve overall stats or exosuit-specific abilities. There are far more modules than you have slots for, so you can tailor your selection to your playstyle. If you like getting headshots as Vigilant, you can pick a module that rewards hitting those skillshots. If you prefer relying on Vigilant’s freeze ability, there is a module that improves that skill. While none of these modules feel like game-altering bonuses, the ability to tailor each suit to your playstyle feels rewarding.
Capcom made the smart choice of not limiting the number of each suit-type a team can have. Everyone can wear the exact same suit, five different damage suits, or a classic setup with two tanks, two damage-dealers, and a healer, letting your squad implement a wide range of tactics. It also doesn’t lock you into a losing setup, either, with the option to switch both your Exosuit and rig at any time during a match with no consequences for doing so. Since most matches are a race, being able to swap quickly when something isn’t working is incredibly important and makes it feel like you always have a chance to make a comeback.
Another important part of the gameplay are the dinosaurs, of which there are a ton. The most common enemy are the raptors, which primarily serve as cannon fodder meant to overwhelm a team more than anything else. As for the rest of the enemies, each one has something unique about it, giving a different feel. The Triceratops has a hard head, making it take almost no damage from the front, and the Stegosaurus has a loud cry, which disables all non-movement abilities of anyone in range. There are also the neo dinosaurs, which have been modified to have special abilities. These typically include using different elemental attacks, like fire or ice, making for a challenging foe. The stronger dinosaurs force better teamwork to overcome, rewarding smart gameplay and forcing you to adapt on the fly.
Leveling up and completing missions offers reward, but the majority of these feel insignificant. Unlocking different modules is great, but the other rewards you earn are loot boxes, awarding random cosmetics and coins, which are used to upgrade modules and unlock new Exosuits. Some of the cosmetics are interesting, like the Krieger suit that turns you into a giant playing card or the Zephyr skin that looks like a Power Ranger, but most are simple color swaps. As for the coins, the economy of Exoprimal is a bit broken. I had what felt like an unlimited number of coins fairly quickly and was able to fully upgrade any module I wanted without feeling like I’m short on cash. These rewards being unexciting meant that the only driving force to boot up another match was seeing what sort of missions Exoprimal still hadn’t shown me, and the thrill of fighting dinosaurs.
There is a battle pass to progress, but the cosmetic rewards in the premium tier are only marginally better than the selection of free cosmetics. There are a few legendary rewards, but those come near the end of the pass, which takes awhile to progress through. There aren’t any challenges, so the only progress comes from completing matches, which wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t so slow.
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Another flaw of Exoprimal is the matchmaking system, which doesn’t offer much control over which matches you get placed into. You can choose either PvP- or PvE-focused missions, or select both for an XP bonus, almost forcing you to pick both. You can’t select individual objective types, nor can you queue specifically for the big co-op missions. While this system does typically give a good mix of mission types, it does have one major flaw. The early missions, which have simple objectives and only simple dinosaurs, don’t get taken out once you progress in the story. This means you can go from a nail-biting raid fight to fighting only a handful of raptors at once, which feels quite boring and simplistic with late-game modules and upgrades.
While Exoprimal’s early hours of repetitive and simple missions will likely drive some people away, its later surprises are a delight for those willing to give it the necessary time. The escalation of difficulty and the wide variety of objectives introduced later on in the shooter gives it fresh life several hours in. Fighting through an ocean of dinosaurs is a ton of fun and the variety of enemies keeps you from falling into a repetitive combat loop. The story isn’t anything special, but tying it to new multiplayer content makes progressing it a bit more compelling. Exoprimal is ultimately a great time and a unique multiplayer experience.
