Anyone playing ELEX yet?

[NCRForever]

Yes. I refunded it. I really wanted to enjoy this game. High hopes, but I had doubts. I'm just bummed that my doubts came true.

[Kapteyn]

I'm not concerned with the graphics - even more so given my experience with Skyrim and going so far as compressing the textures and disabling shadows in order to facilitate stability. I'm actually better off with a game of low-resolution textures if my video card is precisely the minimum recommended.

 

I've seen a lot of people comparing against Gothic and Risen. I have Gothic 3, it's alright but if that's the kind of mood I'm in then I simply pull up Skyrim instead, so I've hardly played it. Risen, haven't played any of them but I have just bought the first one off GOG because it's on offer at the moment (actually, the entire series is going for under £10 right now which is pretty good no matter how bad the sequels may be).

 

Keybindings? Yeah, I'm not your average WASD guy and I've never been into controllers unless it's a racing game... so I need customisable controls and not something like Elite Dangerous which is impossible to get a refund for on Steam because it take an entire day to set up the key-bindings.

 

So anyway, what I'm most concerned with is if it can be modded - I don't mean right now, but in the months to come. The world can be as vast as it wants, that is where most of the positive remarks focus on so I'd expect it to be an endless game to an extent - except I'd probably get very bored with it if I'm forced to use the same guy all the time, with the same boring voice, same bland actors everywhere else and with no way to mod them.

 

I'm half expecting a relentless zombie spree, something like a cross with Left4Dead but in an open world. And a jet-pack.

[NCRForever]

Gothic 1 and 2 were great. I didn't care for 3. Risen 1 was also very good. The graphics of Elex weren't bad as some people are saying. I had no issues with the graphics. I quite I liked them. It was just the keybindings.

[NCRForever]

I doubt there will be mod support. The devs touched on it once and they said they were considering it. But that it could change.

[Kapteyn]

If no mod support is possible in the first place, that's never a good sign. A lot of games require an extractor of sorts, usually the stuff is compressed into a non-standard archive - then you get companies like EA encoding everything as if they're trying to protect it from Ukrainian identity thieves. Packaging the core files is standard procedure, but providing the means to access them appears to be a luxury nowadays and often impossible without a release from the company. So if they're half-arsed about providing a simple little program to extract everything then they are surely hoping people buy the game, play it for a short time, forget about it and move on to the next release - and since ELEX 2 has apparently been announced already (before the initial release as it were), I have even stronger doubts of any mod support. So here's to hoping that GOG put it on offer sometime in the next year.

[Jworf]

I have great expectation for this game, but saw your reviews, maybe I don't consider to purchase it.

[marc5477]

Played it. Graphics are hit and miss. Good environment, terrible characters. Voices were also inconsistent. Great around berserkers, terrible in other towns. Biggest problem is that combat is atrociously bad and boring. Basically, a slight less annoying Demon Souls (where you battle cameras instead of enemies) but with even fewer options. I was doing the same combat combo for nearly 40 hours and it takes forever to kill stuff. Design wise, it was clearly designed for analog stick and a few buttons and the inventory is also consolized.

 

Quests are hit or miss. Some fetch quests are MMO-like. Fetch 40 herbs (this one was ridiculous and boring). Others had silly outcomes for instance, the leader knows you stole his treasure and despite having harsh laws, pretty much welcomes you into the group with arms open. The final battle is not fun or interesting nor is the lore or character development. The game is heavily focused on money so much so that it is king. You really have no use for money except to buy skill points and talent points. There is an unlimited amount of it since enemies respawn often and there are some talents that get enemies to drop more stuff.

Overall, its not the worst game ever. But even FO4 was better and that was a huge disappointment. But you can do a lot more with FO4 thanks to its editor. I rated it 4/10 on meta where 5 is average by my scale. Slightly below average.

[Mudran]

That does sound like their style :smile: still better in some ways than Risen series (In Risen 2 you couldn't finish a quest if you bought a wrong talent, you didn't have enough money for the right one to finish a quest, and in Risen 1 you couldn't get out of locked area if you sold an necklace which you needed for a quest), so I guess this game is still better :smile:, only Risen was gothic, so I wonder if they will manage to keep the same atmosphere in post apocalyptic setting. I do like their worlds - so many new ideas. their characters are funny, but I like them - so different from typical american games. But it is not for everybody. It is old school RPG in many ways and it is not polished - but I like how they still keep that high RPG level, which disappeared from franchises like Dragon Age or Elder Scrolls. I can forgive a lot because of that.

 

But the endgame boss fight was always great - so different from the whole game, but I liked it, so that would be different in Elex.

 

EDIT:

I realized that it can sound a bit harsh - don't get me wrong, the game is polished enough, only it is not AAA title. I don't care, but most of the negative comments I saw was about that.

 

And also the combat now is repetitive I guess because it was easier to make it, but the best combat for me was in Risen 1, where every faction had combos and counter attacks you really had to learn as a player (you had to learn how some animations look like and timed you counterattacks with the right combos ets), with ranks in order to kill a boss, then you could progress in a quest. So it wasn't just waving with a sword like in Skyrim :smile:. Only the camera lock was clunky and the mobs had quite annoying attacks etc, so I guess it is easier for them to make it just repetitive.

Edited November 21, 2017 by Mudran

[Mudran]

I hope it is OK to revive this thread - only I finally started to play ELEX myself and the game has flaws, but it is not combat for me, Or a bit unpolished graphics, or those cringy senteces, but the lack of xps and guides. I'm OK with no guides if the game itself is intuitive or if it was like before - a closed world where you couldn't go the wrong way. But ELEX is an openworld, where almost everything is gated. You feel like you have no freedom to do what ever. To wield weapons you need to put really all points into strength/dexternity, then you cannot learn any other skill and have fun exploring the game or just something stupid, or you try some alternative, but then without being able to do combat well, you just die in almost every quest. you never have enough of points to do what you want. Spells are unlocked in factions which require complicated quests finished, which require combat - like 2 vs 3 with higher levels than yours.

And you run out of quests you can do very soon, before meeting mobs with skull - and you cannot see that before entering a fight with them...

Also there is no exploration because those skull mobs are everywhere or there is a pack of them...

In Risen 1 they had chapters and with every chapter they added a new higher level of the same mobs, so you didn't have this problem, and you was dealing with closed areas, where you had to finish it first - outside of that it was free and dangerous was an area more far away - not mixed mobs everywhere.

 

So I don't know what kind of next level of hardcore they tried to achieve, but I'm not sure it does what it meant to do. Combined with all the unpolished sides of the game... I will try to follow more closely some guide, but it is not the same like Bethesda formula of open world - to create a character you want to play, join a faction you want to join, if every 5th mob you meet with your companion will kill you in 2 hits.

 

EDIT.

I just finished reading about their engine road where they tried really hard to have top graphics - the problem is if faces look odd, it is the most obvious :sad:

Also it is nice to have better combat if combo animations are very slow, you will end up waving your sword too long, without possibility to cancel that, it will look clunky no matter what.

Edited January 29, 2019 by Mudran

[Mudran]

So not to be all that negative the changes I wish for are:

 

1. to have the existing 3 types of characters playing this openworld more transparent and intuitive to build (and to roleplay for me):

A) survivalist which is forced to put all points into defensive/crafting skills depending on dexterity/cunning, which would be perfect to play in outlaw camp

B) warrior which is forced to put all points into offensive/combat skills depending on strength/toughness, which would be perfect to play in berserker camp

C) mage which is forced to put all points into mystic/personality skills depending on inteligence/charisma, which would be perfect in clerics camp

or the opposite - berserkers being mages or warriors with dexternity with no heavy armors and clerics as heavy warriors going for strength/perception and not dexternity for fire weapons.

with some third alternatives - like berserker mage, charismatic outlaw and paladin cleric

 

I really liked the old dnd system used in Morrowind/Oblivion - anything else doesn't make sense that much :sad:

 

But right now the feeling I have is that you need every point from each attribute in every camp, or the wrong combination of it - like dexternity for fire weapons and strength for nature people, and a lot of it, so the overall feeling is that you cannot do anything.

 

2. dangerous mobs only 1 bigger one once in a while or a whole dangerous area everyone is talking about, which is needed to access with story later in the game or not at all - I mean a dangerous area would exist, but no quest will force you to go there, only maybe some higher level loot.

 

EDIT:

It is hard to explain it, so I deleted my previous edits, also I didn't remember it right, so some of it wasn't true anyway.

 

It would be great if it would be possible to have more of freedom or atleast lower atributes requirements for basic weapons/skills, but I will try to play it again - maybe I got it wrong.

 

I guess I will try these builds, maybe I will be able to play a character I want finally:

https://www.neoseeker.com/elex/guides/Builds

 

 

EDIT2:

 

I chose berserker ranger build with survival starting skills, started new playthrough, so I would remember how to do those combos and it works well - I can kill all the quest enemies on level 6 I couldn't before with level 9 and I can RP this build as well, I'm so happy I can play ELEX the way I want.

Also I was wondering why I don't like some of the sentences in quests when I really liked all the quest characters esp. in Risen 3, where they really managed to give them personality, so I think in ELEX the voiceactors sound the same and quite often they are connected to the same types of NPCs - like outlaws have the same faces, the same voices, so after some time you don't want to listen to it. Even if you look at leaders of those 3 factions they look almost identical, so I guess they didn't have time fot that.

Edited January 28, 2019 by Mudran