Have you actually played it? Because it sounds like you’re just parroting the haters from further up this thread or maybe just watched some negative twitch videos.
I feel like the extended period of Elex meme bullshit on this site ended up doing the actual game a great disservice (although to be fair, who could predict it would turn out to be good?). Elex has plenty of flaws, but it also has a ton of redeeming qualities. I think the good outweighs the bad and as long as you approach the game with an ounce of thought, it’s downright addictive.
My point by point refutation:
Combat gets fun when you learn it, which really doesn’t take that long. The autolock sucks, but turn it off and the experience is vastly improved. Most of the hate here come from people trying to play Elex like Dark Souls when they should really be approaching it like any other PB title.
The hitboxes aren’t great, but again once you get a feel for the combat it’s not much of a problem. It can make for egregious looking videos, but once you realize what will hit you and what won’t it stops having much impact on gameplay. There were not many occasions in the Elex where I felt like it was ridiculous that I’d just been hit.
The inventory system may be suboptimal, but that only matters when you’re selling stuff. For everything else it’s adequate. Then again I hate playing inventory Tetris, and I don’t consider the character/inventory system to be a particularly important part of the game. I know the asperger’s crowd will disagree, but I’ll never see eye to eye with them anyway (because they find eye contact uncomfortable—get it!?).
You can turn off the lens flare when leaving a building. Personally, I like how it mimics reality, and even if you don’t like it, it’s still better than a game with a zillion loading screens.
Some quests can be broken, in that you’ve already completed the objective before you get the quest, but they end up being pretty few and far between and frankly it happens in all RPGs. Only difference with Elex is that the game rewards you with EXP too soon in these situations. Big fucking deal.
My pros? Elex thrives as a role playing game. You have to put some actual thought into conversations because NPCs lie and/or try to take advantage of you constantly. Maybe I’m a consequential dialogue fag because tactical conversation is one of my favorite aspects of a good RPG.
And Elex has excellent choice and consequence, with long-term reverberations from your choices that play out many hours further into the game. Lots of great unintended consequences, both for your character and for the world. IMO the fact that your choices over the course of the whole game affect the options you’re given at the end represents a smart kind of character creation. You may not be able to customize how Jax looks, but over the course of the game you get to define his character and that actually has story and even gameplay implications. A cold blooded Jax can be better with guns, a hot blooded Jax is better with magic, and a balanced Jax can be better at melee. What your character does defines who they are, not just how NPCs react to them—we don’t see this often enough.
The characters are generally pretty dark and realistic. Most companions are fairly compelling or entertaining (even the very cliche Nasty has some great color commentary while exploring the game world). The factions are appropriately loathsome and faction choice affects gameplay.
As others have said before, Elex is a diamond in the rough. That still makes it a diamond, though. It’s easy to nitpick because PB is a small studio that tried to do something very ambitious with a limited budget. It’s not perfect. But taken as a whole, it’s very good game that’s well worth playing.
