With a promising premise but an unfortunate lack of identity, Biomutant is a much-anticipated game that introduces too many features and systems while not fully realising any of them.

Since 2017 the furry Kung Fu fable has consistently attracted praise for its bizarrely different characters, promises of open-ended systems, beautiful world and apparent focus on player choice and customisation. But while all of that is present and accounted for in the final game, the connective tissue that brings it together is either missing, insufficient or feels unfinished.

Set in a post-apocalypse where humans made a world hostile to their own existence, but gave rise to new mutated animal species, the setup here is part Horizon Zero Dawn, part Zelda: Breath of the Wild, part Borderlands and with a healthy blend of Kung Fu and environmental flavours on top. The mangy character and creature designs give Biomutant something all of its own, with the bipedal protagonist presenting as anything you can come up with in the versatile character creator; from a lanky battle-scarred raccoon to a chonky Cheshire Cat.

Customisation is a big focus of the entire experience here, with layers of upgrade points, crafting, scavenging and building giving you control over what traits your character develops, its fighting style, its clothing and of course its melee and ranged weapons. But a lack of coherent tutorials or introductions to these systems, as well as painful nested menu designs, makes it all tough to access.

The first several hours are particularly tough to grapple with, because the run-of-the-mill open world quest system begins dumping objectives on you with a similar lack of clarity or context, the story struggles out the gate with vague backstory and endless unearned philosophising, and the overall presentation vacillates between beautifully polished and work-in-progress.

Even once I’d brute-forced my way to an understanding of how the world and systems worked, my overall impression was of elements that all individually had a lot of promise, but none of which really worked.

Developing the ability to spawn bouncy mushrooms, or leave a trail of fire after you when you dodge, are cool ideas. But a lack of finesse and emphasis in the combat system means nothing else in the world really reacts to those elements or sells the drama, and I ended up just mashing the attack button.

Most guns and melee weapons are fully modular, so you can rebuild them with junk and resources you scavenge or create them from scratch. But there’s no good way to see an overview of all the stuff you’ve collected, or to tell which upgrades will actually make a difference in combat.