Exoprimal Review: Gameplay Videos and Multiplayer Impressions

Exoprimal from developer Capcom has one of the easiest selling points of 2023 in the video games landscape—players suit up in mech-like suits and fight time-traveling dinosaurs.

The concept, wrapped in a seasonal, always-online live-service format, is a comfortable one for gamers these days. So too is a third-person, competitive player vs. everything (PvE) and /or player vs. player (PvP) experience.

To top it all off, Capcom has delivered heavyweight S-Tier experiences this year with Resident Evil 4 and Street Fighter 6.

Understandably, Exoprimal arrives with a ton of hype, though its foray into an oversaturated genre where contenders fizzle out quickly means it needs an incredibly fast start to enjoy staying power.

Graphics and Gameplay

It's impossible for Exoprimal not to catch the eye.

Like the concept itself, Exoprimal's visuals and presentation match the childlike feel of powerful robots fighting dinosaurs. It's a colorful, particle-effect-filled explosion of great-looking combat visuals. Everything moves fluidly, be it hulking tank-like exosuits or the biggest of dinos.

Given the theme, it would have been understandable if the game chose a more stylized approach to the visuals. But the largely realistic look, which permeates throughout good-looking cutscenes with quality voice acting, gets the job done well, too.

Especially impressive are the Neosaurs—dinos warped by their journey through time to mutated degrees—might just look more impressive than the mechs themselves.

It's all just cool in an almost silly way. Zipping up and into a mech is cool. Teleporting around and using an almost childlike array of action figure-esque weapons is cool. Standing in the middle of a street while a pack of raptors blitzes at the player, up and over cars and smashing things as they go, is just cool. There's a Beast Wars vibe going on that will hit nostalgia for adults and just be cool for kids to experience.

Using solid-feeling controls, players can use 10 exosuits that fall into three categories—assault, tank and support.

Each of the assault classes feels distinct because they excel at different ranges. The long-distance-based exosuit, for example, has interesting verticality abilities that allow it to find creative sightlines from afar.

The three tank classes are built to absorb enemy attention and damage, be it with a giant shield or a massive sword that absorbs attacks and sends it back at the opposition. Support classes can not only heal, they can dish debuffs at enemies such as blinding them.

Players can change out at any time to experiment, though the game attempts to add depth via other means, too.

Modules allow customization via powerup abilities. Players can mix and match three at a time, modifying stats like reload speed.

There is also further buildcrafting with rigs. Players can only attach one at a time, but they offer significant wrinkles of effectiveness, such as one that produces a big jumping field, or another that provides a repair field.

Three craftable items (wall, platform and turrets) can also assist players after being deployed. Like the above, none are groundbreaking in a stunning way, but they come together nicely in a way that can keep things fresh.

Players will deploy these builds within a few different game modes that fall under the Dino Survival game mode's umbrella. One asks a team to defeat specific dinos, another is an escort mission and multiple serve as general area defense objectives.

The best, though, is Vortex Sabotage, which is effectively another defense mode, though one that ends up feeling like a true horde mode.

Much about the gameplay feels great, though enemies eventually not feeling like much of a challenge is a budding problem the more time a player invests. Most enemy A.I. is very straightforward and even the biggest of bosses aren't very worrisome beyond the first impression, which creates repetitiveness issues.

Players can customize these exosuits with skins, decals, charms and other items to personalize the look and feel. Some of these range from simple color swaps to full-blown weird goodness, like a do-over that makes a mech look like a helmeted football player.

Exoprimal feels good to play within its chosen track, which is a really important thing to get right. But the repetitiveness of the missions and some struggles with depth will need addressed post-launch. As of now, though, the core piece necessary to success—gameplay—can be quite fun in bursts.

Dino Survival Multiplayer and More

Dino Survival is the umbrella from which everything else unfurls within Exoprimal.

Players can tackle different missions and how they play, select whether the mode is PvE, PvP or randomized, to the point of getting PvEvP. It's nice to have that agency of never playing competitively against other players, should a player want to go that route. There are even rare 10-player co-op sessions where the teams group up to tackle a massive boss.

As for the story, it's mostly in-one-ear-out-the-other table setting one might expect from content like this, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

It's 2040, dinosaurs mysteriously make a return and an A.I. dubbed Leviathan can detect appearances and deploy teams of exosuits to deal with them. But things go bad for the player's Hammerhead squad, which crash lands and quickly gets enveloped in a mystery on Bikitoa Island.

From there, it's a funny bit of summer blockbuster action storytelling that uses time travel, endless dinos and exo pilots from all over the place and timelines to explain the how and why of the gameplay premise. Still, for those who really want to dig deep, there's enough context here when cobbling it all together to scratch that itch.

Players unlock cutscenes and other nuggets as they play Dino Survival, though many of these end up a little disappointing. Many of these unlocks are merely audio logs next to a character's unmoving face,

As a whole, matches in Exoprimal sort of feel like the Gambit mode found in Destiny 2, another PvEvP experience. While there are catch-up mechanics, like a Dominator that lets players stomp the enemy team as a massive dino, it often feels like games are decided in the opening minutes despite matches taking upwards of 20.

There's seemingly some missing depth that will give this one competitive legs. Which is to say, while the groundwork for critical team compositions and overall teamwork are there, it never really feels necessary given how easy it is to mow through hundreds of enemies.

Naturally, this leads to things feeling repetitive at best. There are lots of different ways to play individually that are fun, but it never really all comes together. Add in a limited number of maps and game modes and the long-term forecast isn't great.

Exoprimal is another live-service game with a free and paid battle pass, with the latter at launch promising to only offer additional cosmetic rewards. At launch, there are droves of other purchasable cosmetics for players to look at, though nothing too out of the ordinary for this type of game.

The good news, then, is overall progression feels nice. Wins reward more experience, so there's always an incentive to get after it. Each suit levels individually too, so there's a good-feeling grind, for those who want to really hit the grindstone.

Also filed in the expected column is a nice set of options tucked within the menus. The game also runs smoothly at launch and connections to other players, when actually partaking in PvP, seem good enough. Bonus kudos goes to the game for such a smooth launch considering recent releases such as Redfall and how often other games in this genre or near it stumble out of the gates.

The game also has a robust list of post-launch support planned, including the arrival of a new endgame game mode on July 28.

Conclusion

At its core, Exoprimal always felt like a mashup of ideas that would come out a little erratic. We are, after all, talking about dinosaurs thrown through time to fight with mechs in a live-service ecosystem.

What's present at launch though, is fun in bursts and it's not by any means an insult to call it a perfect Xbox Game Pass game. It almost feels like a coin arcade machine sort of experience and frankly, more well-running, fun games like this to round out a library and hop on with friends every now and then isn't a bad thing.

Exoprimal has some important basics nailed down well and things like variety of game modes and better depth of systems beyond face value can evolve over time.

In a sink-or-swing live-service environment, Exoprimal could have a nice long-term niche depending on support, but it's more of a steady fun game players will add to their rotation, not one that knocks every other game out of the way for months at a time.