BIOMORPH Review

BIOMORPH is a dark metroidvania with soulslike elements by Lucid Dreams Studio. Initially released on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S in April 2024, it got a Nintendo Switch port on the 2nd of April of this year. Having enjoyed my previous time with other metroidvania titles, I was pretty excited to give it a go. With this being my first exposure, I came in without really knowing what to expect other than the cool art that I saw in the Switch launch trailer.

So, let’s first dive in and talk about what BIOMORPH is about. You play as a character named Harlo, who did remind me a lot of Ratchet from Ratchet & Clank, which may have influenced why I chose to play the game in the first place. He’s joined by his weaponised robot companions, Eny and Zeki, whom he uses to fight. After an invasion by a mysterious entity known as “The Core”, Harlo and his friend Kleio go to fight against these invaders. But of course, peace is never an option, and the pair get captured. While Harlo is able to escape, he has been afflicted by amnesia, presumably due to the mysterious experiments done on him by his captors, and struggles to recall who Kleio is. All he knows is that if he saves Kleio, perhaps he’ll get answers.

Saving Kleio is a bit of a challenge, however, as even with Eny and Zeki, Harlo struggles against the Ferrox, monsters that the Core uses to battle. But, much to Harlo’s confusion, he’s able to biomorph into these Ferrox, obtaining their forms and abilities to battle them and also get through obstacles. It’s through this unique ability that he is able to escape the Core and soon finds himself in Blightmoor.

This small port town has been ravaged by the Core, and many of the people there have never seen someone like Harlo before. Likewise, he’s not seen any of them before, either. But with the villagers’ boat, they might be able to bring him back to rescue Kleio, and so he agrees to help revitalise Blightmoor in order to defeat the Ferrox who are roaming the world.

Now that we’ve talked about the world and story, let’s talk about the gameplay. Overall, it has the usual platforming elements that you would expect of a metroidvania, so you jump with the bottom face button, and if you hold it for longer, you can go higher. If you want to attack, use the top face button, or the right face button and the left face once you’ve unlocked more chips for more techniques. To save the game, you’ll need to tilt the left analogue stick up at a S.A.F.E. point, and you need to do the same thing when interacting with any NPCs. You can, of course, open the inventory menu with the minus (-) button, and use the plus (+) button to open the main menu to adjust options and accessibility.

There are three ways to adjust accessibility: you can turn on the setting to keep your money after dying, which allows you to go and get your money back from the area where you died, under the condition you don’t die again — or else that’s a vicious cycle. You can also increase your attack and defence by a maximum of 50% each, which is useful when you’re unfamiliar with the controls at the beginning of BIOMORPH. By all accounts, these settings did come in handy, especially when facing my first boss fight.

The boss fights have a good amount of challenge to them when compared to the other Ferrox running around. Most foes can be pretty easily defeated, and it gets a little bit easier when you upgrade your base stats, which can be done with chips from the stores you unlock. There’s also a black market dealer in the sewers who has some pretty cool things for you to buy, so it’s good to come back with more chips. Thankfully, when pressing the top-face button at the S.A.F.E. point, you can travel from the different S.A.F.E. points you’ve been to before, as some areas you’ll need to come back to with a different biomorph later to get through different obstacles.

Admittedly, traversing back and forth isn’t the most fun. Once you know which S.A.F.E. points go where, you can find the areas that you can still find treasure as they won’t have a yellow outline around those sections of the map, and you can always add pins to find specific items by pressing the right-face button wherever you want when accessing the game menu. This is especially useful when looking for Scargatos, little slug cats that one of the villagers had lost when she accidentally left the door open. I admit, the Scargatos are adorable, and the fact that you can hear them before you see them was a lot of fun, as I had to try to figure out where each one was hiding on a separate map.

However, when it comes to biomorphing, the main use comes from getting through major obstacles. In battle, I can’t say the different forms were that useful, and I much preferred adjusting my chips. Although you can only arrange the combat chips while at the S.A.F.E. point, which means that it’s a little bit of trial and error if you mess up in a boss fight. Other than that, the biomorphing effect did lose its novelty, which is a shame as it’s the main portion of BIOMORPH.

Overall, I did have a lot of fun with BIOMORPH, but I did get a little irritated with the controls. Nothing annoys me more than when I want to go past an NPC, and then find myself in a conversation because I needed to tilt my left analog stick up to get past them. It’s a situation where I don’t want to talk. Plus, I wasn’t a big fan of travelling back and forth from S.A.F.E. points that I’d already been past, especially as the enemies aren’t exactly challenging when you go back to them. It feels like a chore to go back and then find another S.A.F.E. point to do it all over again.

While the characters and animation are great, I can’t say that BIOMORPH brings many new things to the metroidvania genre. The controls do take a little bit of getting used to, and having to go back and forth becomes a bit of a chore after a couple of hours. But if you’re looking for a new entry point, then it could be a fun one.