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ELEX ELEX RELEASE THREAD

Bad Sector

Arcane
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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
animation driven motion can look much better but it's a complete massive pain the ass and requires a lot of coordination between art/design/programmers
if you do it poorly it's shit

Yeah, that is the thing though: it can only look much better, which is why it is preferred by a lot of AAA games that are concerned with looks above all (especially since most people will see these animations in trailers, gameplay videos and -later- reviews without having direct control over the character to have a first hand experience of how it feels - they'll only see how it looks), but it can never feel as good as having the animation follow the (invisible) entity you control directly.
 

Ismaul

Thought Criminal #3333
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Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech A Beautifully Desolate Campaign My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
The first 1/3rd of the game you will get ABSOLUTELY BRUTALISED by the smallest rat things, that was the worst part for me.
IMO that's the better part of PB games.

They make you feel like the world is real: shit beats you up, people are cunts, you don't get what you want, you have to run like a coward. To get ahead, you don't have to just attack enemies and win, you have to use your brain a bit, know which enemies to evade, which you can take, use the environment, exploit everything you can. Every victory is that more satisfying, every upgrade in gear or stats.

Personally I even increase the difficulty so the challenge lasts longer before the game gets easy at the end.

Plus there's that first time exploration you do during the first 1/3 of the game, and PB does exploration well.


I had to resort to manually marking stuff on the world map in Paint.
I did the same. But I'd have prefered an in-game option.
 

Murk

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Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
Yeah just a "place marker + type a few words" function would have been stupendous. I did like that the map was basically a satellite photo of the world in game tho.
 

Lady_Error

█▓▒░ ░▒▓█
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I know, but he refuses.

And yeah, now it's only ELEX, Kenshi, Space Rangers and ATOM RPG that still need a short review.
 
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Citizen

Guest
Eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial eclectic lavish exhilirating xenial
 

Aemar

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Having finished Elex recently (around 50 hours doing just about all the content and exploring the full map, maybe missing the odd fetch quest) I'm excited to see what Elex 2 has to offer but at the same time I have some reservations.

When it comes to what they should keep here are my thoughts on Elex itself:

Pros:
- Exploration is as good as ever, there's no other developer that ensures exploration is as rewarding as it is in PB games, Bethesda games and The Witcher pale in comparison to Elex. Why is this? Bethesda games are too reliant on the overworld simply being a hub for dungeons and the world can feel like something that's simply there to break up going from place to place. Elex's world IS the content of the game and thus the world is the focus and is the reason it's far better to traverse and explore. As for the Witcher 3, it suffers from Ubisoft game syndrome where the world is a base for a series of similar activities for the most part (monster dens etc) which breaks the immersion and ensures the game becomes a checklist, it's got some good moments however, but doesn't reach the heights of Gothic and Elex in this regard.

- Domed City (deserves a special mention). To me this was probably the highlight of the game, a neutral city of sorts which felt like a game within a game if you will. The C&C was at it's strongest here and I hope they can build on this going forward as this is the sort of quality I want to see in future games.

- Cities - The Beserker and Outlaw cities were great too me, full of things to do with some great characters, my favourite quest involved Rat in the Outlaw city and I was constantly intrigued as to where it would go, these two cities also felt pretty well crafted. The Cleric city I found looked way too similar from region to region and I found it more difficulty to distinguish everything, I found the whole aesthetic of the Cleric area to be a bit dull and would prefer they didn't go down that route in the city. That said there were some good quests and I know joining the Clerics was a popular choice here.

- Main Story/End game - while the main story, as usual was nothing special I appreciated that it mostly tied into me exploring the regions and factions, I also liked that the end game was mostly short and didn't fall into the trap of some earlier titles where it became a dungeon crawl, the end section was quick and intriguing enough to not feel boring and I appreciated the epilogue as well.

Cons:

- I'm going to say Questing, not all the quests but it just didn't feel as strong as in Gothic 1/2 and to an extent Risen. There are a LOT of fetch quests in this game and while I found myself not needing the quest marker in Edan too much, as the game pressed on it started to feel necessary and far too many of the quests give you little information or almost none at all. This comes down to some of my points below where I feel PB wanted to make use of a lot of locations and ensure there were quests tied to most of them, this resulted in filler quests with little choice, I want quests in these games to be something I love to stumble upon, not something that makes you think "here we go again" offering you another generic quest relying on the quest marker.

- The world is too big, while they did a good job of exploration as mentioned I'd much prefer they tightened the experience. Risen felt like the perfect sized game world, go back to this, doing so along with 3-4 cities would be absolutely perfect.

- Re-spawning enemies - the issue with this is it ties into the world being too big again, in previous titles, not only did killing enemies feel like progress and more rewarding exploration, they also helped with traversing the map and knowing where you had and hadn't been. Given those games were smaller, it's stupid to NOT continue this trend with a huge game map. A lot of the forests look very similar and no re spawning enemies (aside from chapter to chapter) would've really helped with this.

- The perk system. I appreciated that they tried to expand on something that's pretty similar in earlier games but I feel like it fell a bit flat. There's far too many useless perks and I feel like it's just more hassle for a developer that's likely already on a tight budget. This territory is not their strength and rather then trying to be a jack of all trades, I'd prefer they focus on their strengths.

Mixed:

- Combat I'm in different on, I don't think it needs to be a huge focus as I prefer combat to complement the exploration in that I want to continue to feel like I'm best off running away from enemies who're too strong for me, and come back, approaching the exploration like a jigsaw puzzle that way rather then being able to go anywhere I want. That's signature PB so my only change would be to either make melee more of a focus or make ammo far more scarce and a resource that can't be crafted.

- Companions. I didn't mind the companions but I felt their quests were a little lacking. Now I read that Duras' quest is a lot more interesting in the German version and the translation was supposedly botched here which is why it doesn't make as much sense. That's a shame but I'm guessing the reasons may have been beyond their control so I won't critisise that one too heavily. Most of the other quests fell into fetch quest territory with not a whole lot of interest, I think if they're going to go down this road again I'd prefer they tighten things up again, perhaps fewer companions with higher quality quest lines and maybe generic characters you can hire in town to go with you if you want something different.

Now for Elex 2. I'll keep this brief but Piranha Bytes should stick to their strengths, instead of trying to make their games move towards a AA version of a better Skyrim etc. they need to strip it back and spend their development time on the things they're really good at. Domed City, exploration within a tight environment where everything has a place, factions and towns should be the focus, not a "bigger is better" world with tons of fetch quests, meaningless perks etc.
20 euros belonging to my wallet have suddenly decided to join the Steam Summer Sale because of your post. :hero:
 

Aemar

Arcane
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Aug 18, 2018
Messages
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ELEX: A Study on Inbreeding in the Post-Apocalyptic Age
 

Murk

Arcane
Joined
Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
They are all progeny of the Hybrid who was a prolific dick-giver.
 

Aemar

Arcane
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Aug 18, 2018
Messages
6,055
Been playing ELEX for a few hours, and what I can say right now is that the game definitely has all the PB trademarks I can remember: great exploration, a certain degree of clunkiness, brutal character progression, brutal enemy engagements at lower levels, a melee combat system that I haven't fully deciphered yet, etc. Money well spent though.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
It is a good game overall.

But sadly the melee combat is not as satisfying as in the earlier installments. You don't rely much on learning enemy patterns. They don't have as distinctive patterns, as they did in the past. Plus they usually come in groups...
The challenge relies too much on simple weapon strength vs enemy armor. You could say it was always so, but my feeling is that in Elex it's too much brute forcing, not enough skill.

Plus the difficulty curve feels wrong.
At the start you make almost no progress, can basically only face small sick single mobs (compare it to finally beating a band of goblins or those field bugs with skill and timing) and then you almost immediately proceed to rolfstomp everything.
With almost nothing in the middle, where actually the most fun part lies - strong enough to stand on one's own and beat many enemies with challenge, but still need to evade others - or prove one's great skill.
 
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typical user

Arbiter
Joined
Nov 30, 2015
Messages
957
40 hours in, just joined Clerics.

The game is unforgivable at the start (in my previous post I was beaten up because I shit-talked to gate-guard at Goliet after I bought him beer). But after reading walkthrough guides I found sunglasses and good basic chain sabre to carry me on. I also lowered difficulty, on Ultra even standard enemies are bullet sponges, I would run out of Flamer ammo before killing even basic enemies with same level as my character. This is my first game in years which forced me to lower difficulty and I have finished Sekiro. So i recommend for new players to read where they can get some basic equipment after playing for few hours and getting stuck. ELEX needs Night of the Raven treatment to balance out enemies and shuffle items around because I was aimlessly wandering around thinking why I struggle in first area after completing every doable quest.

The game is cool, it reacts to what I do and is pleasant to play after learning controls and getting used to wooden movement. The progress system is nice but I dislike that every faction has spells or buffs. I much more liked Gothic factions with their clear focus on melee/ranged/magic. Clerics could've been using psionics exclusively, Bandits energy weapons, and Berserkers swords, shields and bows with much lower damage. The combat bow is insane and deals same damage as high grade rocket launcher, it is dumb in my opinion.

Ignore most legendary equipment, it's shit, can't be upgraded and has ridiculous stat requirements. I am using Regent Sword Mark I found in some toxic bunker and Combat Bow. These require somewhere around 40/40 str/dex and they gain insane damage with each upgrade. In comparison Ignis Artifex has 70 strength requirement and it deals only 70 damage.

I also liked grid loot system from Gothic - the UI is console shit, I have to scroll through and read every item name before I sell it or when I pick it up. In Gothic on first glance I knew if the weapon is new or same old trash.

Falk is retardo.
 
Self-Ejected

unfairlight

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Aug 20, 2017
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Gothic's inventory and looting systems were absolute and unforgivable shit. Can't agree with you on that.
 

Morkar Left

Guest
40 hours in, just joined Clerics.

The game is unforgivable at the start (in my previous post I was beaten up because I shit-talked to gate-guard at Goliet after I bought him beer). But after reading walkthrough guides I found sunglasses and good basic chain sabre to carry me on. I also lowered difficulty, on Ultra even standard enemies are bullet sponges, I would run out of Flamer ammo before killing even basic enemies with same level as my character.

It helped me a lot to balance combat in the beginning by increasing the damage in the difficulty settings for you and the enemy by 1.5
 

Turbo normie

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Nov 10, 2017
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Sigil
Haha, steam sales made new victims.

"Elex is a good game" is a meme !
Trust me, I played in max difficulty and cheesed the whole game with the laser rifle in a cleric PT. I'm 100% professionnal on Elex. REFUND NOW AND BUY SOMETHING ELSE OR YOU'LL REGRET SPENDING MORE THAN 60 HOURS PLAYING THIS ! MONTHS HAVE PASSED AND I CAN'T FIGURE WHY I'VE PLAYED THIS MUCH !
 

Israfael

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Sep 21, 2012
Messages
3,580
Finally finished this game, as I could not play it because of weird GPU issues (it simply crashed after the first cutscene first, then it just caused BSODs or some weird issues after 10-15 mins of gameplay, now it is somehow fixed), 55 hrs clocked in total, third way (tm) (C) :smug:. I think I did most of the secondary quests, but not so sure. Very Gothic-like in totality, including the movement model and movesets, OP companions like the pirate from Die Nacht des Rabens, PB-humour and dialogues. I was conditioned by bioware / other western RPGs so I got fooled basically by everyone (and triple scammed in Tavar), it was an interesting experience.

What is kinda bad - there's basically two games in one - uber-hard survival horror if you don't own either the energy sword (or berzerker equivalents, if they exist) or the unique plasma gun (or maybe its upgraded equivalents), and if you have 'em, it's basically shoot in the barrel fest. Only in the end, when Logan decided to gank me with his elite guards, I had to run and use healing pots and whatever to survive. If they had it like it was in the Gothic series, where your stats actually influenced your damage output, it'd be much less binary and more varied. I simply charged trolls, patrons, slug beasts and other high-ranking mutants in the last third of the game to make it less dull (as compared to shooting them with AOE plasma balls of doom with 100%stunlock chance)

Some bugs (like lockpicking "easy win", broken coldness meter that never changed even if you consume 100 elex in a row) were really annoying, but I guess it's hard to expect any more from a team of 6 programmers and 5 level designers. :incline:
 

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