ELEX II

DId you love Gothic? And Risen? Then Elex series is a must. Great story, factions, weapons, monsters, hundreds of quests. Just jump in and save the Magalan,

Played all the way through. Some jank and grind and fetch quests, but it's a fun open world RPG like the rest of the Gothic franchise and the previous Elex game! Sad that the studio went bankrupt. :(

Things I liked compared to Elex I: The combat. In Elex I, during melee combat, the bigger your combo is, the more damage each subsequent hit will do. This means that you could start hitting a troll for no great damage but still manage to kill it by the end of your combo when your stats allowed it. In Elex II each hit does about the same damage, so you can hit and block and dodge as you wish, making it much more methodical. Elex I also made it that each hit of the combo also carried a lot more force, pushing and staggering the enemy. In Elex II you can only do that by either depleting the enemy's stamina or using heavy attacks/two-handed weapons and bombs. For me it makes a lot more sense to do it like this. The only criticism is that in Elex II while you/the enemy move around, you often can clip through and attacks that would hit will miss or attacks you'd have blocked will hit you. It's annoying at first but if you manage to do it on purpose you can beat much stronger enemies than you very early, unlike in Elex I. The jetpack. It starts off worse than Elex I because in that, as long as you were not holding the button, your battery started filling back and you could do much longer distances by abusing that. In Elex II that doesn't happen but in return it gets its own skill tree and by upgrading that you're much better off. You can even fight in the air, which is surprisingly fun. Especially when you have your fuel maxed. Skilltrees. Here each has fewer skills. In Elex I every tree had about 20 skills. Here they are fewer and are all useful. While many in Elex I become obsolete if you buy them very late, like the Clerics' first attack spells. There is also no achievement for buying all of a faction's skills here for which I'm grateful. Your drone. In Elex I, it is the most insignificant companion in both story and combat. Here I'd say they flipped the switch and made it the exact opposite. I was very happy to travel around with it, more so than with most of my other companions. The world you play in. They managed to remake the world and still make it interesting even after having spent over 100 hours in Elex I exploring. Ignadon is now covered in ice. Tavar is a forest full of trees. Abessa and Edan isn't there but we have Carakis and Maracor instead. The crater that you could only barely explore because of radiation is a city now. Was very happy to explore a world that was both familiar and unknown. Things I didn't like: The Destruction/Creation thing. It replaces the Cold system from Elex I. In Elex I your control that by trying to pick the logical or emotional choices that aren't always obvious or consuming elex. All the choices there are reasonable for one reason or another. In Elex II you instead get very silly choices that are like 1: Polite, 2: Indifferent, 3: Extremely Aggressive. I never saw any reason why my character would pick choice 3 unless I specifically wanted to go full Destruction. It more sounds like your character hates everyone. Both in Elex I and in this, your rank in this system decides the ending and some of your choices. I think they just brought it here because the Cold system in Elex I was cool but since they decided to force the Emotional ending as canon for II, they couldn't use that and replaced it with this. The only good thing about it is you can control it much more easily than you could in Elex I, but the game would have been fine without it. Companion Quests. In Elex I, these were much more personalized. Each companion had a specific goal or problem that needed your help. Here the Companion Quests are all the same quest. Go to area, kill enemies. There are a few exceptions to that, like for Fox, but at least 85% of them are that. The story and dialogue for them is interesting and true to the characters but it feels a little hastily done and incomplete. The fact that you get teleported around I both like and dislike. Elex I did that with Nasty, too, but here it's for everyone. Dialogue bugs. Your character is ill and sometimes the characters will show concern. But in many cases it feels like no one checked when this happens. I had many instances where my guy asked someone a question, they replied about something else first, then replied to my question, then my guy mentioned his illness and then his follow up dialogue to their answer. Wonder if they ran out of time and couldn't optimize this. Companions for combat. I think you either have Caja, your drone or Bully, perhaps even Falk, but other than that, the others are more of a deadweight. I'm unsure if it's a bug but many times the others just stand around with their weapon out and barely do anything. Irrelevant when you can take care of yourself but very scary at the start. Companions forcing dialogue on you during combat. I've had fights with Behemoths, monsters invade the bastion and other such circumstances for which I could not kill the things around (so other characters did and I lost some exp) because the companions forced dialogue on me. It's not only annoying for the above reason but also breaks immersion. We are being attacked, please talk to me in five minutes after there are no enemies around us. Things I both like and dislike: The story. Spoilers: Not sure why the first game had multiple endings and conclusions when this one decided your ending for you. I suppose Ray, Kallax and a few others are by default dead in this scenario even if you saved them from this fate in I. At the same time this game supplements and enhances the events and overall mythos of this game with new information that changes things, new twists and new reveals. Even has a very sad moment. But at the same time it is treated like a middlepoint. Half of the problems do not get resolved, and new ones appear at the end, probably for an Elex III that will never happen. Your character is still ill. You've killed the invaders but instead they have transformed into Changelings now. There's a new threat/possible faction for the future in the machines. A new threat is about to arrive. Your archnemesis is still alive. It leaves you wanting for more. I think most people who will play this are already PB fans, like I am, and just for that alone you should check it out. For everyone who isn't, I would recommend it if you are willing to give it many hours because the start in these games is unforgiving and punishing and it takes a while for it to 'click' and make you feel you're in total control.

characters look very weird and changed from elex 1. it looks like they dont have shadows around theirs faces and things. nothing in the modding scene to fix this kinda thing either. couldnt get past the graphics and performance compared to elex 1 so i dropped it.

7/10 It lacks the RPG depth of other PB games, and it's profusely obvious that the second half was rushed

There's some good in Elex 2 but alotta bad as well. Coming in from Elex 1, which I really enjoyed there's some things improved and some worse than it. Graphic engine is improved but the characters look terrible, no facial animations or emotions, odd skin textures give off the kinda lifeless doll-like characters. Caja's scrunched up face makes her look like she smells something terrible everytime she's on screen! Most faction armors look horrible compared to Elex 1. Combat is much improved. Melee is alot more responsive compared to the slow Elex 1 melee. The ranged combat felt worse tho, gone are the alt fire types. Playing on controller the auto-aim was one of the worst I've ever experienced. Giant mantis right in my face but auto aim snaps to a flying enemy miles away in the distant sky. It happened so much. Exploration is a mixed bag as well. Jetpack upgrades make for great fast traversal but loot felt very underwhelming, opening a safe to only get a small heal potion and 2 rolls of toilet paper! So many of the loot items are just actual trash to sell, they might seem like crafting materials but 80% is just stuff to sell. It doesn't have the difficulty curve of Elex 1 where the first 10h staying away from enemies is better. With more responsive combat in Elex 2 you can actually combat smaller enemies early on. Also one of the quests in the first hour or 2 get you access to a shotgun. Even the basic shotty does heavy dmg and didn't require very heavy stat investment to equip. That shotty could take out large enemies like trolls in under 10 shells at low level. Builds are better since adding points into str will give you a little more melee dmg, Dex for ranged dmg rather than solely for skill unlocks of Elex 1 but you level faster, get more points to spend and can also find stat increase potions around the world or craft at high level. As with all PB games getting early animal trophies skills makes the game so much easier. When maxed 3/3 it's overkill, by mid game I had over 10k with nothing to buy, last few hours I just stopped looting completely. One positive was there being factionless armor sold by stores so you don't feel forced to join a faction early just to survive the early game. Story is the really killer on Elex 2. It started well enough, check out factions, pick up alotta quests, find companions. All fine but the main quest missions from mid to late game are just kill 3 of this enemy, 6 of this other enemy. It got so tedious. If i wasn't 45h into the game i might seriously have uninstalled. Quests didn't have the same feel as Elex 1. I can only think of the early morkon trader quest as a highlight. There was also a lack alternative outcomes, which Elex 1 has a fair amount of. The companion quests really threw me as you start a quest you'll just be teleported to the area, kill something, talk to someone or collect something and that's it. It just felt so off with all the forced fast travel ruining the fun experience of exploration! Performance was fine for the most part. Played 1080p/60fps with no drops or real issues. The game did crash 4 times randomly, while Elex 1 had only 1 crash for me. As much as this seems like a negative review I got the game 75% off for around £10 it took me 56h to beat. So good value but sadly the last 10h really soured the game for me. A shame to see the final Piranha Bytes game look like a unfinished project :(

Ich mag den zweiten noch lieber, als den ersten Teil.

drink a shot everytime you encounter a bug and you'll end up in a hospital, but it's super fun 9/10