ELEX II

As usual, a lot of the Steam and GOG reviews are people complaining about poor performance, while ignoring the substance of the game. Elex II is a solid classic RPG that doesn't hold the player's hand or bombard him with annoying tutorials. You're expected to figure things out for yourself, deal with unexpected challenges, learn how to navigate the world, etc. There is a real sense of progression because these games are tough at first and your character is fairly useless before leveling up. Exploration and time investment generally are rewarded, and seeing your character become more powerful and able to take down the enemies that previously would wreck you immediately is satisfying. It's not a game for impatient people needing instant gratification. But if you like other PB games, or a Bethesda game such as Morrowind, that is, one released prior to the dumbing down from Oblivion on, you'll probably enjoy the well-crafted and immersive world and quests of Elex II. For the record I noticed no performance problems, but I'm not one of these people who obsessively count fps and cry if it ever falls below 60. I go on whether the game runs smoothly enough to play without problems.

What a horrible way to make a sequel. For all its limitations and roughness, elex 1 offered a weird but somewhat believable world and characters. This game: 1) Sets up a canon ending for elex 1. You were a good hearted outlaw? Maybe you spent more time with Nasty? What if you took hybrids place? F**k you. 2) Every. single. npc. is a massive asshole. They are ALL unlikeable. And they are made this war just for the sake of being assholes. There's no other justification for it. Each and every guard will bully you into doing chores for them before you are allowed to enter a city, then a district, then a specific building. It gets annoying REALLY fast. Especially since game straight up ignores any of your accomplishments from the first game. 3) PB games were never the pinnacle of polishing, but this is new low. Game looks worse than the first entry, it runs really bad and it's just ugly. Technically its an improvement, more faces, more polygons, more animations. But quantity obviously was preferred over quality. Elex 1 did more with less. Elex 2 looks like a game made in unity from free assets. 7 days to die looked like that 10 years ago. 4) Logic suffers. I wont even start on "morkons" just because their name alone is something sounds like a 4 decades long outdated joke nobody found fun even back then. Every motivation ,every plot point is messed up. Every faction acts against their own core beliefs and character. For example, Nasty, a self made against all odds warrior and genius tactician and a freedom loving outlaw joined religious fanatics with strict organization and code of laws because she did not want to start from scratch again once forced out of the Fort. What the f**k? 5) The usual rpg "system" is still there and it's getting really frustrating to deal with. Combat is not fun, leveling up is not fun. It feels like a job. Just don't. I'm not sure what happened, but just pretend it doesnt exist. Giving it a 1 star would be dishonest, the game is playable still

I've played a bit and the game seems like an overall improvement over ELEX 1 (which I've also been replaying recently so I have fresh information on it) but the most standout issue at this time is the bad camera zoom handling. When the character is standing still the game zooms in a lot (forcing me to strain my eyes and move my head further back). When the character starts moving it zooms back to a "normal" level of zoom so now my eyes have to re-adjust and I feel like moving my head closer to the monitor where the normal position would be. My head is normally about 3 feet/1 m from the monitor and this is very distracting. I got a slight headache and struggled to focus my eyes in other programs after 15 minutes of playing the game. I hope this is not going to be game breaking and I can continue to play as the game seems to be very solid otherwise. I'll update the review as I get more information, especially if I find ways to fix this or if they fix it with a patch. Note that the only review I found of Elex 2 (search for "elex 2 30 hours played") is complaining about this very issue as being a significant regression compared to Elex 1 and I agree. This is probably less of an issue if you play the game on a TV at much longer distance than a monitor would normally be at.

Instant motion sickness trying to play this game. The FOV can't be adjusted, and it's way to low, or at least it feels that way because the camera is ridiculously close to the player, who is always blocking your view. The camera is constantly zooming in and out from your character and it feels like there is mouse smoothing that can't be disabled. I have played every other PB game, yeah even Risen 2, so I hope I can come back and adjust my review, but for now it's just not playable. Wait for a fix.