This is not a difficult game at all, so this DLC is totally non-essential. If anything, it's excessively generous with loot. Looks very good, tho.

Most reviewers aren't worth the time of day. Mack, on the other hand, is a ray of light in the wilderness. ;p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UqeJxb2_Ok

If you like relaxed gaming with fun exploration, without shittons of gratuitous ultraviolence, like I do, this might be your game.

Why would you trust a complete stranger's opinion, anyway? You have to be awfully lazy to accept someone else's opinion instead of forming your own.

I don't have enough money to buy every game I might be interested in. Based on what - besides reviews - should I make my purchasing decision?

I would never trust a single review, but these aggregator scores / meta scores give IMO quite a good picture. Besides that, the reviews often contain objective information about the game, not only opinion.

Reviews and scores are pretty pointless in a world where you can watch 30-60 minutes of unedited gameplay on youtube, IMO. Yes there might be some minor stuff not covered by that but it's more than enough to decide if you're into the game or not, I think.

Good point. Unedited gameplay in the form of Let's Plays are definitely a better option.

Hmmm reviews dont seem promising. But conficting. What went wrong?

I've watched a number of reviews...

... Many give Biomutant mediocre to poor numbers...

... but...

... the 2 or 3 reviewers who claim to have finished the game (or 100% the game), enjoyed it. With that said...

... even they seemed to claim that Biomutant will be a "cult" game with people either loving or hating it.

I found this review interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSfu85DrF3k

Thanks for that video. Answers a lot of questions about the game. Looks like heaps to do, although tribe wars seems to be underwhelming?.

The thing with the "tribe wars" is that it's not a "feature" as some peoples expected or as the PR talk made it seem, but it's simply a bunch of standard quests.

As in there is no "strategy" involved, no random event, no enemy tribe fighting back, it is simply : you have a bunch of enemy outpost in your quest log, go to them, defeat the boss or convince him to surrender and the outpost is yours. Do that for two or three outposts and you will be able to attack the enemy tribe stronghold, defeat the enemy tribe leader and you win. Rinse and repeat for the other tribes. That's it! it's just a basic RPG quest line.

Element 101 announced that they're going to make some overhaul of several parts of the game based on feedbacks. https://twitter.com/Biomutant/status/1398584743806095361

So is it "pay to win" "unlock early by paying" OR "those who did not preorder don't get that content until months later in some paid DLC"?

That's the problem with reviews - it's almost impossible to find unbiased ones - even if someone tries really hard to be neutral they may still have some life experiences that will make some games' aspects throw them off and that WILL get reflected in their reviews while for normal people these could be non issues.

Demos were a good thing, not giving you full picture, but still allowing you to "test" to a degree.
Shame they are scarse these days.
Some people pirate first, play some, and then buy if they are interested, I am not supporting this practise, merely saying this is an option.
And then there are "no commentary full game" gameplay videos - personally I think these are some of the best resources for "checking" games before purchase - they are obviously spoiler heavy - but at the same time you have a chance to perceive the game as it is without any "biased reviewer sight/sound/text distractions" guised as "professional opinions".

There's a flaw to that.
It allows 2 picture malforming practices to slip by and alter your judgment:
1.Review bom*ing - but not just any, as CASUAL "negative spam" can be filtered out fast (IF you actually manually check the reviews) due to it's "illegitimate text contests" nature - but the thing you should be worried about is HIGH EFFORT variant of this - one where paid/a**hole people take their time to craft negative reviews that SEEM legitimate but they are infact lies (and a person not having played through the game usually would not recognise majority of those)
2.Something that isn't as uncommon as some people wish to think - predicament if a major amount of idiots poison the review pool, as in if MOST of the reviews come from those types of people - it's the same problem as with democracy, a large pool of idiots/biased/indoctrinated/misinformed can outvote a minority of smart and well informed.

edit: fixed spelling

The first I'd consider only relevant in a competitive/multiplayer context so it's a combination of the second and third option.
Again, you don't miss out on anything - the unlocked perks/skills/abilities/whatever and gear are not exclusive to the Mercenary Class and can be obtained without the DLC.

The price still offends me tbh (basically $100 AUD... top end game price excluding crap like activision deluxe editions)

I usually have no problems with the prices charged unless they feel imho unreasonable for what they are offering. This one? Like i said average decent new game sold here is around $80 AUD. $100 AUD is like top end price for a AAA game (excluding the exhoribant deluxe versions of games). I mean dont get me wrong, it looks good and looks fun but the pricing for it feels really quite off imho.Can imagine more than a few not buying for that reason (no offense to those just coughing up for it but i dont see the value...imho)