ELEX

Elex could have been good. It is not. The graphics, story, setting - they're all compelling enough to make you think things will get good, but they don't. But in the end, games should be fun, and Elex is NOT fun, not at all. So here is the problem - the actual gameplay is hot garbage, and nothing BUT hot garbage. First, armor and damage are absolute, so if your weapon does 20 damage, and the monster has 20 armor, you can't damage it at all (unless you do these little 2-3 hit combos, each stage of which is also absolute, and raises your damage a couple points for each successful strike). There are no critical hits. There are not hit boxes. If the weapon does area damage it does the same damage shooting next to the feet as pegging them between the eyes. If you don't use guides, expect 30+ HOURS running from area to area, doing every moronic fetch quest in the game, just to level to the minimum stats to equip a weapon that damages enemies, like, at all. You will be one-shot-killed by every trash mob until you level enough to equip a good weapon and armor, so running is the ONLY thing you can do, for 20-30 FREAKING HOURS! THEN, when you finally DO get a good weapon about 30-40 hours in, the game stops being compelling at all because now you're the invincible juggernaut that staggers and one-hit-kills every enemy and there is zero challenge. I finally got geared and thought, "yay! now I can progress through the story!" but since there was no puzzle, or challenge, or anything other than clicking on enemies to insta-kill them, the mediocre story gave me no reason to continue. I felt I had wasted days of my life because of this game - not because it was good or it was fun, but it was JUST compelling enough that I thought it MIGHT get good around the next corner, but it never did. Save yourself the pain and do something better with your life.

Very, very tedious and unrewarding combat, uninteresting story, somewhat interesting characters. Setting should be semi-open world instead, works much better.

I see why this series killed the studio. Its boring, its designed for you to just talk to people that whole game, not only do you get hardly any XP for combat, but it ridiculasly hard to the point most will quit in the first hour. Piranaha studio should have shut down after Gothic 2.

Graphics does not look very modern at the beginning, but... We love Gothic not for its graphics, you know. Combat is hard when you low level and later becoming too easy. Story is good. A lot of places to search. Many interesting and funny quests. Summary: Gothic's fans must to buy it.

Echoing many of the reviews so far: If you liked the Gothic games, and even Risen, then you'll love this game. There's literally no hand-holding when it comes to difficulty. On more than one occasion I've walked fifty feet from where I one-shotted a monster, only to have one where my damage doesn't even make their health bar visibly move. There are some rough patches, such as the voice acting, but it's not really that bad. I think that it's more than made up for by an intriguing story, neat side quests, open world exploration with a jet pack, and the ability to choose between lasers, magic, and harpoon guns. Overall, I highly recommend this game.