I was spoiled by the ability to undo every step in Toki Tori and Baba is You before I played this one. It truly can be a little tedious to have to restart a level if one is not careful enough.
The core mechanic does get a little bit tedious towards the end (constant running back and forth between words to find the solution and only being able to carry one item at a time with it being replaced by other pickups unless the items were supposed to be combined). Thankfully, it only took 4 hours.
This applies to absolutely everything in Elex. Exploration and looting are rendered pointless by boring loot most of which is junk represented by different in-game models (hammers, loo rolls and the like) and some unique weapons require high stats (granted, some of them do not) and still pack almost zero punch! Rifles have no clout; shooting someone multiple times at point blank range won't even cause them to flinch, enemies just keep charging. Also the shots are slow, so hitting a sideways moving target isn't easy, which would have been fine, had it not been for the miniscule amount of damage that shot was going to cause. The story I am fine with; I never expect anything original, but I always expect witty and dynamic interactions between characters and there is almost none to be found here. Dialogues can be skipped since the vast majority of quests have map markers. In my opinion Gothic 1 and 2 are the prime examples of stellar world building and, especially the first one - it had by modern standards a tiny world which nevertheless worked so well to immerse the player. The world of Elex just feels silly.
