ELEX ELEX RELEASE THREAD

[Shadenuat]

commander dork 1/1
commander hork 0/1
commander snork 0/1
commander kek 1/1
comannder-sdfdshfj

 

[abnaxus]

Caja is a true friend.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Finished.

Lawnmowed everything there was to lawnmow, p. much 100%'d the gaem I'm p. sure. Save game tells me I spent 69 hours on it, but I spent at least 15 more on reloading and idling (got the 80h cheevo at 65 save time).

And yet after all these 80+ hours, my impression is mostly the same as after 20. ELEX is the best shit game I've ever played

Obligatory endgame charsheet screenie:

Without gulping down elex pots en masse, the game is really stingy with points. The above are actually STR 55 and DEX 64, I just have +10 ring and ammy. For most of the endgame I tried to hog enough points to catapult me to 85 DEX and get ranged waffen III, but I could never get there. Only after I killed the fucking final boss and levelled up again would the 110 I have now in the pic suffice.



Also I was considering trying a 2nd turbo-playthrough with a full ELEX'd up outlaw, but now I'm not so sure whether it's even much necessary. And if anything, I need some ELEX detox anyway.

So in other words, expect revioo soon

 

[Cyberarmy]

p. much 100%'d the gaem I'm p. sure.

How many large gems you were able to "craft" ? I

 

[Shadenuat]

You need 90 CON to get 3 points in Heavy Weapons. Think about it for a sec.

I was able to get both ranged and melee at tier 3 during endgame on my no-elex viking. But I was more focused and used jewelry (+10 dex amulet, +10 str ring). Here:

Remove many levels since it's endgame and I invested in CON for armor later and into CUN to level up magic, and remove 5 or so points from str and dex just because I messed up and did some rounding up to make stats look pretty. You need 70 str for 2 handed sword and 78 dex for war bow III.

 

[Darth Roxor]

p. much 100%'d the gaem I'm p. sure.

How many large gems you were able to "craft" ? I

will hafta check but i think 3

deffo didnt have a large red one

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

It is either incompetence or a fuck you to customers as they know they will sell cause of the German drones who will swallow their shit.

I mean Gothic 3,4 and Risen 2 are highlight that PB can no longer into incline.

Tagging aweigh for information. Don't get fooled by the propaganda of these German Drones. Half the praisers of Elex are simply doing so because its developed by a German studio.

Holy shit, yeah dude, we like Elex because it’s German, right.

Look, many of your criticisms are of stuff that just isn’t important, at least not to me (or to many others). Hating a game for its inventory system would be like deciding not to buy a car because you don’t like how the cup holders look. As for the lighting effects, it’s not like you’re going in and out of buildings that often, and someone described how to disable this further up the thread. Getting EXP for finding or killing something before you get assigned the quest to do it is stupid, but again, feels like a pretty minor problem. Capping saves at 100–who gives a fuck? Just copy your old saves to a different folder and then overwrite the originals.

Complaining about the hitboxes... you must have really great vision because I never felt like it was that bad, and again it’s really easy to adapt to.

I don’t want to give anyone shit for being on the autism spectrum, but these are some aspy dealbreakers. The fact that you don’t engage with any of my arguments in favor of Elex is pretty telling.

That’s why I wondered if you’d actually played the game, because there are plenty of perfectly valid reasons why someone might dislike Elex, they’re just not the ones you cite. Others have hated the inverted difficulty curve—too hard at the beginning, too easy at the end—or the idiosyncracies of the English translation, or the endgame story, or the emptiness of Ignadon, or that the occasional need to use quest markers is immersion breaking.


Back to the hilarious “German drones” thing:

Given the prevalence of national socialism on this site, maybe this isn’t as crazy as it sounds... But where I grew up ze Germans were still considered ze bad guys. Other than classical composers, 19th century novelists and the occasional brilliant conductor (Furtwangler!), Deutschland isn’t exactly known for its cultural achievements (Nietzsche doesn’t count—he identified as Polish, see Ecce Homo). I guess Kraftwerk is tolerable and Nico was a good singer. Really, though, unless we’re talking about a car or a camera, “made in Germany” is more of a reason NOT to buy something.

In other words, you cray.

 

[Lambach]

One of the things that really, really bothers me about all PB games, including Elex, is the lack of unique combat encounters. In this particular instance, you spend most of the game hunting Kallax, you constantly get to hear about what a super badass cool Elexetor he is now and how you stand no chance against him unless you grow into a total badass motherfucker yourself etc. And what happens when you finally have your 1v1 with him? He has the exact same combat style and power of the average Alb soldier mook. God fucking damn it, PB, is it really so hard to program some extra spells or special moves that only the person you spend 3/4 of the game preparing to fight can do?

 

[Zerth]

Creatures are always more dangerous and more fun to fight thro any PB game I've played so far. Specially orcs in Gothic 1&2 or Lizardmen in Risen.

Anyways. I want to know something from you ppl that already beaten the game but not did everything and rushed endgame. In which level you ended up after beating final boss?. I did every quest available, looked around every nook n' cranny and also reached lvl 46 after finished main quest endgame.

BTW, How good is the best fully upgraded laser rifle compared to the best plasma? And if you use any other mode than laser single fire.

 

[Murk]

The unique Laser (mortal stream) is the best, it's 120 damage at rank 3 in ranged and gives you the mutant killer perk. Holds more ammo too.

 

[abnaxus]

lel boilerplate's ELEX review



http://nichegamer.com/reviews/elex-review/

The Verdict: 9
The Good:

• Amazing graphics
• Tons of choice & consequence
• Moderately non-linear and highly replayable
• large, well designed open world
• A fun twist on the cliched post-apocalyptic style
• Lots of tactics to employ in combat makes late game battles very enjoyable

The Bad:

• Spend the first half of the game relatively under-powered
• Combat can be awkward at times, requires lots of patience and practice

 

[Murk]

My rereview: p. janky but p. good

 

[Shadenuat]

late game battles very enjoyable

late game battles very enjoyable
late game battles very enjoyablelate game battles very enjoyablelate game battles very enjoyablelate game battles very enjoyablelate game battles very enjoyablelate game battles very enjoyablelate game battles very enjoyablefAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

So imagine my shock when I played Elex and had to check the desktop icon to make sure I didn’t accidentally load Gothic 2: Night of the Raven by mistake.

With its only downsides being an awkward progression table and combat that comes with a steep learning curve, I was highly tempted to give Elex a 10.

shadenaut.exe crashed

 

[Tigranes]

Creatures are always more dangerous and more fun to fight thro any PB game I've played so far. Specially orcs in Gothic 1&2 or Lizardmen in Risen.

Anyways. I want to know something from you ppl that already beaten the game but not did everything and rushed endgame. In which level you ended up after beating final boss?. I did every quest available, looked around every nook n' cranny and also reached lvl 46 after finished main quest endgame.

BTW, How good is the best fully upgraded laser rifle compared to the best plasma? And if you use any other mode than laser single fire.

As someone who doesn't ever grind and avoids a lot of monsters & probably missed quite a few things, ~35. Didn't worry me since if you drink ELEX you can beat anything after ~25.

Honestly at this point I'd say Difficult & No-Elex or Little-Elex (e.g. house rule of not buying any from merchants) is the way to go. I don't think it's more fun to go Ultra and chug Elex.

 

[Lambach]

BTW, How good is the best fully upgraded laser rifle compared to the best plasma? And if you use any other mode than laser single fire.

A fully upgraded Plasma will always be better than the fully upgraded laser, including the Legendary one, because Plasma has a guaranteed knockdown in one of its firing modes. Burst or Auto-fire laser does more DPS, but a fully upgraded Plasma Rifle allows you to do similar damage while also making sure your enemies can't do jack shit against you.

 

[imweasel]

BTW, How good is the best fully upgraded laser rifle compared to the best plasma? And if you use any other mode than laser single fire.

Plasma rifles are better, but the ammo is rather expensive and is nearly never dropped. Energy cells for laser rifles are cheaper and enemies drop them by the boat load, so ammo for the laser rifle effectively costs nothing. In single shot mode they do comparable amounts of damage. Laser rifles have substantially larger magazines.

They are both good and have their pros and cons. That said, I almost always used the laser rifle in my playthrough. Stunning enemies with the plasma rifle's EMP mode was only useful in certain situations IMO.

 

[Tigranes]

Stunning enemies with the plasma rifle's EMP mode was only useful in certain situations IMO.

?? If you use the ball mode, it's autowin for almost any enemy because you can stunlock them like you do with black hole.

 

[sser]

Stepping on a landmine scared the shit out of me.

Also, did anyone go the outlaw route with guns? Seems like most are going the laser cannon route with the clerics.

 

[imweasel]

Stunning enemies with the plasma rifle's EMP mode was only useful in certain situations IMO.

?? If you use the ball mode, it's autowin for almost any enemy because you can stunlock them like you do with black hole.

It is only really useful in certain situations, so you might as well just save the plasma rifle ammo. Plasma rifle cells are somewhat expensive after all.

That said, if you have cash to burn then go for it.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Finished it too after 67 hours (15 or more of those were spent on reloading near impossible fights because I couldn't let it go).

Everything after joining the Outlaws was dull and going through the motions. Even climbing the Outlaw faction ranks was not satisfying. Every kind of upgrade was way too expensive too. Nearly 20k for an armor that still doesn't prevent patrons and molochs from onehitting you with their special attack?
And I really hated the end game with these never ending fights against combat robots (annoying in melee, bleed DoT effect doesn't seem to work well on them) and mechs ... which are designed to be even more annoying to fight in melee so I just grilled them with that unique flame thrower that you can find in the Hort instead.
Molochs were also shit, they hit too hard and need only 2 to 3 attacks to kill me even with the best armor and on level 45. Also they are as frantic as these little birds.
Other combat AIs were on the opposite end of the shit spectrum, like the ridiculously easy to kill humans, trolls and all the other giants. It's way too easy to war dance around them in circles without getting hit.
And they really really have to do something about these hitboxes. At least the ones for thrown rocks need to get a lot smaller. Also rocks shouldn't be allowed to be thrown in the opposite direction as the giant hand movement.
And enemies on a rooftop above me shouldn't be able to stand on air like Wile E. Coyote before realizing that he is defying the laws of physics and they definitely shouldn't be able to shoot me from there.

The story was quite bad too, especially Jax' monologues which were written by a complete moron.

I never felt like a god near the end, I just groaned in frustrations everytime another one of these fucking mechs showed up. Or everytime one of these ridiculously big mutant packs attacked me. Because then I often had to ignore my dedicated melee build and draw the flame thrower instead because enemies came in waves more reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead than previous PB games. Must have used nearly 2000 flame thrower rounds in the whole game.
And regarding weapon types, what's up with shotguns and grenade launchers/bazookas? They are all shit. Also why don't shotguns knock back enemies?

So while I don't regret playing this I'm also a bit disappointed. PB still writes stories that are cringeworthy, the open world design felt poorly balanced and even character building wasn't particularily satisfying because attributes don't do much besides unlocking equipment and skills, and many skills are completely useless.

The cold system was broken for me btw. I must have used over a hundred Elex and strong Elex potions and chose a mix of emotional and cold answers and it still declined to "irrational" and later "expressive" without going up even after drinking 20 Elex potions in a row..
But I was okay with the emotional answers in most cases so whatever.

I don't think that I'll buy the sequel to this. At least not full price.

screenshots:

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

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The last five odd hours—assuming you just plow through the endgame—are indeed much worse than everything that came before. I always assume that the end of an RPG will kind of suck, but PB is one of the worst offenders in terms of the drop off in quality.

I waited a long time to join a faction, too, and I feel like I would’ve gotten more out of it if I’d joined 5-10 levels earlier.

They really seem to have put a lot more time, effort and thought into chapters 1-3.

 

[Grimlorn]

Also I was considering trying a 2nd turbo-playthrough with a full ELEX'd up outlaw, but now I'm not so sure whether it's even much necessary. And if anything, I need some ELEX detox anyway.

So in other words, expect revioo soon

Game's not worth playing more than once imo. There just isn't enough reactivity or C&C that matters in the game. Being in a different faction or picking different dialogue options doesn't really change anything that matters as far as I can tell. All those so and so's death will affect the story or your decision will have far reaching consequences messages don't affect anything most, if not all, of the time.

 

[Tigranes]

Is the huge variance in felt combat difficulty a factor of stunlocks? NotAGolfer's experience is strange to me - Molochs are powerful but they were never a threat beyond level 25 or so, and combat mechs become trivial after that as well. Hell, with plasma rifles you can easily stunkill Cyclops! Late game battles were either fun in the "I finally get to roflstomp these fuckers" way or boring in the "meh nobody poses a real threat" way, and I wonder if that changes if you refuse to use any knockdown of any kind.

 

[NotAGolfer]

I tried mixing it up and using strong attacks but the enemy types that gave me trouble in melee (at the end only mechs and molochs, everything else was manageable) never got knocked down.
Knocked back a bit, sure, but with fast attacks too. And I couldn't stunlock these 2 enemies (mechs retaliate after about 3 fast attacks most of the time, molochs are even more random).
Blocking works wonders though, but their attacks don't get signalled early and this rhythmic swing gymnastics (TM) combat system often gets in the way. So atm the only reliable way to melee both enemy types is killing everything else that surrounds them and then switching between one or two swings and constant blocking afterwards. And a lot of dodge rolls too to evade their special attacks or the mech's ranged one. Feels a bit like Witcher 3 with enemies ten levels above you then.


None of these enemies are a threat anymore btw, but since I specialized in melee and I didn't build 3-tier ranged weapons the furnace was the only ranged weapon that kept them at bay. Most other ranged weapons still took way too long to kill anything near the end. Except maybe for serrated spears (there's a unique speargun somewhere) but these don't stagger enemy groups running towards you.

I was playing on Ultra difficulty for the second half of the game btw. And mostly without a companion.


edit:
One more thing that bugged me and then I stop with this rant.
The jetpack attack doesn't really work. Against smallish enemies it does but if you want to initiate combat against molochs, stalkers, combat mechs and other bigger enemy types then Jax just slides down in front of them with the attack not triggering. Probably because the enemy is occupying the spot where he is supposed to land so the animation just glitches out.
Looks very weird too.

 

[RK47]

Obviously he did not grenade.