ELEX ELEX II - Jax is back

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I literally don’t know how that does anything other than what I said; “budgets were smaller because markets were smaller and the publishers therefore were okay with a smaller ROI”.

Er… yes?

and I have no idea what ELEX2’s budget was, but 1.8 million Euro seems low. Game took five years to come out and the studio is located in Germany. Don’t know the size of PB’s team these days, but unless it’s under 8 members members 1.8 seems unlikely.

The point is that you're not actually upset that the game is priced too expensively on an economic-theory elasticity curve. I suspect the business majors at Piranah Bytes have a pretty decent grasp on their expenses, and the expected market-base, and their desired profit margins to price it decently. They have significantly more data to do so than an arm-chair codexer like you or me.

I suspect you're just upset about the pricing, because $45 is a lot of money for you.

I'm not upset about anything, I'm mildly disappointed that a game that I probably would have never had the time to finish is apparently a significant step down from its predecessor.

I'm also immensely skeptical that there are any business majors at PB. THQ Nordic? Sure, probably, but they're then the same geniuses who decided to put the game out 3 days after the biggest release of the past 18 months.

As to pricing, $45 is a little less than an hour or of work for me, but that's not really the point, is it? The point is that I could spend that same amount of money on multiple games that I would likely enjoy more. Honestly the point is sort of moot though because the reality is that I'm rarely going to have time to finish games that I buy.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Not that Rusty would ever do that of course.

At the very least, some of Rusty's posts are giving people like me something of a glimpse of the game's quality. The shitflinging between people whose sole purpose in the thread is to gloat about the poor reception and those on the other side defending it with such brilliant opening statements as "I haven't played Elex 2, BUT," are fucking useless when I'm trying to tell if I should get it or not.

Don't get me wrong, I like Rusty, but it's often against my better judgment. He's generally a smart and funny dude (albeit one with a fundamentally opposed worldview to that of my own), but he cherry-picks his arguments to such a degree that I view pretty much everything he says with a healthy degree of skepticism.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

rusty_shackleford loves Fallout 76 and Assassin's Creed I think, so his game-related opinions should be laughed at by default. And he always hated Piranha Bytes games, so....

Wait until some normal gamers play it for a while for an actual opinion.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

rusty_shackleford loves Fallout 76 and Assassin's Creed I think, so his game-related opinions should be laughed at by default. And he always hated Piranha Bytes games, so....

Wait until some normal gamers play it for a while for an actual opinion.

exactly the kind of stuffr they always give Bethesda games a pass on (e.g. bugs, rough around the edges before mods).

at least ELEX had an interesting world that felt alive
I've never been able to finish a bethesda game, always get bored a few dozen hours in and quit. I managed to finish ELEX without a problem.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Uh oh.

 

[Junmarko]

no point in arguing with cult members, not like they'll have another PB game to defend after this faceplant

Baldur's Gate 3 will never be a real woman.

 

[1451]

Gothic 2 had good graphics for it's time.
Elex 2 has bad graphics for today's standards.
Gothic 2 could be ran on a powervr kyro gpu, which was smaller than nvidia and ati.
Elex 2 can't be ran on a Vega 56, a gtx 1070 equivalent belonging to amd, who is a huge manufacturer since all consoles have their hardware.
You can stop making excuses now.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

something I forgot to add:
It has the feature like Outerworlds where if an NPC is interrupted by something, they'll resume whatever they were doing after. This is a very nice feature.


also, the ethnic composition of magalan is um... different, than I remember.

 

[Darth Roxor]

It's like when Darth Roxor made like using the word 'jank' to describe wonky eastern european releases with a lot of weird design and rushed programming was an entirely new word made up just to hate on Elex lol. You can't criticize these games without these people believing you're doing it to spite their cult rather than simply because you don't see why a mediocre, unpolished and deeply flawed open world game is heralded like the second coming

What Darth Roxor actually said back then was that 'jank' was a retarded word that he suddenly saw popping up everywhere and which he hated, but don't let that stop you.

 

[Jinn]

What Darth Roxor actually said back then was that 'jank' was a retarded word that he suddenly saw popping up everywhere and which he hated, but don't let that stop you.

You fucking unreasonable cultist.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

What Darth Roxor actually said back then was that 'jank' was a retarded word that he suddenly saw popping up everywhere and which he hated, but don't let that stop you.

You fucking unreasonable cultist.

He's right and I blame the Anglos.

 

[Jinn]

So returning to Tavar for the first time and seeing all the growth there has been a lot of fun, especially considering it was my least favorite area in the first game. Gets me more excited to see more of the changes that have happened in Magalan over the 6-7 years since the end of ELEX 1.

Combat is growing on me a bit more now that I've gotten to take on some harder monsters and human opponents. While I liked the combo system from ELEX 1, I feel like I could end up enjoying this equally if not more, particularly with the stagger and parry mechanics in mind. My satisfaction from combat in PB games comes more from how the RPG progression is reflected in it more than the actual physical mechanics themselves anyway, so it was never a huge concern of mine. They could have done better, but I didn't expect to find they had. That being said, some people might end up enjoying this system more in the long run, and I'm interested to see how it develops with different weapons and increased skill later on. And yes, if you just spam LMB against even slightly stronger opponents, you're going to die if you're play on Ultra difficulty. I would recommend anyone looking for a nice challenge to default to Ultra for their first playthrough. It seems pretty close to the kind of balance you'd find in a classic PB game.

Only got a couple more hours in today, but I'm starting to have more and more fun the further I get. I'm in the middle of a playthrough of another game at the moment, but am excited to finish it up so I can give ELEX II my full attention.

 

[dragonul09]

How many times do I have to repeat myself. Elex 1 was a failure, this flop has nothing to do with marketing, people didnt like the mish mash with scifi-medieval-fantasy bullshit and the awful gameplay on top of that.

It's the same story with PoE 1 and PoE2, despite the high ratings for the first game it was obvious the sequel was gonna flop hard because again, people didnt actually liked the terribly written universe and gameplay.

They are lucky the japs cant write to save their own mothers, otherwise they would have never seen top 100 this month.

 

[Dodo1610]

Elex 2 is so frustrating because it has by far PB's best designed open word and exploring it with the new improved jetpack is great. But so much else that made me like Elex is gone, worst of all Elex's interconnected quest with multiple outcomes. Almost every single quest I found was pure busywork with no alternative options to solve it.
Like one of the first quests you get is to kill some Morkons and there is no alternative solution. One of the early quest in Elex was about killing an Outlaw. But in Elex talking to that Outlaw opened up a whole new quest...
You can find more interesting quest within the first 2h of Elex in Goliet than I have found in my 8h of playing Elex 2.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I've searched meticulously the whole installation. Found two drugs in the safe, 70 or so Elexit, one message, one scrap, one potion. That's it.

such discoveries! such exploration!

First time playing a PB game, I see.

I played Risen and thought it was hopelessly mediocre. Then got baited by people touting Elex. Never again

Exploring caves with 17 coins (individually littered on the ground) and a single health potion and spell scroll is not uncharacteristic of PB. Then again, at least they felt helpful in G1 & 2.

 

[Ismaul]

But so much else that made me like Elex is gone, worst of all Elex's interconnected quest with multiple outcomes. Almost every single quest I found was pure busywork with no alternative options to solve it.
Like one of the first quests you get is to kill some Morkons and there is no alternative solution. One of the early quest in Elex was about killing an Outlaw. But in Elex talking to that Outlaw opened up a whole new quest...

That, if true of the game in general, might very well be the nail in the coffin. If ELEX 2 is reduced to a generic open-world game where the main options for each quest are to take it or not, like Bethesda is known for, then it loses greatly in value.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

How many times do I have to repeat myself. Elex 1 was a failure, this flop has nothing to do with marketing, people didnt like the mish mash with scifi-medieval-fantasy bullshit and the awful gameplay on top of that.

It's the same story with PoE 1 and PoE2, despite the high ratings for the first game it was obvious the sequel was gonna flop hard because again, people didnt actually liked the terribly written universe and gameplay.

They are lucky the japs cant write to save their own mothers, otherwise they would have never seen top 100 this month.

codex is addicted to lolsoquirky settings because they've made themselves numb from playing every rpg available

 

[Jinn]

That, if true of the game in general, might very well be the nail in the coffin. If ELEX 2 is reduced to a generic open-world game where the main options for each quest are to take it or not, like Bethesda is known for, then it loses greatly in value.

It's strange, because in most of the in-depth reviews and impressions I've come in contact with on the game stated that the quest design was good, often times with several different options and outcomes available. Perhaps we can get Hellion to weigh in on this, considering he's probably the only person here who finished the game?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I didn't finish that quest but they definitely don't aggro on you when you approach them, you can talk to them but the only way at that point in time forward is presumably killing them. Which is why I put it on the backburner to see if alternative solutions became available.

Spoiler

and there's a unique high-damage bow you can grab easily on top of the giant tower in the upper district of the berserker area, just use your jetpack to get past the guard by going to the left(facing the upper area gate, NOT the entrance gate), run along the side roof, then jet pack up to the top of the tower. You can catch onto the rope to regain jetpack fuel if you don't have enough to do it in one go.
again, it's the upper area, which is a secondary area you need to gain access to after gaining access to the area itself.

 

[Jinn]

I didn't finish that quest but they definitely don't aggro on you when you approach them, you can talk to them but the only way at that point in time forward is presumably killing them. Which is why I put it on the backburner to see if alternative solutions became available.

I was also wondering if some Cunning-based skill further down the road would become useful in that situation, because it certainly seems it would. Who knows, maybe it's just a "here's your first humanoid enemy fight" or something.

 

[Nikanuur]

I like Fox already:

Spoiler

You mean those nice creatures there? I don't go there. It helps me to stick with my "do not die" policy.
I know, I know, Berserkers are expected to kill monsters, and save the world and all. But I am just too pretty to die young.
You though, you are neither young nor pretty. You could take care of them.

 

[Nikanuur]

Exploring caves with 17 coins (individually littered on the ground) and a single health potion and spell scroll is not uncharacteristic of PB. Then again, at least they felt helpful in G1 & 2.

First time playing a PB game, I see.

No, no, the point was, the loot was over-abundant in the beginning. That is not a good thing, it made us disapointed over a large, important part of the game initially. But, fortunately, locations past the initial "tutorial zone" seem often to have a normal (much lesser) amounts of loot.

And at any rate, one needs 3 weapons of the same kind to improve one. Would you sell the weapons for not that big of a coin anyway, or would you rather keep those to craft a better one? Etc...

 

[Junmarko]

The game is becoming a meme.

5:11 - LOL

Jax's 5 year old son has a jetpack too...because of course he does.

 

[HoboForEternity]

i have been enjoying this a lot tbh. Like the camera and performance is still a big problem, but otherwise the world is still great.


Don't get the graphics complain. Well character models are inexcusably ugly true, they look like they were ripped off hypothetical redaxium 3, but the environment are gorgeous, there are lots of time where i just say "woow this area looks

I think navigation gameplay still hold well. Aside from the skyand scouts and the stupid limestone, i found few of the quests i have done are doable without markers. Like caja quest to find morkons, the guy said north (not exactly directly north, but i went north, then follow the main road northwest, saw morkon flag from a distance, went there and the bloodhounds were there.) The mason also said the bellhammer can be found northeast, or maybe the big city ruin. Since i think the big ruin will have scary monsters, i went northeast, and i found the hammer just fine.

 

[HoboForEternity]

as for loot, i don't get the complain about just finding few scaps, a note and cig/elexit bags. gothic, even archolos still have a lot of that. i have like thousands of magic scrolls in archolos.

when you do find loot, it's pretty cool. like i just found this unique early gun that would help me for the next level up in a ruin surrounded by mosnter