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ELEX ELEX II - Jax is back

Joined
Jan 12, 2012
Messages
4,065
Are factions worth joining? I'm currently killing everything on the map with the good ol' shotgun to the face trick and I don't see much of a challenge anymore at the end of the first chapter. Tempted to continue solo.
Do you miss much content if you are unaffiliated? Is there decent armor/guns you can get if you don't join?
All of them just sound kind of retarded caricatures.
 

Modron

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
9,930
Are factions worth joining? I'm currently killing everything on the map with the good ol' shotgun to the face trick and I don't see much of a challenge anymore at the end of the first chapter. Tempted to continue solo.
Do you miss much content if you are unaffiliated? Is there decent armor/guns you can get if you don't join?
All of them just sound kind of retarded caricatures.
Depending on how much you want to save scum you can get the strongest lazer rifle/plasma cannons/2nd best 1 handers via stealing. Best shotgun/bow/grenade launcher are unique weapons which can be found in the world. Armor is a different story, morkon/outlaw gear is 50% stronger than the best rebel clothing you'll be wearing 98% of the game until you find late game Skyand Armor. Zerker armor isn't much better than rebel gear and alb/cleric gear is a bit better than zerker stuff as you can see here: https://www.neoseeker.com/elex-2/guides/Armour_Accessories#Chest_Pieces

The only compelling reason not to join a faction outside of larping is there is an achievement for completing the game without joining one.
 

Yoomazir

Educated
Joined
Sep 21, 2020
Messages
222
Who tf did the character faces and facial animations? They're so bad it reminded me of the Mass Effect "sorry, my face is tired" meme...

Aside from that world exploration is pretty fun, combat is average at best and the story took a turn for the worse (I fucking hate Jax parenting shit). This is pretty much your typical PB sequel.
 

soulburner

Cipher
Joined
Sep 21, 2013
Messages
809
It's the lighting system they used. If you look at the faces during the night, they look pretty much alright. The facial expressions and animations are very good, they just look kind of grotesque because of how the light propagates.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
The main release of the quarter ELEX II did not live up to management’s financial expectations in the quarter but we are expecting a positive ROI over time.

Another release, Expeditions Rome, developed by the external studio Logic Artists was well received by players and critics. Both ELEX II and Expeditions Rome are expected to be long tail sellers.

Fabulously optimistic indeed.
 
Joined
Feb 7, 2019
Messages
167
Is this game still relevant?
Not really, didn't get good impressions from this forum. I played Elden Ring and now I play Outward Definitive Edition which released on the 17 May, also installed Red dead redemption 2 and death stranding. Probably gonna play ELEX 2 later in the summer or next year when they have fixed it and there are good community mods that fixes it more. Which is a shame sense I played ELEX 1 first time last year which I loved.
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
Patron
Joined
Mar 27, 2016
Messages
9,170
Location
Disco Elysium
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
It's the lighting system they used. If you look at the faces during the night, they look pretty much alright. The facial expressions and animations are very good, they just look kind of grotesque because of how the light propagates.


Yes, jax's face looks great in this screenshot i took

20220429230548_1.jpg
 

Smerlus

Educated
Joined
Mar 29, 2020
Messages
133
On one hand I have to show respect to PB for just slowly and gradually declining in quality in their video games. They never set the bar that high to begin with but their games have generally been filled with good ideas and good quest design. I really didn't see much evidence of that here.

The highlight of the game, for me, was the little bits of reactiveness spread through the story. The way NPCs would migrate from location to location depending on decisions made.

The low point is the last 1.5 chapters relying on trash mobs to push the story along. Makes me really regret role playing in this RPG. I should have just tried to find the strongest weapon in the game, max out the required skills and attributes and then pick one of the shitty groups to align with. I wish you could have two AI companions because maybe having two dumbasses tagging along, they might actually strike an enemy once every 15 seconds.

Usually the bugs and jankiness are the biggest downers in PB games but this time around it seems nothing was feeling right about this game.
 

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
9,835
Location
Free City of Warsaw
Ok, after a month and a half I returned to Elex 2 and started playing it for real. Faces are still butt-ugly (I met Caja) but this time I play in English which helps with weak dialogues (they were terribly delivered in Polish). Anyway,has there been any performance patch in last 2 months? I have not yet visited a city so didn't experience a slideshow: the game yet.
 

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
9,835
Location
Free City of Warsaw
I play in English which helps with weak dialogues (they were terribly delivered in Polish).
I have a lot of trouble believing they're better in English tbh.

Nah, the dialogues still suck, but they're better delivered so at least they sound ok (when you're not thinking about words that form them). I don't know who they hired for the Polish dubbing but even the first conversation with Adam seemed so jarring to me I could not go on with this.
 

soulburner

Cipher
Joined
Sep 21, 2013
Messages
809
I generally cannot stand Polish dubbing in games. The voices are always exaggerated and recorded as if it's an animated movie for kids.

There is a DirectX 12 preview build available on Steam, which is now over a month old and no further updates have been released (well, there was one, which supposedly fixed a crash for more recent Nvidia driver update). It improves performance by a lot: on my RTX 3060 some areas which had about 38 fps now have 60 with vsync - but introduces a few problems, like broken antialiasing or super-bright-and-foggy-nights, which make the game barely playable.
 

coldcrow

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2009
Messages
1,649
Short version: they fucked up. No clear, concise design ideal, game systems all over the place and unfocused, gfx and sound barely adequate and technical execution very shoddy. One has to wonder wtf happened to PB.
 

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
9,835
Location
Free City of Warsaw
I generally cannot stand Polish dubbing in games. The voices are always exaggerated and recorded as if it's an animated movie for kids.

It all depends on a quality of actors. Polish dubbing for the Witchers is great, also I enjoyed it a lot in Horizon: Zero Dawn. In Archolos is was okay, not great,not terrible. Some of it sounded flat and delivered without emotion,but some of it was good.

Perhaps there are good parts of Polish dubbing in Elex but I could not stand Jax's voice so I changed to English. If you don't have funds to hire good voice actors it's better not to make dubbing at all and offer 'cinematic' version - Polish subtitles, English voice.
 

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
9,835
Location
Free City of Warsaw
Okay, the game has a lot of problems but exploring the world is still fun. I even managed to find some high level and unique weapons in the world, though it seems more empty than in Elex 1.

Also, character development is a joy. After 7 hours I'm on level 7, so pretty early, but already specializing in Lockpicking, jetpack and hoping to branch out into Chemistry once I find a proper teacher for those tasty elex potions.

Visited the Cleric's Castle (pity how low they've fallen), found the android companion in some random factory, trying to legally enter Fort (while visiting it by climbing the wall when I need to trade). It's janky fun, typical experience for recent PB games.
 

Nikanuur

Arbiter
Patron
Joined
Mar 1, 2021
Messages
1,484
Location
Ngranek
On one hand I have to show respect to PB for just slowly and gradually declining in quality in their video games. They never set the bar that high to begin with but their games have generally been filled with good ideas and good quest design. I really didn't see much evidence of that here.

The highlight of the game, for me, was the little bits of reactiveness spread through the story. The way NPCs would migrate from location to location depending on decisions made.

The low point is the last 1.5 chapters relying on trash mobs to push the story along. Makes me really regret role playing in this RPG. I should have just tried to find the strongest weapon in the game, max out the required skills and attributes and then pick one of the shitty groups to align with. I wish you could have two AI companions because maybe having two dumbasses tagging along, they might actually strike an enemy once every 15 seconds.

Usually the bugs and jankiness are the biggest downers in PB games but this time around it seems nothing was feeling right about this game.
Bah, your crone is degrading.
 

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
9,835
Location
Free City of Warsaw
34 hours in, level 23. Finally mastered chemistry, so mass production of elex potions began. Still in chapter 1 though, did not pick a faction.

Exploration is still fun, though the world somehow seems smaller, despite having more landmass and 5 big settlements instead of 4. I also miss old desert of Tavar. Now it's either greenlands, snow or volcanic terrain. Since you get access to strong companions really fast, it's easier to venture far and fight more advanced monsters early. The improved jetpack also helps to avoid most of the heavy-hitters and quickly traverse the map.

Some quests are cool, even if most are kill this, fetch this. Dialogue stopped sucking balls after the intro, but it's not stellar either. It gives context to the story, but that's about it.

Performance is poor in populated areas. Sure, I play on PC from late 2015, but it managed to run much more beautiful games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance or Horizon: Zero Dawn on max settings with better framerate. So it comes down to PB's inferior coding.

High requirements aren't really justified by gorgeous visuals. It mostly looks like Elex 1, with the exception of character faces, which are pure decline, both Caja and Nasty are uglier than in the previous game, and they weren't exactly beauties back then.

Combat is a frantic affair (mostly due to low framerate), I miss the old combo system. Now it mostly devolves into button mashing, Gothic 3 style.

So far I do not see Elex 2 as an improvement over its predecessor. And yet I cannot stop playing it. Yesterday I spent 8 hours in Magalan. Most games usually don't manage to grip me so strongly. Somehow PB magic still works, despite all the ineptness and all the jank.
 
Joined
Feb 7, 2019
Messages
167
So how is the patch situation? Have they releases patches and fixed the worse performance and gameplay bugs? Actually thinking of trying it out soon, after some 100 more hours in Outward DE, New Vegas and Death Stranding.
 

soulburner

Cipher
Joined
Sep 21, 2013
Messages
809
So how is the patch situation? Have they releases patches and fixed the worse performance and gameplay bugs? Actually thinking of trying it out soon, after some 100 more hours in Outward DE, New Vegas and Death Stranding.
No updates have been released for quite some time now. The DX12 patch has been released in a preview version, but that one has also not seen any further updates. As much as the DX12 version (available on Steam only) improves the performance from being barely playable to super smooth, at least on my end, it has enough problems of its own that it's not a good idea to play the whole game with it. I have not seen any information from developers, maybe they said something about this on their Discord, but I haven't bothered to take a look over there, because Discord is the most unreadable mess I have ever witnessed in the entirety of my existence.

If they do not release the DX12 patch in a 'final' form any time soon or ever, I guess I'm going to replay it from scratch once I upgrade my PC to a Zen 5/RTX 5070Ti or something.
 

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