ELEX ELEX RELEASE THREAD

[agentorange]

Finished it yesterday. It is nowhere near Gothic 1 but it at least feels like a game made by the people who made Gothic, which is saying a lot. As far as designing an open world in RPGs go, the Gothic mold is the standard that other games should aspire to, and try to improve upon. The world of Elex is far bigger, certainly, but this ends up being detrimental in many ways.

Exploration in itself in Elex is joyful; seeing a location in the distance and making your way towards it, getting sidetracked on the way there by another cave or ruin. The designers did a very good job of naturally crafting locations into landmarks, and I was feeling drawn towards a tower on top of a hill or a sprawling ruin on the horizon. There is no shortage of hidden corners to Magalan, either, with some very cleverly hidden locations.

The problem is that what you find in these locations is always paltry and unsatisfying. Exploration in Gothic always felt worth it because whatever you found could prove useful, even if it was only a healing potion and some scrolls. Let alone when you brought down a troll or another large monster and found a stash of permanent stat raising potions, powerful spells or a unique weapon.This was in large part simply because the world was small enough that every part of it felt significant, you were very rarely running across the exact same kind of location twice. Not only that but because the distribution of items was carefully balanced, you never felt inundated with certain objects to the point where you get sick of even having to pick them up. However in Elex what you find in most locations, even those most out of the way and carefully hidden locations, is a box of cigarettes and some old world money, and if you do find potions or chems they feel absolutely unnecessary because by then you have found so many in just about every location--not to mention they are so cheap to buy and make. By the end it going into the realm of mmos where you are building up these immense stores of crafting materials and junk items that seem to be flooding the world. At a certain point I was simply ignoring most items on the ground because I couldn't be bothered to pick them up, and this is in a supposedly apocalyptic world where resources are vital and scavengers kill each other over scraps.

Anyway a fine game. It very easily could have been a great game with some minor alterations. They could improve the sequel by cutting back on the size of the world by about 30% and instead spend that time on fine tuning the design of the individual locations.

 

[dragonul09]

At last people realise that the world building is total ass. The random placements and the empty locations filled with nothing but sulfur nuggets and toilet paper rolls really seem to piss a lot of people on steam and as it should, I mean coming from Gothic and Risen where every corner of the map had something interesting to find, you get Elex where you spend most of your time hoping that something interesting would be in the next location, but niet , it's the same old toilet paper roll and mugs. And I feel the need to say it again, if you cut this game in half you wouldn't even realise it's missing, that's what you get when you try to appeal to the Skyrim crowd, an empty vapid experience.

 

[Abu Antar]

Btw, after I beat the game

Spoiler

I killed all faction leaders because they attacked me. I was thinking of wiping everything out, but it would have been too time consuming.

Spoiler

ALL of them?
In my case it was only for Outlaws. He attacked me as end to conversation but game threated it as unprovoked attack and crime. Had whole faction against me. It was annoying as being outlaw changed nothing.

Other faction leaders were fine.

Spoiler

Torvald ran up to me and attacked me outside the Ice Palace. Ragnar attacked me in Goliet. I had the entire village after me, and I was exiled. All Berserkers hated their own Paladin. But I felt like it was better to just get out. He was the only one who wouldn't stop following me, so I ended up killing him. Logan, didn't attack me, btw, neither did William. I went to the Outlaws. They just said that no one could push them around. I was attacked at the cathedral in Hort and had to kill like 10 clerics before I teleported away. The game told me that someone had witnessed me committing a murder. Game, it was a freaking massacre. Origin, some were displeased, but no one attacked me. Killed Zardom, too. Unfortunately, this wasn't mentioned in the ending slides (me killing them). It just said the Berserkers had exiled me. I don't think you're supposed to kill the leaders and just run away.

 

[GloomFrost]

At last people realise that the world building is total ass. The random placements and the empty locations filled with nothing but sulfur nuggets and toilet paper rolls really seem to piss a lot of people on steam and as it should, I mean coming from Gothic and Risen where every corner of the map had something interesting to find, you get Elex where you spend most of your time hoping that something interesting would be in the next location, but niet , it's the same old toilet paper roll and mugs. And I feel the need to say it again, if you cut this game in half you wouldn't even realise it's missing, that's what you get when you try to appeal to the Skyrim crowd, an empty vapid experience.

They did not try to appeal to skyrim crowd. One chicken at the very beginning could easily kill you, one wrong dialogue option could get you killed. This is very opposite of what skyrim crowd likes. PB just didnt have enough time/money (As always with PB) to add more content and make world more lively. One big expansion pack like NOTR could solve all the problems you mentioned.

 

[Grimlorn]

Btw, after I beat the game

Spoiler

I killed all faction leaders because they attacked me. I was thinking of wiping everything out, but it would have been too time consuming.

Spoiler

ALL of them?
In my case it was only for Outlaws. He attacked me as end to conversation but game threated it as unprovoked attack and crime. Had whole faction against me. It was annoying as being outlaw changed nothing.

Other faction leaders were fine.

Spoiler

In the Cold ending I had both the Berserkers and Clerics turn on me. I wiped out the entire cities but nameless NPCs would still respawn and walk around. What's strange is when Bounty Hunters for Berserkers would show up outside of cities. It didn't seem to matter all the Berserker leaders were dead. There was also one NPC, a shopkeeper I think in all cases, that would only get stunned. There was no way to kill them permanently, not sure why. There would be Alb forces outside Goliat, but no way to interact with them to lead them into the city to take it over. They would just attack you on sight, even though the Hybrid is basically serving you now. I'm assuming that was a quest they never finished. The ending slides don't acknowledge any of the deaths of the leaders of the factions. In neutral ending, Nasty doesn't seem to care about killing her brother or cousin.

 

[Junmarko]

At last people realise that the world building is total ass

Here it's not total ass, it's just obvious that it was emphasized heavier than other aspects. Gothic 1 & 2 pretty much nailed the perfect balance of world building+everything else.

I think PB were trying to overcome Gothic 3's lingering failure here. Making a seamless world on a massive scale that actually works, is probably one goal that has nagged them too long.

Sequels are always better anyway. Forza Elex II!

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Sequels are always better anyway. Forza Elex II!

Like Risen 2.

Aaanyway, I finished the game yesterday. I don't even remember the last time I was this conflicted about loving and hating a game so much at the same time.
There are things ELEX does exceptionally well, but for each one of them there are others it does awfully bad.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with it very much, but I could spend two hours straight bitching about everything that sucks beyond belief.

 

[Tigranes]

R2&3 we know were castrated by publisher conflict, including specific demands for certain game features publishers made & PB's own wish to just make them ASAP and finish the contract.

There's reasons to be more positive about an Elex 2, though sadly, I doubt the gameworld will get any smaller; that's the number one thing retards whine about like clockwork.

 

[Abu Antar]

I wouldn't want ELEX 2 to be half the size of ELEX, but I wouldn't mind if it was 1/3 smaller. That is unless they can make more varied ruins. While I did like to explore, many places were samey or even copy pasted. I did miss caves, to be honest. Risen felt smaller and the world in that was fun to explore. It isn't all about how big the game world is.

 

[abnaxus]

Wasn't there something about Elex causing global cooling.

The antagonists in Elex 2 will literally be

Spoiler

 

[ShadowSpectre]

I finished the game today and I'm leaning on the side that I liked it, but it has some annoying flaws. Some thoughts on Elex:

The world map, the roads, and how you can pretty much get up onto anything makes navigating around never really feel restrictive. That being said, some of what you can actually explore is good and other things just have a more generic feel to them, like the factories and houses scattered around. Occasionally you will find a more original area, but I find that the layout of the world map is better than what you can actually find in it.

As for the combat, it's better once you have good equipment and can use ranged weapons. Melee is feasible but if you are on even slightly elevated ground and swing at something's head, you will completely miss it. The hit boxes can also be pretty wonky even with ranged, but ranged weapons generally feel more smooth in execution. The RPG mechanics are okay and the challenge is high in the beginning, but if you know what you are building and what to put your money into you will succeed with much easier fights.

Dialogue can be cheesy, but the characters usually have more personality than the latest Bethesda Fallout iteration (not that this is a great feat or anything). Story is okay, succinct from beginning to end. What I didn't like was how ridiculous the warm/neutral/cold system was. For some reason being an asshole will reward you with a decrease in cold and doing often the decent thing will increase your cold. Other times it is intuitive. What this actually does is give you a shitty ending after you tend to give balanced responses but then consume tonnes of elex potions which increase your cold just enough to make it impossible to have a better ending. Ultimately, your decisions work out into a pretty binary result. As such, the causes and effects all feel shallow. Majority of the quests fall into fetch-quests or kill-X quests.

Functionally speaking, the game loads quick and isn't plagued by bugs. The AI can get a bit bizarre, but it's not game-breaking. For PB being a smaller team, it's actually quite impressive what they've accomplished. The cutscenes transition smoothly along with the dialogue. Game has some weird lighting effect issues in the way it renders, but you can get sunglasses for that. Hah.

Overall, if you are debating a purchase of Elex, I'd say wait for it to go on sale. The game has its moments and seems to get better as you keep playing, but it's not genre-defining or anything original. The major issue has been the lack of really good third-person RPGs in the last while that make Elex seem more attractive than it really is. Still, I'd check out some game play videos and see if it's for you.

 

[Zerth]

Heh, after 30 hours and 19 levels later, I finally joined clerics. Explored most areas from Abessa, Edan, Tavar and Ignadon. I did every quest required to join each factions, -although I got trade-banned in Goliet, so I was left by either choosing clerics or Outlaws-. In my experience, the Outlaw faction quests are harder, since It seems you can't get away from dueling Npcs, yet it's pretty doable with some investment on combat skills and decent low requirement gear at Hard difficulty(seriously, if you have avoided putting points on combat and stamina and don't want to deal with headaches so far; stay away from Tavar, at least you can be teleported to Hort and avoid setting foot across Ignadon, but the Fort can only be reached by walking or jetpack jumping given the case, and your companion will take too long -or end up KO'd- to kill those damn jackals, which are pretty common around Tavar).

At first, I wasn't aware of Elex potions and thought this game was going to be as stingy as Gothic 2: NOTR in regards of stat and skill points gained per level and that the only way to gain bonus points was through collecting rare stuff like King sorrel or dragonroot and crafting perma stat potions like in NOTR. Thus I made a not very sensible decision: allot most of available stat points to DEX and INT wanting to heavily specialize in Psionics and Energy weapons, because, again, I thought specialization was the way to go in order to build a competent character in combat, as It was the case in NOTR.

Anyways, I tried to get attribute skill (+1 stat point per level 50 INT needed) as early as possible, so you can go figure how much Jax sucked at fighting and how much He relied on Duras in order to kill regular shit. I feel companions are somewhat underwhelming by the way, -or at least in Hard difficulty-, fortunately, They can certainly take on regular variants of monsters and some reavers alone, but They will hit the floor after a few hits from something as nasty as a rotboar, chimaera, ripper, slugbeast,Moloch etc. Still, companions can't die, therefore this can be exploited. I would have preferred a bit stronger but killable companions, they are already smart enough to withdraw from a fight when you do, so it's a plausible implementation, plus the possibility to give them healing potions.

I also picked Animal trophy pretty early, so at least I wasn't short of elexit when I eventually found a cleric merchant and purchased my first laser weapon which I immediately upgrade and finally was able to fight Albs and stuff. I picked the Psi amplifier, and now all those points poured over INT are starting to really pay off. So far I only drank 2 greater elex potions and some elex potions I found exploring.

My point is that is plausible to make some progress early on without combat skills, since the required join faction quests from Clerics and Berserkers don't involve Jax in killing tough enemies and there are tons of minor quests that can be done without fighting too. Whilst is moronic to think you can totally get away from fighting in a PB game; you're not necessarily screwing over ur character if you pick some stuff from charisma or crafting before survival and combat first.

 

[razvedchiki]

so you can buy shotguns from outlaw shops only if you are an outlaw?

 

[Zerth]

so you can buy shotguns from outlaw shops only if you are an outlaw?

I guess. Checked and didn't find any shotgun available. And since it's an Outlaw weapon some basic form oughta be available when u join.I think I saw a shotgun within Duke's bunker though.

 

[agentorange]

You can find a shotgun in

Spoiler

the farmhouse near the dam in Northeastern Abessa, as you are heading into Ignadon

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

What I didn't like was how ridiculous the warm/neutral/cold system was. For some reason being an asshole will reward you with a decrease in cold and doing often the decent thing will increase your cold.

Apparently you don’t understand what cold means in Elex. It is NOT karma. Good does not equal warm, evil does not equal cold. Cold just means logical, warm just means emotional. It’s literally what the words mean when you use them in the sense of a personality. Not that complicated, unless you were playing Elex like it was a Bioware game.

So obviously being an asshole decreases your cold. Being an asshole is an emotional response. For example, if I berated you for being a moron, that would make me LESS cold because it’s driven by my feelings of frustration that someone could be so slow on the uptake.

Doing the “decent thing” can also increase your cold if the “decent thing” is also the passionless and rational thing. Really straightforward.

 

[Modron]

so you can buy shotguns from outlaw shops only if you are an outlaw?

I guess. Checked and didn't find any shotgun available. And since it's an Outlaw weapon some basic form oughta be available when u join.I think I saw a shotgun within Duke's bunker though.

The bartender in the domed city has one under the bar like quite a few bartenders, you have to steal it of course. Yeah there is a special one in the duke's armory that is only slightly weaker than a fully upgraded one, although it does have a 1 round bigger capacity and grant the mutant killer ability IIRC.

 

[razvedchiki]

i ask where to buy,people respond where to find........

i have found all the shotguns laying around,it just made me curious why you have to be in the faction to get them in shops(cleric and zerker shop sell weapons to anyone).

 

[ShadowSpectre]

What I didn't like was how ridiculous the warm/neutral/cold system was. For some reason being an asshole will reward you with a decrease in cold and doing often the decent thing will increase your cold.

Apparently you don’t understand what cold means in Elex. It is NOT karma. Good does not equal warm, evil does not equal cold. Cold just means logical, warm just means emotional. It’s literally what the words mean when you use them in the sense of a personality. Not that complicated, unless you were playing Elex like it was a Bioware game.

I never said it was like karma, quit self-projecting. The second half to what I said is important: "Other times it is intuitive. What this actually does is give you a shitty ending after you tend to give balanced responses but then consume tonnes of elex potions which increase your cold just enough to make it impossible to have a better ending." By the story's logic, you should also be able to sleep off some of your elex-induced cold, but it doesn't let you do that.

There are instances where what I'd equate to a "logical" response in a situation decreases your cold and the "emotional" response increases it. Whether that is bugged or not may be a different story, but it happens where the responses are reversed. Motivation is usually where it gets strange, and I disagree with the way some of the quests work out. There are multiple instances where it makes sense to kill an NPC or work it out, alternatively, and it results in both cold increase and decrease in ways that don't make sense compared to other quest results. Sometimes the game itself forgets it's own system. You are entitled to a different opinion.

Furthermore, I don't see how being more "cold" ie: logical (in this game) would want to make Jax:

Spoiler

Accept what the Hybrid is saying, agree with him, then prepare to placate some unknown force he knows no more than what the Hybrid has told him about to result in enslaving all the free people instead of getting them to fight.

Seems to me that is not logical, I don't see why he can't even with a high "cold" value (knowing what he knows):

Spoiler

Go through with Thorald's plan, because if you follow through with Caja's quests you learn the extra information on the nature of elex.

 

[Murk]

You can find a shotgun in

Spoiler

the farmhouse near the dam in Northeastern Abessa, as you are heading into Ignadon

There's also a scrap shotgun at

Spoiler

the factory premises where you can get the miner armor, near the smaller volcano in north west ignidon... but lots of tough enemies there

The unique one that the Duke has is p good tho, and has reasonable stat reqs.

 

[Tigranes]

Ranged / Black Hole is the way to go if you are frustrated by the combat and want a certain amount of killability. Melee I think can be quite fun, though, in a way that only PB Melee can be.

Companions are overpowered godmode early game, then become useful distractions. They certainly shouldn't be any stronger - PB games are made for fighting alone, and I don't think it's fun or sensible to play them as charisma nerd with a band of muscle.

What is warm/cold in dialogue was really obvious from the get go, I'm not sure how anyone can find it confusing. The ending I can't comment on, as I've only seen the relatively warm ending.

Is it a special Redeemer feature to have the ball shot do knockdowns or is that for all plasma weapons? Makes Ranged even better, really. Mixing it up with laser, plasma and black hole makes you able to take on almost every situation.

 

[razvedchiki]

all plasma rifles fire knockdown aoe shot,but the flamer one is better because it also burns the mobs for a while.

 

[Junmarko]

Vito the bartender (Domed City) has a double barrel shotgun under the counter.

 

[CreamyBlood]

Hey guys I just reached level 17 and I still really love this game but I don't really have anything articulate or eloquent to add right now. I like the PSI powers. I like the cleric gear. I like stealing things. And honestly this is probably the best open-world RPG that's come out since whatever or whenever. This is basically the sort of game I wanted FO3 to be and knew it wouldn't but also didn't really know I wanted because I never really thought about: Jetpacks.

I don't know about the cleric stuff or FO3 but....

But regarding jetpacks. I just started playing ARK again with some buddies after taking a break for a year and you know what? It's *really* hard not having a jetpack on you when exploring. I have to walk the long way. I keep double-tapping the spacebar and nothing happens. (But I think at high levels the game does have them).

As to shotguns since I plan on becoming a Mad Max Biker and like the slutty outfits their chicks wear....

Spoiler

I never could steal it while the bartender was there (Domed City) but now the Albs have taken over. I've done pretty good sneaking around and stealing stuff and looting bodies in the aftermath. Lots of elex in the basement, poor Alois. Still having difficulty getting into the bar though as there are two guarding the front entrance. Might just abort that plan for now and carry on.

 

[Elex]

I also have to say I'm getting increasingly bothered by the dumbass placement of supermonsters around the world. I've run into 5 mountain trolls in Ignadon, and not a single one of them was guarding anything useful or cool, just some random-ass sulphur bits, which are omnipresent in this section of the map.

Monsters are not hand-placed, they are chosen randomly from a list.

You can check this by yourself- save the game in a place with no enemies in sight, run around the world, note the enemy placement, reload the game, repeat. Enemies will be different, a mass rat might be replaced with a raptor or even a mountain troll.

i think is also chapter based: in chapter 3 i find more trolls