Great art, and fun characters, and combat. However, the farther I progressed the slower the game became. Restarting the game did not help. I should also mention that the Linux version isn't updated with some quality of life features you find in the windows version.
It has excellent gun play, and environment. The game is pretty... well not the npc models, or your character, but everything else. The available companions are crap. The dialog and quests aren't great either. To summarize the macro quests: Given two choices pick a winner and screw the other over. But, really you probably have enough credits and stuff, and oh a cargo ship that you could not screw anyone over. So the quests end up feeling like false choices (most of the time). But, you know, the shooting was fun, and most of the game is just a sandbox with interesting micro quests... which really were the best quests the game has to offer. So 3/5, would recommend, but maybe in the 10$-20$ range.
Initially the game is about avoiding combat, because most things just straight up out damage me and have tons of health. Kiting is an option for some of the creatures, but with the long kill times it is very unrewarding. I did try scavenging, but soon discovered that money wont get me very far. Armor, skills, and magic are locked behind climbing the ranks of factions. After exploring and meeting all the factions I discovered that they are the same in the worst sort of way. All the factions are authoritarian, and do not tolerate diversity of thought. They are all about oppression and doing the wrong thing in a blind pursuit of an ideological extreme. Much to their determent, they even lack pragmatism. All the factions need to be opposed, but the game isn't designed to progress without blindly committing to a faction. Without a faction and without a path for progression my time in Elex came to an end.
