ELEX

Loving this game. In the beginning I whimpered a lot and died. Then I learned how to run and hide and gradually I got stronger. Now, heaven help the enemy! This is how it should be. If you start out too strong you never have to learn tactics and skills. Previously when faced with these kind of odds I resorted to cheat codes. Not this time, couldn't find any so I toughed it out. Well worth the purchase price, don't listen to the whiners who want everything handed to them on a plate. It is not perfect but it is really worth buying.

I really struggle to understand what the people giving this game a 4/5 or even 5/5 see in it. From me, it gets 1 star for being functional *in a purely technical sense* and another for the visual design, which in a few places is pretty and somewhat interesting (even though the graphical fidelity isn't what it should have been in 2017). That's the good over with. THE BAD: - The main story is entirely forgettable. - Much of the dialogue is *aggressively* bad (both in English and German), both in terms of writing and in delivery of the voice acting. - All of the factions - and, like Gothic, you need to join a faction to progress in the plot - are completely unlikeable. Here are your choices: you can side with a) the magic tree Nazis, b) the desert meth Nazis or c) the techno-church Nazis. - The world is much bigger than it needs to be to contain what it does. It feels empty and pointless in a lot of places. - The combat is *monumentally* awful. They went for a Dark Souls-esque combat system but didn't understand what makes Dark Souls combat work on a very fundamental level. A combat system like that needs very careful tweaking and balancing to be challenging but fun. This is just a frustrating mess. I could go on about the quest design and faction mechanics and whatnot, but the game really doesn't justify the effort. As the title says: it's bad, and it's not even bad in interesting ways. The ideas put into this game were very average to begin with and then the execution was terrible on top of that. Give this one a miss. And while I have you here: *please* stop buying games just because they're "by" someone. And for the love of God stop DEFENDING/PRAISING games just because they're "by" someone. The glory days of Piranha Bytes are long gone. Even as far back as 2002/2003, only *one* of the original founders of the studio remained. It's just a company using the name to get nostalgia dollars out of old people like us, they don't need supporting or defending.

You know when you really really want to play something, but you can't get past how clunky it is? So, yeah.

Couple of hours in and i had to turn the difficulty down from ultra as i kept getting rekt. Game is smooth, some people on steam are complaining the voice acting is terrible, i actually think its pretty good. Doesn't have sli and at 4k i can't run it on a single 980 which is a shame, but 60fps at 1440 maxed.

Alright, my first ever game review. Elex is an unpolished gem, in some ways. The story is a little bit of a slow starter, but ramps up realy good. The mix-up of fantasy (Clerics, axes/bows/magic), current tech (Outlaws, chems/projectile weapons) and sci-fi (clerics, energy weapons/psi powers) is nicely done. It begs you to have multiple playthoughs, as you can only join one faction at a time. Every weapon (axes/swords/hammers, current projectile weapons and plasma/laser rifles) are viable gameplay styles. Magic, Psi powers and chem-fueled bonuses are available as soon as you join the faction that uses them. [As for the balance of these powers, I can't say too much about that. I only played as clerics (psi) so far] . The combat is, at times, clanky and has annoying bugs in it (can't aim with ranged weapons from time to time). Also, at the start, basicly every enemy has a real good chance to kill you. But as you progress in the game, you get better gear, better stats and better skills. The amount of skills is also a big plus point. The reward when you finally can kill bigger enemys is sooo satisfying. It still has annoying bugs in it, like not be able to save if you have a lot of save files. Or some graphical glitches here and there (for me they were realy rare) But all in all the game, for what it is, and who made it, is a fantastic game. Everyone who can look under the hood of a game, and can tolerate some clankyness, will have a blast of a time playing this game.