Elex II

I like the look of it, reviews are very unconvincing though.

www.rockpapershotgun.com/elex-2-review


Elex 2 is very much a Piranha Bytes game. It’s an open-world RPG that cares precisely not one jot about whether you live or die. It’s clunky and janky, but compelling and can be a breath of fresh air when you’re used to a steady diet of over-polished AAA affairs. Sadly, it also has the same problems as the previous game. And the Risen series. And Gothic 3. Presumably the first two Gothic games, but I could never get past their terrible controls.

The difficulty is all over the place. It starts off hard because protagonist Jax is rubbish, gets way too easy once you figure everything out and then just inflates the damage and health of all the enemies until everything takes an age to die, but can kill you in a few hits. Balance isn’t even an afterthought, it’s just nonexistent. I was still using a mid-game shotgun on the final boss because it clearly did so much more damage than my magic powers, or my supposedly endgame quality unique weapons. The downside of said shotgun was the lengthy reload time, but since all ranged weapons instantly reload when holstered, that could be circumvented by tapping the hotkey a couple of times. Sometimes quests require you to go back to the quest giver before they’re listed as complete, as you might expect. Other times they’re marked as complete when you’ve killed ten spikepoodles or whatever, but you still need to go back to the quest giver to get a reward and advance the story. The pacing is flat out terrible, with the last few hours of the game just being an endless slog requiring the slaughtering of dozens upon dozens of the same handful of enemy types.

I'll add it to my psprices list for a sale or wait for Gamepass.

Enjoyed Elex 1 and currently checking out discussions on Elex 2. Seems to be as janky as the last which ain't too bad as I looked way past that and had a great time. CD Keys have it for £24 which don't seem too bad. Hmm...need to finish Dying Light 2.

People who like Piranha Bytes games will like it. People who don't wont. As always with Piranha Bytes games.

I was really hoping RPS would have gotten John back to review it, just because his angry rant reviews were always entertaining to read.

After playing for a couple of hours that review is spot on.

After playing PB games for a couple of decades I'm loving it.

I have played through Gothic 1 and Risen 1 and gave Risen 2 a try not too long ago. I don't think PB games are for me. I liked Risen 1 the most, though Gothic 1's setting is probably my favourite. But they seem to have gone from making unwise changes to their formula back to just sticking to it with an almost fearful conviction. I mean if somebody is convinced that Gothic 2 was already perfect then I get it. But I never liked their games that much. Though their games certainly could be atmospheric. Not least due to Kai Rosenkranz.



Yeah, Two Worlds 2 was on a good path. The magic system was great, but there was still a lot of room for improvement. Aesthetically it could have been better. There just wasn't much particularly exciting about the world or setting and consequently also exploration. And oddly way too much voice-acted dialogue. I was always thinking that a conversation was over, but it just kept going on and on and it was almost never engaging enough that I actually wanted to listen more than the minimum amount of time.

Decided to go for Elex 2, as it is was only £16 from Amazon. Less than an hour, but I like what I have played so far. As I have mentioned before I did not enjoy the first game and ended up abandoning it. It is absolutely a PB game and is no looker! but I can "see" past that.

Morning J
I noticed you had posted in thread, good enough for me  . I'm now wondering if I abandoned the original game too fast. I have watched a couple of comparison and versus vids (no spoilers) re Elex1 and Elex2 and 1 gets a lot of praise,  played for about 8 hours when it released, so no time at all for an arpg.

Saying this I'm still playing Gears (I could have typed this in 2006!) and I have Saints Row ordered for release day.