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ELEX ELEX RELEASE THREAD

Elex

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 17, 2017
Messages
2,043
have you done your duty yet

RZKyr0O.jpg

That probably won't stop Skyrim or something from winning the award.
probally divinity 2 will win.
 

Lahey

Laheyist
Patron
Joined
Jun 10, 2017
Messages
1,467
Grab the Codex by the pussy
Hold up. I'm apparently one of the only people on earth who enjoyed reading TTON, but I felt like there was lots of little choice and consequence (which dropped off substantially after the first hub), but very little that was meaningful except for the end. The whole thing was like a loosely tied together series of vignettes--lots of choice, not much consequence. Did picking your favorite color really change anything? I don't have the wherewithal to read a million words again in order to find out.

Elex vacillated between moments of great C&C and being totally on rails--it was a lot more reactive in the early game. I did like how they locked you into the various endings based on your behavior/elex potion abuse. But I guess I can't think of anything better from the last year, which is what PB should put on the back of the box.
The tides and cold systems were poorly implemented. They both facilitated different endings, though Elex was more simplistic about it. In numanuma, having a blue/silver tide enabled a rejoining with the spectre to 'become whole', while jumping through a bunch of hoops (with a red tide? I didn't do this) allowed you to become the new memovira. These choices were divorced from the endgame dialogue with the sorrow, which meant you could see many different slide combinations. The ultimate result is not a huge gap, but it's there.

Things start pulling apart with regards to companions. In Elex, your companion reactivity is largely binary; you kill Duras or spare him, you fuck Caja or Nasty, you save Ray or...you don't? I know he can survive the end but this appears to again be based on cold level and not his quest. Falk is a one-noter, though perhaps taking him to kill his 'dad' triggers something. Arx is the only apparent exception here; you can kill him, dine with him enthusiastically, or find him a heart to compromise. The second option may lead back to the first. I admittedly need 5 more playthroughs before confirmation can be given.

In contrast, Rhin alone has 5 different fates. She can be sold into slavery at sagus, sent through the orphan portal, sold to the decanter, sent through the weird dude's portal to return as an adult, or simply kept along for the ride (OP option). Erritis can be sacrificed for raw power, left uncured, or cured. Matkina can be sacrificed, become the new leader of miel avest, or the new memovira. Tybir can be abandoned in sagus, or has a few different endings based on his quest. Callistege and Aligern are similar sans abandonment. I don't know about the toy because lul fuck playing that trash again just for slides.

You're right that sagus held most of the tangible c&c, but even that section alone consists of more than the bulk of Elex. Many sagus quests have several solutions compared to Elex's often binary approach, but neither game does a good job of providing long-term consequences outside the slides. Elex's domed city is the only area where your choices actually matter, but it is again completely binary and shallow. The one area Elex beats numanuma in c&c is post-game faction killing spree, because the latter doesn't feature anything comparable. Elex is a much better game overall, but numanuma's reactivity was superior, to the detriment of everything else it seems.

tl;dr Where numanuma's c&c fails, so too does Elex, but in many parts it is better. Whether by a nose or a mile, a win is a win. Elex is still my goty though because it's actually playable.
 

T. Reich

Arcane
Joined
Apr 15, 2013
Messages
2,714
Location
not even close
Looking back, I'm kinda bewildered as to why PB made all of the "go together" companion missions as "teleporters". As a result, it feels really disjointed at times, especially if said companion mission just throws you in a middle of an action without possibility of backing out of it,
Why it couldn't be made as the very first "escort" mission you get (Duras leading you to Goliet) is beyond my understanding. The Duras' escort mission is very much oldschool PB - you get a temp companion who leads the way to the goal, but you're free to explore somewhat on the way.
So, instead of Nasty teleporting you to rape-fest where you barely have time to get ready for combat, you'd trigger her mission, get an active marker on your map, and Nasty would start running to that marker. If it's too far away by foot, you'd simply have her "teleport" to near that location, while you can take your sweet time to get there, including by teleporting to a nearby WP.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
I voted AoD for that steam thing. Elex doesn't fit in my book for C&C heavy game cause of main quest, immortal npcs and low reactivity overall (unless I would rate only 50% of the game). I'd rather vote it for something like "No handholding allowed".
 
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Lahey

Laheyist
Patron
Joined
Jun 10, 2017
Messages
1,467
Grab the Codex by the pussy
I wrongly assumed this was current year only and just praised numanuma for no reason. Oh God.

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Joined
Dec 17, 2013
Messages
5,103
So I finally got a two handed sword and expiremented with it.

One interesting thing is that you CAN do timed parries on other two-handers with a 2-handed weapon. However, that whole mechanic seems bugged as hell. It's kind of impossible to figure out when you should be parrying exactly. In Dark Souls, for example, you are told to parry as soon as you see the weapon begin its attack (after the windup or whatever). In Gothic 1/2, you had to hit parry as soon as you saw the attack. In Witcher 3, you could do it when the red bar lit up, or when it looked like the enemy weapon would hit.

Here, it's impossible to tell. I experimented at the Goliette gate against Drog, who has a 2 handed hammer. His attacks are very different, and some have really long windup stages. I was able to consistently parry one type of attack, , but the other 2-3 were just impossible to do. In fact, sometimes it almost seemed like i heard the soudn of a parry (metal on metal), but the attack hit me regardless.

The combat in this game is so weird. The timed parry and the roll are features of an action combat system, meant to be timed in reaction to the enemy, but neither of them really work that well, and the go-to defensive move seems to be just holding up block, which requires no skill or anything else. Is it just them running out of money before the combat system could be fully implemented?
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
I never tried parry with 2h, but with 1h it worked similar to other PB games - you just parry when their swing is coming in, and usually it's pretty consistent.
 

T. Reich

Arcane
Joined
Apr 15, 2013
Messages
2,714
Location
not even close
TBH, I never really mastered blocking/parrying, in none of G1+2, R1, DS1+2, or Elex.
In regards to defense in Elex, I found that offense is the best defense. Especially if you're using a 2h, because it's really easy to stun-lock an enemy with a properly-timed attack chain.
Rolling in this regard is just as offensive maneuver as it is defensive. Rolling as defense really only good when you know the enemy (and its attacks' timings) and do rolling in anticipation of their attacks rather than as the immediate reaction to an attack already in execution. In this regard, rolling is great for avoiding immediate enemy retaliations after you finished your attack chain. Then you usually get a bit of a breather to reposition and regen stamina, and then a couple more rolls usually put you in a good position to start attacking again.
This is all not an early game stuff, of course, because you will need to increase your baseline stamina quite a bit before you can execute more complex battle actions.

P.S.: And then there's the magic 1-button press "evade" action, which seems to utilise i-frames and is almost a cheat-mode, but it's disabled by default.
 

Haplo

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
6,138
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Yesterday I've learned Power Wave PSI... and just... wow. It's pretty awesome. Now meleeing crowds should be much simpler. I'll need to test it against some larger opponents though.
 

Zlaja

Arcane
Joined
Aug 17, 2006
Messages
5,682
Location
Swedex
I just solved the abessa dispute by siding with the outlaws. Oh man, I'm filthy rich now after all that looting. :positive:

PS: Riley you dumb fucking n****r!
 

Brancaleone

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 28, 2015
Messages
1,004
Location
Norcia
Ok, thanks to the wealth of info graciously provided by the Codex' gentlemen, I've decided to wait a few patches and finally get Elex.

Also, to uphold the honourable internet tradition of feeling entitled to the fruit of other people's work: is the hell-hamster working on his bloody review, or not?
 

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