This game seems to have been abandoned. It was quite interesting and enjoyed playing for a few hours until I ran into some issues with the monster AI but since the game is abandoned now we can't expect any fixes or further updates :(
I could talk about this game for hours, it's one of the best strategy games I ever played, you should check out Youtube clips of people doing deathless runs on Extreme difficulty to see perfect planning and execution. Instead, I'm going to address the most "helpful" review shown here by GOG: > Then, you'll probably start to realize slowly that there isn't really any more to the game other than building tents and collecting resources, upgrades are painfully boring incremental modifiers +10% this or that and all the new buildings you can research are more efficient versions of the starting ones. Well, no, you build a lot more things than tents (lots of other types of housing plus many different types of buildings) and you do a lot more things than collecting resources (laws, special building abilities, scouting, decision making and their consequences) and lots of events that constantly try to throw a wrench in our plans. But what makes everything deep is the fact that strategy (defined as making plans to meet certain expected future needs and executing on them) is very important in this game. It's not just about what to build, but when and where to build it. It's not just about which law to pass, but when to pass it. It's not about collecting some resources, it's about how much of them you collect (collecting too much is a problem too) and when you need them. And it's not about sending out scouts but when to send them out, towards which destination, in which order and when to bring them back home. All of these decisions have to be done more or less perfectly, especially on higher difficulty levels. This makes the game a pleasure for the type of player that likes a fair challenge, where the game may seem very hard and impossible (on some difficulties) it actually isn't, if you do it right and try to micro-manage and optimize everything. Everything else (fantastic musical score, great artwork, interesting lore, etc) is just adding to an otherwise great game package.
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.
I didn't expect to like this game as much as I did. The combination of large, open world, realistically modeled with huge draw distances, the crafting/building/tech tree, the surviving mechanics (deadly day heat, deadly night cold, thirst, hunger), the mystery and excitement of exploring/seeing what's behind that next dune or what hides in the distance made it for a very addictive gameplay loop. One memoralable immersive moment in the game: I got lost in a sand storm and I had no idea where to go anymore. After some time trying to remember from what direction I was moving and where I was going, it was getting close to sunset and that's when I realized I can just use the direction of the setting sun as a reference point. Did that and found my way quickly afterwards. I finished the main story (as much as it has been implemented at this moment), explored everything, unlocked and crafted all the tech so I'm now just having a hard time trying to stop playing it, instead I just build stuff, grow stuff and hang around in the game world while more and more monsters are coming with every passing day... One of the best games I've played this year.
I loved this game, it started out as STALKER-like indie effort with no clear direction (was it an RPG, was it an FPS, was it a base builder, etc) and after having finished it I must say it's its own thing, an interesting mix of all those elements that ended up being executed better than I thought. I especially loved the complex decision tree and how they impact each other, quite similar to some of the best RPGs. The early game is rough but the midgame is great (basically once you get good weapons and don't struggle for resources and food anymore you're in midgame). The levels are amazingly well crafted, I kept wanting to go back, kept using the photo mode to take screenshots. The timed mission thing was stressful until I realized what happens when it expires... Suffice to say it actually makes sense in the game story/lore and you have a way to deal with it and continue playing the mission so not a big deal. I also think that without a bit of pressure from the mission timer the game would quickly become repetitive because while it has very detailed levels there are just a few of them so it can easily get repetitive if you can spend hours in each the first time you go into them. But don't despair: there will be tons of missions taking you back to the same level over and over again so plenty of time to explore and learn the levels by heart even without attempting to reset the mission timer (which you can do). Looking forward to see what else these devs will be making because if this is their first game I'm very impressed!
First, the bad: I couldn't get past the intro scene, after playing the title cutscene the game just crashes. Did this with everything I tried. After about 15 tries or so (quite annoying because the checkpoint forced me to replay the same section over and over again) I managed to get past and play. Had maybe one or two crashes for the next 6 hours after that. All that said, this game was so good! Now I must say from the start that I'm not a Blair Witch Project fan. I didn't like the movie so I stopped watching it midway through. So I have no idea if this game follows the movie lore or atmosphere or whatever. But in terms of standalone spooky FPP walking simulator with light combat and puzzles it's almost perfect. I love that subgenre of games and this just went very high in my top. I loved so many things about it: - the forest (at least when it's daylight and can see it) it's amazingly well done, graphically, the lighting is very good - the sound design was great, the creepy weird noises following me through the forest always kept me on my nerves - the dog companion is a great addition - the puzzles didn't have any moon logic and didn't require spending so much time going back and forth to solve them that I would stop being immersed in the atmosphere - the PTSD episodes were interesting and added some variation to the otherwise classic horror elements I very much recommend it, especially if on sale! Here's hoping you won't have those early game crashes I experienced.
I already filed a ticket about this but GOG seems to take a long time to process that. The system requirements are incomplete since they only mention NVIDIA cards. Quake 2 RTX also runs on AMD RX6000 cards (I tested the GOG version on RX6800) as it uses Vulkan Ray Tracing. As far as the game goes, not a big fan of Q2 myself but the ray traced lighting is glorious.
Great middle ground between Amnesia TDD's horror simulation and SOMA's philosophical oriented gameplay. Yes, it;s not as spooky as Amnesia TDD but it is more spooky than SOMA. It hits a great middle ground in terms of puzzles for me (I found Amnesia TDD to have way too many puzzles stopping game progress at every little step when all I wanted was to go forward). I also don't understand the criticism that says immersion is ruined when the character speaks (why, because it's a female voice?). You are wearing the skin of a very particular character and Frictional Games made 100% sure you will feel like that character. Nothing wrong with that. I also feel this game has done some many things for the first time in a videogame that it's likely to be a cult hit but I can't talk more about those details to avoid spoling the surprise.
