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ELEX ELEX RELEASE THREAD

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
You can't jetpack into the Hort or Domed City. The Fort has no real reason to keep you or anybody out. Goliet's probably the only one where they should freak out if they see you fly in (but of course, most players get Duras' introduction into the city anyway).

I do think, to balance out the jetpack, there should have been some underground stuff or even hazards that shoot down people flying on jetpacks (e.g. a FNV Boomers like group with old world anti-aircraft shit), like Reapa says. It feels great to delve into caverns and ruins in R1; in Elex there are only brick houses
 

Hobo Elf

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Messages
13,997
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.
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:

I'm so sorry the game offended you by presenting you with things that you cannot equip or fight against so early on. Maybe you should try playing Oblivion instead? The game would surely scale better to your level.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Oblivion is a lot more efficient because instead of you running into high level enemies, daedric armoured bandits run into you
 

Zerth

Arbiter
Joined
Feb 18, 2016
Messages
406
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
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:...... (Also Darth Roxor )

Yeah, and perhaps because is too much, I usually don't bother by reading backstory notes and pay much attention to recordings either (unless is related to a quest). Because I don't have a reason to care about the events promptly after the meteor strike.

In Risen 1 , as well as in Gothic I & II (haven't played R2 & R3, so I don't know anything about these games), inventory UI is grid based, I don't understand why PB chose instead the cumbersome UI design that entails scrolling down a list of items. Even for the amount of information intented to be shown at the same time on screen, a grid would be a better choice. At least they should've made icons with different colors in order to be quickly discernible at a glance.

Speaking specifically about combat related skills, every level obtained in any of these skills unlocks techniques instead of damage bonus, like parry, counter parry, new combos, etc. ELEX the only thing you can unlock in combat is the jet pack attack, and every different kind of weapon has rougly the same attack pattern. Well, at least the combo meter is rewarding.
 

Incantatar

Cipher
Joined
Jan 9, 2012
Messages
453
You can't jetpack into the Hort or Domed City. The Fort has no real reason to keep you or anybody out. Goliet's probably the only one where they should freak out if they see you fly in (but of course, most players get Duras' introduction into the city anyway).
You can actually jetpack into the Domed City. You will just get attacked by the guards if you do.
 

Elex

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 17, 2017
Messages
2,043
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
i killed that poor troll before i realized he was mot aggressive.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
The things outlaws call weapons are pathetic

And of all the recipes for ammo, the most important one is missing
FUCKING FUEL
I NEED MORE FUEL

firebat.gif~c200
 

Elex

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 17, 2017
Messages
2,043
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.
i miss the not faction ending armor like in gothic 1 the insect plate and the ore armor
 

Elex

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 17, 2017
Messages
2,043
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.
but in gothic you have that nosense athletic rolling jumping and the “i climb a 4 meter tall wall”
 

Xeon

Augur
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
1,858
I used to like grid based inventory but not anymore as I got older. Feels too much cumbersome to sift through icons instead of by alphabetical letters or whatever especially if there are a lot of different items in the game.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Mainstream gonna mainstream: http://www.pcgamer.com/elex-review/

ELEX REVIEW

Billed as a science fantasy game, Elex is more like getting out every single toy in the drawer and playing with them at the same time. One figure is bigger than the other, one has a gun, another is a knight, another is a pirate. None of them quite fit together, and that means that sometimes the whole thing looks pretty odd, but for better or for worse we’re definitely using every single toy we’ve got.

More an unapologetic genre mashup of post-apocalypse, fantasy, and sci-fi videogames than a straightforward science-fantasy game, Elex’s cobbled-together tropes and genres are an astonishingly apt metaphor for its cobbled-together systems and stories. After 54 hours with Elex, playing well into its endgame, I was still curious about its world and the things in it, but in the process I was so often frustrated with the actual play that I doubt I’ll go back for more.

Individual animations are smooth, but they fit together very poorly, making action scenes look sloppy and indistinct. Frankly, it’s no worse than the much-loved PUBG, but since Elex lacks that game’s fast pace it’s much more noticeable. Characters are visually interesting and pretty well acted, but their writing and behaviors are wooden. In return for this lack of coordination and stiffness, Elex gives you an open world that’s both densely packed and easily traversable. What you can’t scale with a jerky climbing animation and a few jumps you can reach using your jetpack, allowing satisfying open world exploration where you can pick a point on the map and go straight to it, no matter the height you must climb to do so.

On the world of Magalan, there are four kinds of people: People who think technology is Jesus, people who think technology is evil, people who are emotionless mutants, and people who want to get really wasted. To progress, you must join one of the groups of the Free People—technology loving Clerics, barbarian magic-using Berserkers, or drugs-and-explosives obsessed Outlaws. It’s a reductive, transparently gamey faction system that should be one of the worst things about the game, but actually fuels odd stories and endearing fish out of water interactions between characters. The main character in particular, once an emotionless Alb mutant but now betrayed by his people and without his powers, has had so little interaction with the real world that his behavior is an entertaining parody of stiff, boring scarred white guy videogame protagonists. The game plays into this, instead of the normal moral compass of good-bad that RPGs use, your character’s spectrum runs from cold and emotionless to passionate and explosive.

Narrative design and storytelling in Elex suffers from a notable lack of uniqueness and variety. The companions, with one exception, are pretty much stock genre characters who lack interesting twists. Other characters in the world are white European (all of them) stock characters straight out of a fantasy or sci-fi archetype, and generally lack depth or motivations beyond their obvious immediate situation. The overall plot is pretty well executed, though somewhat disjointed in its end stages, and even though I found all the twists and turns predictable they were still a fun ride. The voice acting tries very hard despite the mediocre script, and in places—all comedic—rises above the limitations of a game of this scale. Every dramatic scene in the game falls completely flat.

Fight club
Elex’s primary conceit is that this world doesn't care about your character. It’s designed to appear as such using a variety of tricks that are standard to the open world RPG, like a day-night cycle that gives characters routines to follow. The most effective way that it communicates this independent nature is by a complete lack of scaling mechanisms. Enemies have the same stats from hour one on, meaning that much of the world at start—90% or more—is totally, brutally inaccessible to you on pain of death. Playing this game, even on its easiest difficulties, you will save constantly and re-load just as much.

That inaccessibility can be frustrating because most quests you find will involve or require combat. You’ll get a quest and try to solve it only to discover it’s something you’ll have to come back to in ten or fifteen hours. (Sorry about your urgent problem, see you in three weeks when I can do something about it!)

There are interesting social and dialogue choices that any given character might access because they only require you to have spent points in a specific category of skills. You might be able to intimidate a guard because you have a handful of points in combat skills, or repair a robot because you’ve sunk every point you have into crafting. Like anything else in the game, these requirements vary wildly—one of the first characters in the first town has a dialogue option that requires a whopping ten points in a skill category. Social options, then, seem designed for those who will play the game multiple times, consulting a wiki before opening any given conversation to ensure they’ve got the right skill totals to choose the dialogue options they want.

Conversely, the openness of the world and quests can be great. You can stumble on some of the end-stage characters or set piece encounters of a quest before you even know it exists—like myself, who found a conspiracy in the making and was forced to deal with it before I knew most of the people and the situation involved. Sadly, though, this is the exception rather than the rule—it only happened to me a few times.

In truth, though, most of Elex’s progression boils down to fights. It’s billed as an action RPG, and uses the common stamina system to limit attacks, but its play is much slower and more demanding than most modern interpretations of that genre. Attacks build up combo meter, which increases damage, with each progressive attack in a chain doing more damage. This makes it sound like it’s about knowing your weapon’s animation and timing, but you can’t rely on that at all. It’s more about knowing when to parry or dodge than anything else, but the interactions between animations and odd hitboxes mean you hit when you expected to miss and get hit when you know you pressed the button in time.

Enemies have diverse and interesting designs, like giant fungal trolls, advanced combat robots, and Cronenberg-esque twisted mutants, but generally lack unique or creative behaviors and fall into a handful of clear types that use the same attacks. Many of the ranged weapons and magical powers are difficult-to-impossible to use—I became so frustrated with them early on that I picked up a club and shield and rarely looked back.

Fights are at their strongest when they’re one on one against a powerful foe, but Elex throws you haphazardly into huge brawls instead of scaling up to harder opponents with more interesting attacks. Fighting these large numbers requires you to run around at full speed drinking potions between attacks, exploiting the world geometry to ensure you’re not hit in a kind of guerilla warfare with the game’s design.

A flawed progression
Exacerbating core gameplay problems are Elex’s opaque combat systems and rudimentary UI. Stats like “attack power” are mentioned by items but never defined or given a clear scale. You can’t see your character’s health total, just a bar that never changes size. You can’t even see how many experience points you need to level up, just a grey bar. As you level up, you quickly learn that your statistic points serve very little purpose other than to unlock the thresholds that allow you to wield new weapons and get new skills. It’s an illusion of strategy and complexity rather than actual depth. The majority of your ability to do anything actually comes from equipment, and each new piece of equipment has ever-higher requirements, this means progression comes in fits and starts that don’t align with gaining levels. A new weapon means the ability to fight enemies you could only tickle before despite nearly identical stats and skills. Ten hours and ten levels later little has changed—but then you upgrade your weapon and suddenly reach a new tier of power.

Perhaps this wouldn’t be bad, but equipment and skill acquisition are terribly designed. They’re gated behind a crafting and training system that requires you to gather and spend money—money which is painfully difficult to gather. It’s not worth going into details, but you’ll be grinding kills and selling everything you find to get equipment in the late game. Beyond that, weapons have stat requirements, so if you’re not careful with timing your upgraded weapon you can be unable to wield it. The entire system is an insult to the player’s time and attention.

The only thing that makes that grinding bearable is Elex’s world and area design, which is patently its greatest strength. It’s a lovely looking place, full of clearly hand-crafted corners. It emphasizes quality over size. (Though it is quite large.) Though building models are repeated I never noticed them in the same arrangement twice. Nooks and crannies contain items, enemies, and people. Almost always to kill, yes, but there’s enough competent environmental storytelling to keep you interested. A lot of effort went into the camps of bandits and raiders you find: A pack of cigarettes near where a guard was standing, or a toy secreted away beneath a bed. Much of this detail is never activated by the story or by quests, only by player driven exploration. I found new places and things, even characters and quests, hours into the post-game.

Elex is an ambitious game. As with all open world RPGs, it’s riddled with odd little bugs, though I never encountered one that prevented me from finishing a quest or progressing the story. Otherwise, it ran remarkably smoothly, with very few hiccups other than texture pop and nary a dropped frame on a five year old machine.

Elex’s flaws don’t really come from the bugs, but from how it falls short of its ambitions. Its world and visual design are top tier, and it’s a game with a wide scope and an eclectic vision—it's fun for the forgiving—but that ultimately leaves much of the game underdeveloped. Its RPG systems in particular, what it should rely on for a core, enjoyable gameplay loop, are lacking. Combat is difficult because of numbers, not because of gameplay. Building up a cool character isn’t about customization or uniqueness, it’s about putting in the time for new equipment. Those systems become the weak link that fails to hold the whole thing together.

THE VERDICT
64

ELEX
Inventive in some ways and stagnant in others, Elex will appeal to die-hard RPG fans and few others.
 

Turisas

Arch Devil
Patron
Joined
May 25, 2009
Messages
9,926
So are you screwed out of buying more flamethrower fuel if you join anyone other than the Clerics? The douchebag merchant at The Hort doesn't want to trade at all anymore, which is fine I guess if he weren't the only guy selling it. Anyone seen it on other vendors, or should I just cheatengine myself some?

Fucking clerics, man.
 

Elex

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 17, 2017
Messages
2,043
So are you screwed out of buying more flamethrower fuel if you join anyone other than the Clerics? The douchebag merchant at The Hort doesn't want to trade at all anymore, which is fine I guess if he weren't the only guy selling it. Anyone seen it on other vendors, or should I just cheatengine myself some?

Fucking clerics, man.
travelling cleric merchant and the cleric combat trainer/merchant
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
You can't jetpack into the Hort or Domed City. The Fort has no real reason to keep you or anybody out. Goliet's probably the only one where they should freak out if they see you fly in (but of course, most players get Duras' introduction into the city anyway).
You can actually jetpack into the Domed City. You will just get attacked by the guards if you do.
I find it interesting that's there is giant sewer hole where waterfall comes from way beneath main bridge to Domed City, but it seems like an unused asset.
 

Xeon

Augur
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
1,858
Man, one step bullshit, I tried it several times when Elex linked the archery video and got stomp rolled. Normal people just freak out and roll all over the place and hope to win.
 

HiddenX

The Elder Spy
Patron
Joined
May 20, 2006
Messages
1,655
Location
Germany
Divinity: Original Sin Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Pros
  • Fantastic world
  • Strong character progression
  • Excellent exploration
  • Varied gameplay
  • Interesting factions
-"Varied gameplay"



Sorry can't take your review seriously, you clearly haven't played anything remotely challenging


My lvl 44 end game character can do the same with a fire enchanted weapon - so what?

With lvl 20-30 the above fight is interesting - and you need varied gameplay to win it.
 

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:

I'm so sorry the game offended you by presenting you with things that you cannot equip or fight against so early on. Maybe you should try playing Oblivion instead? The game would surely scale better to your level.
i was saying it was good to be up against a high level enemy early on. it was bad for the game to decide for me when i should be equipping my stuff. that's neither something that makes sense from a role playing perspective nor is it a good game design decision. there is absolutely no excuse for the game to take away such basic decisions.
but i'm fighting windmills here. the very fact you people play these kind of action games is telling volumes about both your tastes in rpgs and your intelligence. it's at a level it just can't be insulted by anything.
 

dragonul09

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Dec 19, 2014
Messages
1,445
Pros
  • Fantastic world
  • Strong character progression
  • Excellent exploration
  • Varied gameplay
  • Interesting factions
-"Varied gameplay"



Sorry can't take your review seriously, you clearly haven't played anything remotely challenging


My lvl 44 end game character can do the same with a fire enchanted weapon - so what?

With lvl 20-30 the above fight is interesting - and you need varied gameplay to win it.


Where the fuck do you see variety in that video, the brain dead AI that attacks once in a full moon and the animations are so telegraphed that someone with multiple sclerosis could avoid it, that shit you consinder good?
 

dragonul09

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Dec 19, 2014
Messages
1,445
Pros
  • Fantastic world
  • Strong character progression
  • Excellent exploration
  • Varied gameplay
  • Interesting factions
-"Varied gameplay"



Sorry can't take your review seriously, you clearly haven't played anything remotely challenging


Those mobs are either bugging the hell out or he set the AI aggressiveness to "passive".


The dude plays on difficult and there's no bug, that's the AI, stop making excuses
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
Slugbeasts have worst AI in the game. 60% of the time they just stand still and do nothing.

The most agressive and smart are chimeras I think. Neither mutants, bugs or spiders can match the randomness and constant direction changing of those.
 

dragonul09

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Dec 19, 2014
Messages
1,445


I'm still waiting for the variety, you rolling around and beating a brick wall for 10 minutes is not my kind of challenge. Also you are clearly underleveled, it's like me starting Skyrim and go and attack a dragon with a butter knife at level 1 and hack at him for 10 hours and call it a diverse and challenging game. Also if you play in the same level zone as that monster he won't stand a chance and that's why people complain, because the only way to ''challenge'' yourself, is to attack overleveled monsters and basically hit them over 9000 times before they die, that's not my idea of a good game.
 
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