ELEX ELEX II - Jax is back

[Abu Antar]

Got my key.

 

[Kem0sabe]

This looks worse than Elex 1, how could PB fuck this up so badly with a ready made engine... its beyond me.

 

[Bah]

No, it's not Elex/Gothic in that it doesn't have towns, settlements and C&C

You can't strip out a major component of an RPG and then say "it's the same thing".

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Hopefully they're not using dx12 so I can still play.

it's listed as w10+ only.

 

[Bah]

This looks worse than Elex 1, how could PB fuck this up so badly with a ready made engine... its beyond me.

By "looks", I assume you mean the graphics... in which case stop being a graphics whore.

 

[Lord of Riva]

This looks worse than Elex 1, how could PB fuck this up so badly with a ready made engine... its beyond me.

from the vid, paraphrased:
"Well, the PC version will probably get over ... 50%...."
"I wish the Developers, they are very likeable at least, a good ... game that is modern. I mean look there, if there were 20 arrows I would have to click 20 times, square... or X or whatever... and thats kinda shit"

A very likeable, high energy person who clearly has a penchant for RPGs, especially on PC.

 

[notpl]

Are there any reviews for this yet or is there an embargo until (arbitrary time)?

Elden Ring and Elex 2 aren't even in the same genre. I can't imagine ever playing Elden Ring -- looks like absolute shit.

They're both ARPGs. Elden Ring is great, that doesn't mean ELEX isn't also, people are allowed to like multiple things. Also, why are you autisticly yelling into the void? If your comment was meant to be a response then you failed miserably at it. Try using the "reply" feature next time.

Try not having the attention span of a gnat. The post directly before mine was about Elden Ring, and the prior page had 5 posts related to Elden Ring discussion.

Elex is the game play style of Gothic, although a bit more modern. Elden Ring is the gameplay style of of Dark Souls. The games could not be more dissimilar. Claiming they are similar because they are both "ARPGS" shows a level of understanding of role-playing games approaching the level of the average redditor.

Try using the features of the forum as they are intended to be used instead of COPEING & SEETHING like a Twitter tranny because someone pointed out your massive retardation.

Also ELEX's combat is literally inspired by the Souls stamina-management combat archetype. I am actually impressed how in denial you are concerning this.

Gothic 3 release date, October 13, 2006. Combat has a stamina system.
Dark Souls 1 release date, September 22, 2011. Combat has a stamina system.

Elex is by Piranha Bytes. Gothic is by Piranha bytes. To claim that Elex combat is modeled after Dark Souls again reveals how lacking your knowledge of RPGs is. Perhaps RPG Watch would be more your speed?

Gothic 3 did not have a stamina system. You're thinking of the expansion developed by a random indian shovelware contractor, Forsaken Gods

 

[Kem0sabe]

Verdict: Wait to buy

 

[Kem0sabe]

 

[Anthedon]

A performance test (in German): https://www.computerbase.de/2022-02/elex-2-benchmark-test/

It's not looking good.

 

[MicoSelva]

ELEX 2 review for Polishbros.

 

[GhostCow]

A performance test (in German): https://www.computerbase.de/2022-02/elex-2-benchmark-test/

It's not looking good.

78fps at 1080p with a 3080 is absymal considering this game doesn't look very good graphically

 

[Bah]

Gothic 3 did not have a stamina system. You're thinking of the expansion developed by a random indian shovelware contractor, Forsaken Gods

I think it is you that is remembering wrong. The yellow bar in this Gothic 3 screenshot is the stamina bar. Gothic 3 had health, stamina, and mana.

 

[Anthedon]

Gothic 3 did not have a stamina system. You're thinking of the expansion developed by a random indian shovelware contractor, Forsaken Gods

I think it is you that is remembering wrong. The yellow bar in this Gothic 3 screenshot is the stamina bar. Gothic 3 had health, stamina, and mana.

You are correct sir.

 

[Falksi]

Verdict: Wait to buy

His criticisms of the game come across in the vids I've seen for sure. It looks way to janky for what it's supposed to be, and PB games need something a bit special besides to get away with that.

If this hasn't got it, then it's just another shitty open world game amongst a plethora of shitty open world games.

 

[Infinitron]

Unpleasant! https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/elex-2-review

Elex 2 review: a bonkers RPG hampered by unpleasant characters
Schlock for your system



Just a few minutes out of Elex 2’s, pleasantly brief, tutorial area I came across a radio. The broadcast was announcing a concert at the nearby amphitheatre. A Billy Idol concert. Yeah, you read that right. I immediately made a beeline for the concert venue and was treated to a rather unflattering rendering of Billy Idol and his guitar-playing chum performing a song. (Whiskey & Pills from his 2014 album, rather than anything you’re likely to have heard.) After the cutscene, you’re left in the empty amphitheatre, alone apart from a couple of guys talking about how great the concert was.

There is no context for this cameo. Billiam doesn’t feature as an NPC. In the 40-ish hours I spent playing the game, I had no reason to return to the amphitheatre. It makes no sense whatsoever and the only explanation I can come up with is that someone involved in the game really likes Billy Idol and just wanted him in their game. It’s the sort of random that I can respect, and I only wish the game had more.


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.

Spoiler

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 understand that this is a sprawling, open game from a relatively small developer, but it’s also a developer that has been making the same sort of game, right down to the levelling systems and the combat, over and over for two decades. All that time and they still haven’t got the fundamentals right. At the same time, it’s all starting to feel a bit stale. As much as I like the formula, and as much as I enjoy the setting and the jetpack, there’s no real surprises for anyone who has played Gothic or Risen. Before writing this review, I looked back over RPS founder Alec Meer’s (RPS in peace) writing on the Risen series to make sure I wasn’t misremembering and, sure enough, found him experiencing the same issues, making the same complaints.

If it was just a case of jankiness caused by a small, overambitious team then I’d be happy to give Piranha Bytes a pass at least one more time. Sadly, that’s not the case. Elex 2 is, by far, the most unpleasant, mean-spirited and plain nasty game I’ve played in a very long time. Almost everyone you encounter is just a horrible person. They’re generally rude and abrasive, and even the friendlier ones are just annoying. One of your party characters, literally named Nasty, is flat out abusive. I’m assuming that this is supposed to be “mature” or “realistic” but it’s neither of those things. The game is like a twelve year old who thinks that being rude and swearing constantly makes him well ‘ard. These aren’t nuanced, well-rounded characters, they’re flat automatons who are unrelentingly awful instead of having any personality.

It could be argued that something was lost in translation, since Piranha Bytes is a German developer and I’m playing the game in English, but I think that’s just being terribly unfair to all the lovely Germans I’ve encountered in my lifetime. It would also ignore the fact that the same unpleasantness isn’t restricted to NPC dialogue. Elex 2, like its predecessors, has a problem with women. It’s not quite as front and centre as in earlier titles from the developer, since there are a good amount of fully clothed female characters, but the attitude on display is shockingly backwards. The women in the game are bitchy harridans, jealous and spiteful. When I decided to have Jax continue his relationship with Caija (a character from the first game who he had since had a child with and then abandoned) both of the other women in his entourage reacted negatively, losing loyalty. That’s one character who I’d hardly interacted with, and another who verbally abused Jax at every opportunity. I had no idea they even were potential romance options, but of course they hated Jax hooking up with another woman. As you may be able to guess, none of the male characters had the same reaction.


Speaking of Jax, he isn’t any better. No matter what options you choose, he will be rude, angry and shouty at every opportunity. For me, this came to a head during a late game conversation with his son, Dex (who is, for the record, seven or eight years old at most) where I was presented with the option to threaten to beat him. Worse still, at least one of the companion characters will approve of that decision. Even with the general nastiness of the characters in the game, this blindsided me, forced me out of the game and away from my computer for some time.

There is certainly room for games that deal with child abuse as a subject matter, or that have such deeply flawed people as protagonists, but that requires care and tact. Neither of those are on display here, or anywhere else in the game. Instead it’s a throwaway line, with no real consequence, that exists for you to show off how eeeeeeevil you are. There’s also plenty of interesting discussion to be had about what sort of behaviour games allow us to portray, how they choose to condone or condemn and why we react viscerally to some actions and not others, but this review is already far too long.

Cyberpunk 2077 is the game that sprang to mind while I was mulling over how to approach this review. It’s also a janky, overambitious RPG full of sweary, violent people doing horrible things to each other. The difference is that, by and large, the characters in Cyberpunk are compelling, well-rounded characters with depth and nuance. They’re frequently likeable, even caring, forcing us to deal with the contradictory aspects of human nature. Elex 2 has none of that, it’s just a game filled with deeply unpleasant people.

 

[adddeed]

His criticisms of the game come across in the vids I've seen for sure. It looks way to janky for what it's supposed to be, and PB games need something a bit special besides to get away with that.

If this hasn't got it, then it's just another shitty open world game amongst a plethora of shitty open world games.

Being a game made by pyranha bytes IS that something special.
Reason why ive enjoyed every game they've made since Gothic 1.

 

[Jinn]

Well, ELEX II is climbing the steam best seller list, and is sitting right below a 50% off Cyberpunk 2077 on my screen! Very happy and excited for them. Hope it's a true indication of some fine sales. Game looks as great as expected. Buying mine sometime later today to try and add to their rise.

Also, lol at that RPS review. "Mean characters! So unpleasant!" Bitch, have you ever met a person?

 

[Bah]

The very fact that reviewers are so negative about this game gives me high hopes that it is going to be excellent.

 

[Infinitron]

More reviews:

GameGrin 5.5/10
Gamepressure 7/10
GameSpace 7.5/10
GameWatcher 6.5/10
God is a Geek 5/10
New Game Network 60/100
Ragequit.gr 84/100
WellPlayed 3/10

 

[Darth Roxor]

The very fact that reviewers are so negative about this game gives me high hopes that it is going to be excellent.

you mean ELEXCELLENT

 

[adddeed]

Well, ELEX II is climbing the steam best seller list, and is sitting right below a 50% off Cyberpunk 2077 on my screen! Very happy and excited for them. Hope it's a true indication of some fine sales. Game looks as great as expected. Buying mine sometime later today to try and add to their rise.

Also, lol at that RPS review. "Mean characters! So unpleasant!" Bitch, have you ever met a person?

Rude NPCs is one of my favorite things in PB games. Those in Risen 1 were great.

 

[Angelo85]

Well, ELEX II is climbing the steam best seller list, and is sitting right below a 50% off Cyberpunk 2077 on my screen! Very happy and excited for them. Hope it's a true indication of some fine sales. Game looks as great as expected. Buying mine sometime later today to try and add to their rise.

Doing my part

I just hope my rig won't explode once I fire the game up :D

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Oh noes please Elex2 don't be shit.

 

[4249]

The very fact that reviewers are so negative about this game gives me high hopes that it is going to be excellent.

It's going to be Eclectic, Lavish, Exhilerating and Xenial.