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ELEX ELEX RELEASE THREAD

Incantatar

Cipher
Joined
Jan 9, 2012
Messages
453
So I tried killing Karsten with grenades but he just dodged and threw his grenades at me. I tried again in melee and found out that my special attack hurt him. Depleted his stamina and killed him after a long fight.
So ... how many reloads did you need to accomplish that?
You can tell me, it stays between us, I swear.
:M
None. You don't have to believe me of course. He hit me a few times but I always chugged a healing potion immediately. The playstyle is addictive only because you don't cheat yourself. I had three moments where my heart almost stopped. The bandits close to the berserker hunter chased after me and I realised you couldn't use the jetpack with a flamethrower and I fell of a building hitting me with half my hp. The second was the slugbeast on the island which came awfully close after I got stuck in rock. The third was the necromantic berserker who surprisingly attacked me with his two hander thanks to Duras the clown.
 

Grimlorn

Arcane
Joined
Jun 1, 2011
Messages
10,248
Entering Doomed City felt pretty derpy.

You get fake ID from Hunter after doing a quest with him, then go to gate and buy a real ID even after telling me I can't enter at all in the first time.
That's not at all how it played out for me.
Did you talk to Hunter after the quest? He has to put your face on the ID. When I talked to the guy at the gate, he just let me in. He can't tell the difference between the fake and real ID. You can also tell him it's a fake ID and he'll give you a real ID for being honest but ask you to take the fake ID to someone which I haven't done yet.
The drone only gives natural elex as far as I know.


On Stormson quest
Who tells you that Stormson was taken North? I followed Stormson around he talked to everyone then showed up in the bar. Jora says he'll meet him there at night. I went at night thinking I'd see Jora meet with him or arrest him. Nothing happened, then I went to see where Jora was and he was just sleeping. Went to talk to Akira while she was still sleeping and she says he's been arrested and it must have been Angrim. Go to the bar and Stormson has disappeared. Walk around a bit can't find him but it's pitch black. I can't see anything, so I sleep and talk to Angrim. Angrim just says he's been exiled for his crimes. Turn on the quest compass and it points to the same place. There is no mention of guards taking him somewhere else to kill him, even after talking to Akira after talking to Angrim. The lift and Valley of the Damned is West. The guards bodies are found so afar North that he was actually closer to Origin than Goliat.
 

Elex

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 17, 2017
Messages
2,043
I still think it's net worse than Risen 1, but it's deffo solid and light years away from the previous two abominations.

Its main advantages over R1sen certainly include world size and differentation, the overall originality and maybe faction differentiation, but R1sen is a clear winner in the most important categories - mechanics (from combat to char system), general game readability (interface and mechanics) and the world/exploration coherence (let's face it the exploration in R1sen is MUCH more rewarding and better thought through).

The game is as bad as Risen 3, that game also had a plethora of big islands and a load shit of exploration but in the end the results were the same, bad combat, subpar loot system, fucked up pirate theme, underused factions , subpar quests that resulted in a plethora of fetch this and kill X monsters. But what I can say about Risen 1 and 3 (never played 2) is that the dialogue made a lot more sense than Elex, either the english translation got fucked up in this game or they didn't give a shit about it. Also Risen series shined a lot more in terms of voice acting and it was actually quite good at times, it had those silly gnomes and the ooga booga tribes people and the pirates actually sounded like pirates.

Elex just doesn't perform in any department, they tried to make the world so big that they forgot about everything else.
going full pirates and the gnomes is the worst part of risen 2-3 after risen 1 i expected more risen 1 not "YOU ARE A PIRATE!", i wanted something like "INQUITORS EVERYWHERE" for risen 2.

if elex 2 become "NOW WE KILL SPACE LIZARDS" it's expected, if elex 2 is about greek vs persia larper it's a no sense.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,406
Location
Djibouti
The game is as bad as Risen 3.

get the fuck out of this thread already, hesu christo

Counter arguments please, I don't speak in blind fanboysm, it's quite a primite language in my opinnion.

i've already mentioned counter arguments to almost everything you keep regurgitating across this thread like a dozen times, but since i'm a generous god, i'll at least mention two of them once again:


that game also had a plethora of big islands and a load shit of exploration but in the end the results were the same

This is the biggest point as to why Elex is objectively and clearly superior to Risen 3. The R3 islands all existed in their own respective vacuums, and none of them ever had any interactions with one another. The Stormson quest (as dumb as it is in structure) is one obvious example showing that the areas and factions in Elex interact - a guy starts in Goliet then lands in Ignadon. Another one is Drog - you can first exile him from Goliet, he lands in the exile valley, and then you can tell him to either join the clerics or the outlaws. Simple and largely insignificant? Sure. But even something as fucking basic as this was 100% absent from R3.

subpar quests that resulted in a plethora of fetch this and kill X monsters

People (rightly) complain about the healing root quest in Goliet where you have to gather 7 specific plants of which there are only 7 in the entire world. So far, I've seen only 2 such quests - one in Goliet, the other from the womyn with a pet troll. Meanwhile R3 was CHOCKFUL of these. It was like every other, if not more, quest was "Bring me 5 specific plants that grow somewhere in one place on the ass end of the world".



this is about as much effort that i feel like giving now to reply to your stupid and baseless tryhardery

i'm afraid if you want to learn more you'll have to wait till i finish my review
 

Xeon

Augur
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
1,858
I think so far I encountered 3 people who are either faked being members or switched factions, why can't the player do the same dude.

Rock switched sides with my help from Berseker to Outlaw, Cleric guy who wants to buy the Cleric weapons, Outlaw guy pretending to be Cleric part of the Cleric chem quest.

Hope they improve on that on the sequel, trusting to give armor or not being able to loot armor from corpses is cheap answer. There are a lot of roaming traders as well, would have been great if I could have bought a faction armor or similar without joining even if it was a lot more expensive.
 

Hobo Elf

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Messages
13,999
Location
Platypus Planet
That would ruin the entire fantasy of armor in PB games. Armor is just as much a status symbol of your rank within a faction as it is an extremely valuable piece of equipment. Armor has always been something that you earn, not what you can buy.
 

Felix

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2009
Messages
3,356
The game is as bad as Risen 3.

get the fuck out of this thread already, hesu christo

Counter arguments please, I don't speak in blind fanboysm, it's quite a primite language in my opinnion.

i've already mentioned counter arguments to almost everything you keep regurgitating across this thread like a dozen times, but since i'm a generous god, i'll at least mention two of them once again:


that game also had a plethora of big islands and a load shit of exploration but in the end the results were the same

This is the biggest point as to why Elex is objectively and clearly superior to Risen 3. The R3 islands all existed in their own respective vacuums, and none of them ever had any interactions with one another. The Stormson quest (as dumb as it is in structure) is one obvious example showing that the areas and factions in Elex interact - a guy starts in Goliet then lands in Ignadon. Another one is Drog - you can first exile him from Goliet, he lands in the exile valley, and then you can tell him to either join the clerics or the outlaws. Simple and largely insignificant? Sure. But even something as fucking basic as this was 100% absent from R3.

subpar quests that resulted in a plethora of fetch this and kill X monsters

People (rightly) complain about the healing root quest in Goliet where you have to gather 7 specific plants of which there are only 7 in the entire world. So far, I've seen only 2 such quests - one in Goliet, the other from the womyn with a pet troll. Meanwhile R3 was CHOCKFUL of these. It was like every other, if not more, quest was "Bring me 5 specific plants that grow somewhere in one place on the ass end of the world".



this is about as much effort that i feel like giving now to reply to your stupid and baseless tryhardery

i'm afraid if you want to learn more you'll have to wait till i finish my review

eh, there are more than the specific amount but just let the guy hating the game, his life has no meaning without the hate.
 

Hobo Elf

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Messages
13,999
Location
Platypus Planet
People (rightly) complain about the healing root quest in Goliet where you have to gather 7 specific plants of which there are only 7 in the entire world. So far, I've seen only 2 such quests - one in Goliet, the other from the womyn with a pet troll. Meanwhile R3 was CHOCKFUL of these. It was like every other, if not more, quest was "Bring me 5 specific plants that grow somewhere in one place on the ass end of the world".

I thought the healing root quest was fine because it directs the player into finding a "hidden" semi-powerful weapon and pits you against a very high level enemy. I consider the Goliet quests to be a soft tutorial so this, to me, seems just like the devs teasing the player with some mid-to-high level stuff at the very beginning of the game.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,406
Location
Djibouti
That would ruin the entire fantasy of armor in PB games. Armor is just as much a status symbol of your rank within a faction as it is an extremely valuable piece of equipment. Armor has always been something that you earn, not what you can buy.

Well, in NotR you could do some funky things with armoire at least, like put on the bandit outfit and pretend to be one to be able to access Raventown (and in turn get attacked by all other NPCS in the game).
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
I'd prefer there was non-faction upgradeable armor, even if it wasn't so strong. I prefer variety, so something like smithing armor from a quest for vikings, getting armor from higher ranks/reputation on how calaan-halal you are for clerics for teh free, and scrapping armor from ingredients yourself with unique outlaw skill instead of buying it would work for me.

I would like factionless path through game as an additional challenge-mode too.
 

TwinkieGorilla

does a good job.
Patron
Joined
Oct 19, 2007
Messages
5,480
Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pathfinder: Wrath
Hey so I'm pretty new to PB games here. I'd played a minute of Risen back in the day but barely remember anything about it. How does this forum feel about that series?
 

agentorange

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 14, 2012
Messages
5,256
Location
rpghq (cant read codex pms cuz of fag 2fa)
Codex 2012
risen doesn't have jetpacks
The purpose of the jetpack in ELEX is to make up for the lackluster, too-big-for-its-own-good world design and allow you to get away from the high level monsters that are placed in nonsensical locations. If they fixed/improved this stuff you wouldn't even need a jetpack. I don't replay Gothic1/2/Risen and think to myself "boy I wish I had a jetpack" because the world is satisfying to explore without it. The jetpack ruins the pacing and cheapens the exploration, it's like having a cheat item from the outset.
 

agentorange

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 14, 2012
Messages
5,256
Location
rpghq (cant read codex pms cuz of fag 2fa)
Codex 2012
Let me give an example. In Gothic 2 just to GET INTO Khorinis is a very memorable line of quests. I think there are about 6 solutions to gaining entry, some of which you will not discover until multiple playthroughs. How you get in, who you choose to interact with and make deals with can have an unforeseen effect later on. In ELEX you just use your jetpack to boost over the supposedly highly defensible walls of the city. Yeah it's funny but it makes the world feel like a joke. Actually despite the fact that the ELEX world is technically far larger than any of the previous Gothic games it feels far smaller and less significant because of this.
 

Reapa

Doom Preacher
Joined
Jul 10, 2009
Messages
2,340
Location
Germany
People (rightly) complain about the healing root quest in Goliet where you have to gather 7 specific plants of which there are only 7 in the entire world. So far, I've seen only 2 such quests - one in Goliet, the other from the womyn with a pet troll. Meanwhile R3 was CHOCKFUL of these. It was like every other, if not more, quest was "Bring me 5 specific plants that grow somewhere in one place on the ass end of the world".

I thought the healing root quest was fine because it directs the player into finding a "hidden" semi-powerful weapon and pits you against a very high level enemy. I consider the Goliet quests to be a soft tutorial so this, to me, seems just like the devs teasing the player with some mid-to-high level stuff at the very beginning of the game.
yeah, it's great that you have to deal with (run around) a high level enemy that early in the game, and find a semi powerful weapon that early in the game and then not being able to equip it, because according to the set character progression time line you were not supposed to find that weapon until much later. :troll:
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
So, I fired up Risen 1 and played a couple of hours. I enjoyed Elex, but throughout thought it is distinctly inferior to R1, which I rate very highly. Comparing R1 - Elex early game yields some interesting points:

(1) HP Bloat in Elex.
Even on Hard R1 v. Difficult Elex, enemies tend to have a lot more HP relative to your attack power. In R1, the stick you pick up allows you to kill the first enemy (the bird) in ~5 hits; within minutes, you find a shoddy sword that reduces it to 3 (which is a single slash-slash-slash combo). In Elex, the first runt mass rats you fight with your starting weapon take longer in Difficult, and significantly longer in Ultra.

Combine this with the lack of Stamina in R1, and generally faster attack sequences and animations all round. Dodging feels instant in R1 compared to Elex. In both games, your vulnerability is similar; a couple solid hits from the enemy and you're fucked. But the difference is that in R1, you could even try and take on a non-'Weak' boar or wolf, and you win or lose within 20 seconds. In Elex it is going to be a more drawn out process - which naturally makes it harder to take on enemies above your power level, because you have to avoid making any mistakes for longer.

I think this is one of the key issues that contributes to people feeling like you are more weak and useless in Elex. In R1, within the first 10-15 minutes you might have fought 6-7 enemies, learnt a lot about how the combat works, and if you are good or are used to PB combat, even take on a Boar. In Elex, the chicken above the wall takes a long time to kill even if you are good, it is much harder to kill because you have to stay alive longer, and in general it feels more grueling because you spent 30 mins playing and killed like 3 rats.

(2) World Design.
Playing R1 right after Elex it is striking how, although Elex distinctly maintains a PB/Gothic feel, how many changes have been made to the formula. First, everything is larger in Elex. Distances between enemies, distances between key areas. The world is far denser in R1; you might be at an intersection in the roads and spot 6 enemies steps away (who are much more blind in aggro LOS for obvious reason). Jan guiding you to bandit camp takes 2 mins, harbour town a bit longer, but it all feels faster than Duras to Goliet. World density is further diluted in Elex due to the jetpack, and how that changes the way you view the landscape: in R1 (and I would argue G1/2) you often see the world in terms of narrow paths, constrained tightly by a combination of strong enemies and natural environments. In Elex the world is more of a wide flat plain that you jump in and out as you please.

This world density difference has consequences for the PB Feel (TM). To me the key word for everything that makes Gothic great is parsimony. You don't upgrade your armour 80 times. You don't see cities with 2000 pointless NPCs. Every enemy is dangerous and every kill counts, and even small pieces of loot make you happy too. Elex maintains the major pillars of this feel, e.g. dangerous combat and armour scarcity. But it also dilutes it by losing some of this 'density'. So it isn't simply a matter of the world being too 'big', though that factors into it as well.

(3) Too much stuff
Another important way this parsimony is lost is what yuo find in this world. In R1, you get off a shipwreck, find a few corpses with nothing significant, no love letters or diaries. You fight a couple of wolves in a quiet and desolate nature; you find a small abandoned house, again no love stories or backstory, just a quiet hamlet. Even when you reach Bandit Camp or Harbour Town, the key themes from NPCs are so simple: we are bandits, those monks take people away. In Elex, Jax is talking about bros and Elex magicks and lost drones and interfaction politics the moment he wakes up. You find all sorts of old world machinery. Duras gives you a long rundown of how things are. As you wander, you keep finding all these old recordings and notes and stuff.

So there's a lot more lore and story and subplots going on in Elex - and I actually think this is to the detriment of the PB Feel, and takes it a bit closer to nuFallout or Skyrim. I think PB games always worked best when dealing with a harsh and parsimonious setting: you're in a fucking prison camp, you don't fucking need to know what magic runs this universe or the long back history of what this prison used to be for social experiments or whatever. Dude you meet is a mob leader and his motivations are simple and direct. Your own situation is simple and unforgiving. Again, R1 recreated this perfectly with not only your shipwreck, but having basically a colonial island without overloaded detail on what's going on in the mainland or whatever; details would come later. I think all these old recordings about Calaan and whatnot aren't bad in themselves, they are interesting, and I foudn the pirate stuff in R2/3 cool (the only redeeming feature), but to be sure it is a decision that dilutes this parsimony.

So I don't think all of these are purely negative. The HP bloat arguably makes individual enemies matter more in Elex and reinforces the vulnerability of the player, for example. But I"m just noticing some interesting differences, and I think on the whole they lead me to preferring R1 as a purer distillation of the PB formula. (Also Darth Roxor )
 
Last edited:

Reapa

Doom Preacher
Joined
Jul 10, 2009
Messages
2,340
Location
Germany
Let me give an example. In Gothic 2 just to GET INTO Khorinis is a very memorable line of quests. I think there are about 6 solutions to gaining entry, some of which you will not discover until multiple playthroughs. How you get in, who you choose to interact with and make deals with can have an unforeseen effect later on. In ELEX you just use your jetpack to boost over the supposedly highly defensible walls of the city. Yeah it's funny but it makes the world feel like a joke. Actually despite the fact that the ELEX world is technically far larger than any of the previous Gothic games it feels far smaller and less significant because of this.
the jetpack is not the problem. it's stupid as fuck but not the problem. they could have made memorable quests / could have had memorable cities if they wanted to. not being able to get into one would be as simple as making the city an underground one. they could have sprinkled some "daedric armor" around the game for the jetpack to be even better. they did neither.
 

dragonul09

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Dec 19, 2014
Messages
1,445
Let me give an example. In Gothic 2 just to GET INTO Khorinis is a very memorable line of quests. I think there are about 6 solutions to gaining entry, some of which you will not discover until multiple playthroughs. How you get in, who you choose to interact with and make deals with can have an unforeseen effect later on. In ELEX you just use your jetpack to boost over the supposedly highly defensible walls of the city. Yeah it's funny but it makes the world feel like a joke. Actually despite the fact that the ELEX world is technically far larger than any of the previous Gothic games it feels far smaller and less significant because of this.
the jetpack is not the problem. it's stupid as fuck but not the problem. they could have made memorable quests / could have had memorable cities if they wanted to. not being able to get into one would be as simple as making the city an underground one. they could have sprinkled some "daedric armor" around the game for the jetpack to be even better. they did neither.

You are so wrong, do you know how many toilet paper rolls I have found on the top of buildings, I couldn't have achieved something like that without the jet pack, I bet that was the whole point of this useful gadget.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,406
Location
Djibouti
also mens, here's a funny question i have for u:

does anyone actually know what does radiation do as a weapon effect?

because after 50 hours of playtime... i still have no idea, and it sure as hell doesn't do damage over time :shittydog:
 

Incantatar

Cipher
Joined
Jan 9, 2012
Messages
453
Expectedly my run ended with falling 5 metres to the death. I thought I was above water, turns out slightly to the side. Made it to level 14, not bad I think for the first try.
I agree with Tigranes. I hate that exploration and advancement feels so empty. The game is not bad, but I'm not feeling the atmosphere like I should.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
also mens, here's a funny question i have for u:

does anyone actually know what does radiation do as a weapon effect?

because after 50 hours of playtime... i still have no idea, and it sure as hell doesn't do damage over time :shittydog:
It should be a DoT, I mean, it ticks when you get hit by outlaw weapons.

I am actually now concidering between bleed, rad and reflect on chainsabre and want to know what is the most effective and not bugged choice here.

I think RAD lowers stamina and checks enemy rad resist instead of armor to extent but really

who knows. gif

Guess I'll go with bleed.
Just need 7500 and 12 hand grenades to make a chainsword bleed enemies.
......:prosper:

and since Ima outlawing and stuff:
- Furnace or custom flamer?
- Unique shotgun or custom, or forget about shotguns?
- Why is 2 grenades makes only 1 explosive bolts, I need 10 to kill anything
- Grenade launcher, yay or nay? What to load it with?

u cant unscrew unique weapons. u can't unscrew unique weapons...
die game, die(
 
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Tygrende

Arbiter
Joined
Aug 2, 2017
Messages
872
also mens, here's a funny question i have for u:

does anyone actually know what does radiation do as a weapon effect?

because after 50 hours of playtime... i still have no idea, and it sure as hell doesn't do damage over time :shittydog:
Supposedly it prevents healing. I have no actual evidence and never tested this myself though. If that's the case then it's basically useless as I don't think there are any enemies in the game that heal themselves.
 

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