ELEX

Like my title says. If you loved Gothic 1 and 2, then you will love this game. So much of this game feels like I am playing Gothic 1 or 2 but in a different world. The combat is fun and challenging, the game does not hold your hand unless you want it to, they give you plenty of information to go about it yourself if you do not want any of the hand holding options. The graphics are spectacular. I highly recommend this for any Gothic 1 and 2 fan.

If you want an open world game which doesn't hold your hand and encourages exploration, horizontally and vertically, with great reactivity get this game. Example: Intro plays, you get through the tutorial motions, riding an elevator down and meet the first guy which wants to guide you to his village. You go back to the elevator but the button is broken. Casuals would go, OK, go with the guy. But you can also go, fuck that, and jetpack your way back to the place where the intro movie plays and be rewarded for that with loot. You played Stalker and found getting to high up places is the most interesting thing besides the atmosphere? Get this game. All systems in the game are not geared towards casuals (like, don't button mash but hit the time window of hit). This is true spirited PC game.

Let’s be upfront: This review will be long and fairly negative. I do not recommend this game at the current price and consider it daylight robbery. If you are a fan of the Gothic/Risen series then you might be able to see past the failures of this game. The game does not record your gaming time properly: when you die (which you will be doing a lot), it resets it to your last save. Alright onto the review: As far as good point goes the game is actually not bad looking: yes graphics may be a little outdated, but overall, the designs are actually good and there are some really nice touches which coincide with the settings. The story keeps true to itself and is not as wonky as certain people might tell you: the Berserkers faction makes sense in their design and behaviours as do the Clerics and Outlaws. They have made a nice mix of Mad Max, Skyrim and Fallout: wanting to know where the story ultimately leads is what keeps me going. The jetpack is a sweet tool and you will be using it pretty much all the time, including during fights. It enables you to go everywhere, and explore everything without too much trouble. The game does not hold your hand: you have to explore, fight, learn how this world works (advantage is given to those who know the Risen series, you’ll at least know how the skills system works), make your own decisions and most decisions will have an impact on the world/factions. Given that you meet the requirements, you can use almost any (non-faction bound), items, armour and weapons. The game is generous with quest and gives you plenty of options to deal with them. There is a nice play of light when switching from interior to exterior, which complement nicely with the ambience of the game. 0 loading time and lag making it an enjoyable, fluid and seamless exploration. It kept the Risen/Gothic feel that we have come to love (and hate). Now onto what they did not so well. I will start with the most obvious: The combat system: Anyone that has played Risen, knows that PB is not known to create the most fluid and varied combat style out there. It is slow, you only have two moves in melee (and a super, not so super) and it feels very, very clunky. As with Risen 2 for example, you will get used to it and learn to forgive its many wrongs. Saying that, you will die: if Dark Souls was unforgiving, Elex is unfair. Being a sucker for punishment I play in Ultra (highest difficulty): you do little damage and most mobs are several times higher level than you are and will one shot you. Those mobs are conveniently place almost everywhere, most easily avoidable, and really close to the main Hubs, making foot and on road travel, a suicide mission, even with a companion. It doesn’t help that even the hardest mobs give you little experience and miserable loot. The AI has this really annoying and lazy feature: if you see them starting their moves and step (not dodge) out of the way of their telegraphed attack, even if the attack is supposed to go in a straight line or you are supposed to be out of reach, they will magically move the extra mile or touch you: the hit box is a horrendous mess at times. It’s a lazy turnaround to add difficulty to your combat system, when as a dev you know that it is clunky. Also some mobs completely ignore your attacks and attack you anyway: that problem is absolutely random. Finally, if a mob is on slight slope or on a step, your companion and yourself will not be able to melee it. Tactical combat is a lie or at least a misguided wording, challenging is true, due to the fact that their outdated, slow, buggy, clunky, unfair combat system makes it so. The Story: the only thing that doesn’t fit at all in the story: Jax. He is supposed to be an Elite Alb commander, yet, he starts at level 1 and can be one shotted by a rat. He also possess really random stats and has 0 skills whatsoever. If this is an Elite Alb commander, how the hell do the Alb win the war? The Loot System: absolute garbage, you can be lucky while exploring which is nice (even if you won’t be able to use those items) but the drops are some of the worst I have seen in RPGs. You will never loot armour from a fallen enemy or their weapons for that matters, just some random junk and elexit. The Map: you can’t zoom out all the way and there is no way to place personalised markers: you can place one useless marker, which you cannot rename. This is supposed to be a game about Sci-Fi with a guy possessing an ultra-advanced chip with inventory/map integrated. Instead it feels like some paper map created in the 12th century, that Jax picked up after the crash. The AI: the mobs are mainly stupid: if they have no range weapon, all you have to do is jetpack on high ground and they will become still targets; even if they have range weapons, by jumping around and attacking from time to time, letting your companion do the dirty work. The XP you get from killing them is on par with the loot you received for killing them. AI was supposedly improved in a Day 1 patch which leaves one to wonder how much worst it could have been before that? They also pretend to have improved targeting behaviour from NPCs or the NPCs not helping you in battle: no, as for the latter, the reaction time from NPCs is just laughable. Animations, V/O and Lip Sync: falling down animation cannot be explained in terms of who made the decision that this was a good animation. There are also many glitches, so many, it would take a few pages to enumerate them all. Finally, the lip sync and voice over are butchered jobs: there are no excuses for the absolute nonsense that this is; sometime you when you’ll talk to a NPC, he/she will start with a voice, then switch to a different one, for no reason. The lip Sync would have been better if they had not done it at all, then this “thing” they ended up calling lip Sync. Jax is supposed to be an emotionless alb, so his voice/reaction fits, I wonder what is the excuse of (almost, there are one or two exceptions) every single other NPC you interact with? Are they all albs in disguised? Maybe that is actually the end game: everyone was an alb. There was supposed to be a Day 1 patch improving NPCs: spoiler alert: either it failed miserably, or it was even worse than what it actually is now. Quests: while they will award most of the experience you will earn in the game, some are incredibly difficult without warnings, and some are even part of important story missions (or the way there is paved with ridiculously strong enemies). Resolving a quest without interacting with the starting NPC (yes you can), awards you with nothing or very little. Progression: very, very slow and the very reason why the game is so long. PB signature trademark: 10 points to spend in attributes, which reaching a certain level (20 or 25 if I well recall), cost 2 points to gain 1 point in an attribute. A quick look at the skill tab and the weapons/armour requirements and you can see that to equip something decent, you will need to gain at least 5 levels for each attribute. Rusty axe my old friend, followed me around quite a while. Sound design: while they got some sound designs right, too much sounds like it was recorded at the last minute, on a crappy mic, by a deaf amateur designer. The music level is also way above any other sound, even if you drop it to 30%, it gets randomly fixed at some point. Finally the thing that really pisses me off: this is 2017, 21th century, age of Information and technological domination. PB sets Elex in a distant future of an even more advanced technologically advanced human race, yet Jax cannot wear more than one ring on his hands. Someone needs to remind PB that character are designed from living human beings: 2 hands, 10 fingers. There is a real sense of freedom in Elex coupled with a varied, enormous landscape waiting to be explored and power to be harnessed. The story leaves enough hanging, to keep you going and exploration, for the brave of heart, will always feel intriguing, albeit not as rewarding in some situations. Unfortunately, PB’s laziness into reshaping its combat system into something that fits 2017, the lack of good animations, a dreadful, emotionless VO and a batch of numerous issues plaguing the game are killing what could have been an excellent release. People often say that PB are not a AAA company, but their association with THQ, should have provided with a platform to offer so much more after the disappointing Risen 3. We are left with a game that feels like an unpolished gem, and even too often, like an unfinished game: not worth the AAA price tag.

Elex is a surprising gem. The graphics are very good. They are not as detailed or defined as some of the latest CRPG's but more than sufficient for the game. The world detail is very good. There are many interesting locations to explore and discover. I appreciate the fully voiced characters. The conversation system uses a selection dialogue and your choices do affect outcomes further into the game. The combat is rough and could use a bit of work. I am not sure of the hit boxes and I would like more physical feedback when I hit something. Sometimes it is hard to tell if you have actually hit an enemy mob. I would like more feedback than a simple bar that reduces as you take or deal damage. The AI of protagonists could be improved as well and seems very simple. Overall I am looking forward to exploring more of this game world. It is a solid effort by a very small team and a worthy successor to their earlier games. It is definitely a major step above their earlier Risen series. Definitely worth buying!