ELEX ELEX II - Jax is back

[rusty_shackleford]

Canceled, eh rusty_shackleford? WRONG!

Translated excerpt from the Gamestar preview:

Because Elex 2 is more Gothic 2 than Risen 2 . In concrete terms: It primarily continues the strengths of its predecessor instead of breaking with them. It expands instead of revolutionizing. You get a comparable open world, comparable fights, a comparable narrative style and - you guessed it - comparable open-mouth moments.

But before you confuse "conservative" with "boring": Elex 2 has cool new ideas, an exciting story starting point, new open world areas - and you can now fly with the jetpack! So don't float, just fly properly. Like Iron Man.

The rough outline: what is Elex 2?
The absolutely most important information first: Yes, there is a chainsaw broadsword again in Elex 2, yikes! Elex 2 plays a few years after its predecessor - and what is bad news for the inhabitants of the game world should again please fans. The world of Magalan still doesn't get the hang of leaving its own post-apocalyptic devastation behind. So a mix of dense fantasy forests, weathered skyscrapers and science fiction innovations is waiting for you. Here are the basic facts:

Story and quests

• You play again as Ex-Alb Jax, but there will be no savegame import from Elex 1. As in Gothic 2, you lose your skills and can decide again which path your non-nameless hero should take.
• Anyone who has played Elex 1 will know: A new threat hangs over the world. But nobody wants to believe Jax, which is why he fell out with the old factions and went into exile. In Elex 2, he returns from oblivion to convince people of his cause.
• According to Piranha Bytes, none of their games have had as many dialogues and storylines as Elex 2. By the end of the credits you are busy an average of 60 hours, 100 percent natures naturally need significantly longer - and the factions mean that there is always a high replay value.
• There will be more than three factions, but the parties still represent certain character classes or weapon types.
• It is still unclear how many factions are completely new. But we speculate that at least berserkers and outlaws will return.
• The companion system returns: Jax hires familiar and new companions to accompany him through the rugged wilderness. As part of the quest, there should be significantly more decisions and hard consequences.

Open world

• Elex 2 offers a new open world that consists partly of old and partly of new regions. The old areas have been changed drastically over the years and by the hearts of the world, but you also travel to completely new areas. So overall like in Gothic 2.
• Your jetpack not only allows you to float, but you can also jet through the landscape like Boba Fett. But only after a few upgrades.
• Children are now a part of the play world.
• The nights in Elex 2 are significantly darker than in the predecessor. But hey, now you've got a flashlight for that.

Further gameplay adjustments

• Little changes in the classes: You can play as a ranged fighter, magician, thug or a mishmash.
• Because you are now more agile in the air, there is also pure air combat against other flying opponents. So Jax can fight gargoyles at a height of 20 meters.
• The moral system has been revised: Instead of a cold value for Jax's emotional state, there is now "creation" and "destruction". Whoever kills defenseless sheep, for example, increases the destruction value. This new moral system is closely interlinked with the parliamentary groups - more on this below in the article.

Technically, you can see Elex 2's leap forward, even if you still can't expect the smoothness of a 1,500-person Ubisoft production, for example, in the animation.

bet you guys wish it was canceled now

don't say I didn't warn you

the higher you guys get your hopes, the worse it will be

 

[cruel]

Too much hate in this thread, but I need to remember this is Codex after all. The game has a lot of flaws, but it's far from shit IMO, I had a lot of fun for the first 80h, which is like first 3/4 of the game. End game sucks, of course. Don't agree with exploration being shit to be honest - yes, you will find a lot of teddy bears, cigarettes and cups, but the game has enough good stuff to keep it rewarding (medium / large elex potions, unique weapons, stat boost potions, damaged weapons etc.). Finding 'Razor' unique sword made me very happy when I was struggling to get a better weapon. I got Savior crafted pretty early only because I found 3x damaged version during exploration. Some of the quests are also pretty good (Skibor, Ivan, children detectives, berserker entrance etc.). Far from 'shit', especially knowing how the gaming market looks like nowadays.

TL;DR - don't trust Codex, play the game yourself and judge it.

 

[adddeed]

Agreed. If i listened to retards like rusty_shackleshit i'd have missed a lot of fun games.

 

[Cyberarmy]

TL;DR - don't trust Codex, play the game yourself and judge it.

I played it and I agree with the hive mind. This is probably PBs worst game, after Gothic 3
Whole game feels a step back from first game on every front. Still amazed that they did a worse job at melee combat than ELEX...

 

[soulburner]

It's not a terrible game on its own. It could be even considered quite good. As a sequel to Elex, which was kind of a return to form for PB, it's inferior in many aspects.

Elex 2 shows every sign of being rushed and then abandoned. It feels really good one moment (many quests, non-boring dialogs, good voice acting, firearms may be overpowered, but are much more fun to use, more responsive controls) and on the verge of being funny-bad (performance issues, melee hits not connecting on low framerate, very bad looking areas with no shadows and ugly sprites, erratic enemy behaviour, "click-the-enemy-to-death" combat system).

While the end game quests would probably stay similarly poor, I believe delaying the game for 6 months would be the wise choice to tweak and bugfix stuff properly. We do not know if it was PB's decision ("let's just stick to the date and forget about it") or the publisher's ("release now or we don't give you any more money") and it's no longer important. What is important is if PB can make Elex 3 - or whatever they are working on now - better.

 

[Ryzer]

Well, if Elex 2 sells poorly, considering the lukewarm reception of the title, the answer will obviously be no.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Well, we got ELEX after Risen 2 and 3 so anything can happen I guess?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Well, we got ELEX after Risen 2 and 3 so anything can happen I guess?

a shitty ELEX 3 followed by a good new game

 

[Cyberarmy]

That's the PB tradition I guess...

 

[Ryzer]

That is if THQ nordic don't fire them before.

 

[thesheeep]

Still amazed that they did a worse job at melee combat than ELEX...

The problem with this is that they are still trying to go for that mainstream action-RPG combat.
Which would be fine, if they had anyone in the team capable of doing the programming, animation and game design for that.
They don't. They really, really, really don't. All parts of the combat implementation are bad.

They shouldn't even try to make anything but the basic clunky Gothic/Risen combat - that one was functional, at least.
Let the casual crowd complain, who cares? They will never be into these games, anyway.
In trying to go for something they just don't have the talent/knowledge for, they made the result extra terrible. It's not even functional anymore.

Hit boxes that have absolutely nothing to do with what you see (enemy attacks will hit you when you are standing meters away), enemies just gliding around like this is the original Everquest beta, mechanics that make no sense whatsoever (like shields), and so much more...

The general advice for any kind of project is to focus on your strengths. PB - at least for Elex 2 - seems to have focused on their weaknesses, which is just baffling.

 

[coldcrow]

Risen 1 combat is pretty good. Needed a bit more tweaking (remove power of permablocking vs opponents who can't break blocks), but is certainly the best iteration of PB combat.

 

[Modron]

Archery was satisfying in Risen 1 as well.

 

[Ryzer]

Archery was satisfying in Risen 1 as well.

Gothic 3 has the best archery.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Risen 1 combat is pretty good. Needed a bit more tweaking (remove power of permablocking vs opponents who can't break blocks), but is certainly the best iteration of PB combat.

I think it was actually very good when fighting 1:1, particularly against other humans. Group fights were p shit tbh.

 

[Alienman]

Risen 1 combat is pretty good. Needed a bit more tweaking (remove power of permablocking vs opponents who can't break blocks), but is certainly the best iteration of PB combat.

Didn't have sliding. Bane of my existence.

 

[JBro]

If you've read my posts I think I had been more than forgiving, but this business of waiting 6-7 months for a patch just for it to be half-assed in such a manner really soured me. No, the game was never very good. Yes, it sucks worse than Elex 1 and many other PB games. There are some redeeming qualities, and I like it in some respects but it is a very baffling game.

Also it still runs like ass. Better, but still ass. I hope PB continues to make games, and I hope the next one is better.

Btw, does anyone have a fix for Risen 2 and 3's controller support? The analog sticks in those games have some kind of issue where pushing them in opposite directions causes some kind of stutter.

 

[Cryomancer]

Archery was satisfying in Risen 1 as well.

Gothic 3 has the best archery.

And best magic, but sadly the WORST melee combat in the series.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Archery was satisfying in Risen 1 as well.

Gothic 3 has the best archery.

And best magic, but sadly the WORST melee combat in the series.

Best magic and game is playable thanks to that. Otherwise it would be really boring to finish. (and kill everything on map, as is tradition)

 

[hello friend]

For another cool magic system, playing a mage in Two Worlds 2 is very fun.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Todays patch (I think the real DX12 patch) made the game decent at least. A lot smoother and looks a bit better.

 

[Roguey]

Todays patch (I think the real DX12 patch) made the game decent at least. A lot smoother and looks a bit better.

Changed files in this update

ELEX2 Content
Depot 900041

Modified – data/packed/c_1_na.pak (+4.00 KiB)
Manifest ID changed – 1340294138483638672 › 785451204234905762

ELEX2 Binaries
Depot 900042

Removed – system/D3D12AgilitySDK/d3d12SDKLayers.dll (8.81 MiB)
Removed – system/D3D12AgilitySDK/D3D12Core.dll (4.95 MiB)
Modified – system/ELEX2.exe (+512 B)
Manifest ID changed – 1817173782337155632 › 968835866830202434

Removing DX12 is one way to fix it I guess....

 

[Child of Malkav]

They removed dx12? So I can play it now?

 

[GhostCow]

They removed dx12? So I can play it now?

You could have played anyway. Both versions were in the folder

 

[soulburner]

DX12 was not removed, that would be preposterous. Here's the changelog:

1. Fixed a bug where Non-DX12 Graphics Cards tried to initialize the DX12 mode (via Microsoft Reference Adapter)
2. Fixed a bug where the Fullscreen Toggle could lead to a crash
3. Added an error message when a user tries to start the DX12 version on a very old Windows10 version that doesn’t yet support the Agility SDK
4. Fixed a bug that occurred when the graphics card didn’t support the requested Depth Stencil Format by adding fall back formats.
5. Fixed a bug where the moon is too bright in the DX12 version.