ELEX ELEX II - Jax is back

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

First impressions:

• Game runs smooth like butter on my system @ 1440p (Ryzen 9 5900X, RX 5700 XT, 64GB RAM). The GPU fan also barely spins up.
• Graphics have been improved. Especially shadows and lighting, which are now excellent and on par with any AAA game. Vegetation also looks much better.
• Combat and movement is substantially less janky and much more responsive.
• Playing on Ultra and barely made it past the starting area: The enemies still hit HARD, but aren't nearly as deadly as the "hell chickens" in ELEX 1. Their attacks are also pretty easy to dodge.
• The menu loads FAST. Literally instantly.
• Annoying camera feature: When you are moving the camera zooms out, but when you stop, the camera zooms back in and hovers just behind Jax' shoulder. It is really awkward and annoying, but I don't see an option to turn it off...

EDIT: Okay, the camera problem I described just disappeared. All I had to do was minimize the game and write my impressions on the Codex to fix it.

More impressions:

• My rig is averaging about 60 to 70 FPS @1440p and ultra settings, which is not great, but acceptable.
• I have also run into performance problems in certain areas. FPS can drop to the low 40s, and you will notice the stutter, even with adaptive sync.
• Save games load LIGHTING FAST on my SSD (WD_BLACK SN850 // 7000MB/s). Loading a game from the main menu takes about five seconds and loading in-game takes just over 2 seconds. Very impressive.
• Overall I would say ELEX 1 had better optimization at release, because that game ran flawlessly for me.
• ELEX was rather flat, but ELEX 2 has a clear emphasis on verticality. Very early in the game you can fly/walk up to the top of a low mountain to check out your surroundings and scout out many unique points of interest.
• Overall I am quite impressed by the world design I have seen so far. In Ubishit titles the worlds are just bland and extremely repetitive, but PB put a lot of love into designing Magalan to keep game play interesting and refreshing.
• The game rewards you if you stray off the main path, as you will always find something interesting or helpful, which is typical for Piranha Bytes.
• I stranded off while herpa derpa exploring and, in good old Piranha Bytes fashion, I of course got my ass handed to me when I ran into an enemy - killed with just one hit.
• I would also say that the beginning of ELEX 2 is slightly easier than the beginning of ELEX 1.
• Last but not least, my game crashed when I opened a chest. I took that as a cue to call it a night... ^^

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

EDIT: Okay, the camera problem I described just disappeared. All I had to do was minimize the game and write my impressions on the Codex to fix it.

If you figure out what fixed this besides alt-tabbing out of the game, please let us know. It persists when I try that, and it's just a pretty annoying camera all around. The ELEX 1 camera was perfect. Don't know why they had to change it.

My temp fix was apparently a fluke, as it worked only once. It is apparently a camera bug which appears when the camera zooms out while Jax is running.

 

[Sam Bixby]

So is this game running on WIndows 7?

 

[Tweed]

Have fun if you use ESDF, while F is rebindable it's still hardcoded to assigning quickslots.

EDIT: Oh wait you can actually assign them by number, good.

 

[GhostCow]

Win 7 users can try dxvk to get the game working, but if you're going to be that much of a faggot about refusing to upgrade you should just dump Microsoft and switch to Linux because you're going to have about as much trouble playing newer games either way.

 

[Tweed]

I hope someone is already working on a mod to change SoyJax back into ManlyJax.

 

[Not.AI]

What is the last windows this does work on, btw?

Yup, windows gets worse with every version, no?

Devs should just use vulkan and not dx!

 

[Mauman]

I'm more than a bit annoyed that Jax can't immediately call out who Adam actually is.

If it's that blindingly obvious to me, it should be to him too

 

[Sranchammer]

Looking forward to 2028 Winter sale

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

Went in absolutely blind..
They changed his fuckin' voice?
They're actually going for Gothic 3 Forsaken Gods : Electric boogaloo?
What the hell are these graphical glitches holy crap, half of the things on screen randomly turn black.
I rate it /10 so far.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

*equip bow*
*crash*

ah it's gonna be one of those games

 

[Tweed]

I haven't had any graphical boojums save for the fact that it feels like the refresh rate is off. I'm running it at 165hz, but something still looks odd about it. Either that or the game is just performing poorly.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

so umm
is it just me, or does the game look worse than elex?

 

[Lambach]

another review
game's fine

Question for those who are playing the game: did they actually manage to make melee combat even more janky than the first game? Looking at this video, it seems like melee weapons are weightless and there's almost no impact when the attack connects, like you're hitting the enemy with a feather. What gives?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

another review
game's fine

Question for those who are playing the game: did they actually manage to make melee combat even more janky than the first game? Looking at this video, it seems like melee weapons are weightless and there's almost no impact when the attack connects, like you're hitting the enemy with a feather. What gives?

melee combat feels incredibly floaty, like arkham combat-tier floaty but without the smoothness of arkham combat.

I played it for like an hour and I think I'm just gonna wait for patches or something idk, just didn't click with me, FOV/super zoomed in camera is making me feel weird. I guess I'm just misremembering what elex was like but I don't remember things like basic movement feeling so clunky

 

[Dexter]

Anybody know if the Retail PC version comes with any kind of CD Key like for Steam or is Standalone?

 

[Lambach]

I guess I'm just misremembering what elex was like but I don't remember things like basic movement feeling so clunky

I don't think you're misremembering, after watching that video, I definitely got the feeling that everything just felt.... off. From melee combat, movement, jumping, camera etc.

I mean, the "Combat" section in the video, from 23:00-28:00, good god, that just looks grotesque. The combat in the original was mediocre and janky, but this shit just looks like it's some Unity asset-flip on Steam for 5 bucks. Maybe it feels different when playing, but just watching... Jesus Christ.

 

[Lyre Mors]

FOV/super zoomed in camera is making me feel weird. I guess I'm just misremembering what elex was like but I don't remember

I think the camera is throwing a lot of people off and also making movement way clunkier than it probably would be with the ELEX 1 camera on top of it all. Baffling design choice. Hope the word has gotten to them and they'll put an option in for the past game's camera.

Also, in terms of combat, check the auto lock option out next time you return to the game. Combat felt better when I turned it off.

 

[HoboForEternity]

still few hours before i can play

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Played it for a bit. The camera FOV issue which everyone complains about on Steam seems to be easily fixed by disabling FOV in the settings and lowering mouse sensitivity. At least for me.

Couple of things I didn't like so far:

1. This might just be me getting old, but I feel like the initial enemies don't have any tells when they are about to attack. They just stand there grunting and then immediately switch into attack animation without any tells, making it hard to play reactively.

2. I attacked the 2 NPCs in the starting outpost, just to test out the humanoid combat, and my strikes literally went through them, no damage and no reaction. We have come a long way since those Gothic NPCs that would threaten you when you just drew your weapon near them.

Other than this, the combat seems smoother compared to ELEX 1, you can't constantly block with a weapon, instead it just comes up for a second or two and goes back down, similar to Gothic games. No combos, just regular attacks and heavy attacks. Seems more responsive overall.

 

[HoboForEternity]

given the time they spent and how relatively well the condition the first elex was released, I expected a better optimized game and seriously the decision to take out camera scrolling was pretty stupid. but then again, it's not piranha bytes if they don't self-sabotage to a certain degree

 

[Reapa]

nobody gonna say it?
the writing is fucking stupid!

"You wanna join me and lead a huge army and save the world?"
"No, i'm a berseker..."
"I sense you might be interested."
"Alright, i'll do it."

FFS

 

[JDR13]

Played it for a bit. The camera FOV issue which everyone complains about on Steam seems to be easily fixed by disabling FOV in the settings and lowering mouse sensitivity. At least for me.

What do you mean by disabling FOV in the settings? I'm not seeing any options related to FOV.

 

[Tweed]

Looks like the formatted the dialogue for dumbdumbs too. So far all I've seen is "Obvious warm response" "Obvious neutral response" and "Obvious cold response".

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I didn't understand what was going on at all in the intro btw
so there I am, stealthing along like Jax suggested I should because he constantly talks to himself... then suddenly, BAM CUTSCENE I'm running away from some glowy aliens