Elex (PC, PS4, XOne)

Coming October 17th.

New game from Piranha Bytes (Gothic and Risen series) and Nordic Games.
So far only review is from a German magazine that gave it a 85%.

What I expect of it is basically a major downgrade in animations and flow from other third person action rpgs like Dark Souls, but with a world scope similarly to Divinity: Original Sin.

From the review, they said it is the best game from Piranha Bytes since Gothic 2. I'd describe the Risen series as very clunky, but I played all of them for quite a few hours (never finished them), so I am looking forwards for this.

Posting this thread since I assume it will go under the radar for most people as I doubt it will recieve a lot of marketing hype prior to launch since Shadows of Mordor 2 release the week before and South Park release on the same day as this.

Trailer below shows that I think I am correct in my expectations of a fairly clunky and stiff game when it comes to combat compared to other third person games, but I am still excited since the review used the world and its scope as the reason for the high mark.

I bought it.

It's basically a more polished Gothic / Risen type game. It's not AAA level polish, but nowhere gamebreaking clunky.

So my biased thoughts so far after around 10+ hours is that it is a huge gameworld, lots of things everywhere, most of which can kill you. It's almost designed to try to exploit the more clunky things like pathing, line of sight, etc, in order to progress. And not like there is a set path for you to go where things are "on your level". Enemies that can oneshot you are sprinkled everywhere, and on the highest difficulty, you increase that number to 90+% of the things you encounter. However, once you get a follower (can have one at a time), they only get "stunned" when killed, and you can exploit that by them taking on harder enemies. Not so much a cheese tactic either as necessary in the early parts.

Some small tips:
It will take a while before you get ranged attacks other than bow.
Every stat is useful and intermixed, so it's really not like you just increase some stats and ignore others.
There are different sunglasses with various abilities on them. Just got a pair that highlights "normal items" in the game. Incredibly useful to find loot.

Can also spoil some early tips like the location of an easy to get follower early on + location of sunglasses which shows items if people want.

I really enjoy it so far, but you need to accept that it is not AAA. Made by team of 26 think?

EDIT: Vorph: Combat system isn't so bad is it? It's certainly clunky, but seems ok so far for this type of game?

EDIT 2: After reading what I wrote, I think Vorph is right about combat since I am basically saying that to do quite a lot of the combat, at least so far, is more about finding ways to break it than "fight" per se. Dodge around and not get hit while follower kills things or path enemies into bigger enemies that kill them for you (no exp for that though).

Utnayan said:

This thing got absolutely decimated on gamespot.

https://www.gamespot.com/elex/

4/10. Ouch.

Click to expand...

Reading that review, it does seem that most of his negatives are around the combat. Some things they fail to mention are that followers do not get auto targeted, so vast majority of the combat the problems around that wont matter.

The difficulty of it is true though, but not accurate that there aren't ways around it. There are, but as I said above, combat can feel more like trying to break it than not. Looking for a high ground, and if enemies have ranged, looking for a high ground with a cover that the enemy just stops and tries to hit, then trying to get your follower to follow you there and be the one that kills the mob. Followers break aggro if you don't shoot it, so you need to pop out from cover to do a few shots every few seconds (arrows are a must buy all the time).

Cohh is playing on the Ultra difficulty and progressed far longer than I have.

I'd probably agree with his review though, because it's not a "normal" way to fight. You, alone, just trying to do regular combat, it can be insanely hard. Dodges, rolls, managing the stamina, and after a few minutes you might be close to killing a slightly hard mob until you fail one dodge and it oneshots you.

My suggestion for a faster enjoyment of the game would be to run to the north following a paved road (it is right next to the first camp called "small camp" on the teleport). Follow that north, and when a jet passes overhead (triggers at one point), you know you are on the right path. Keep running past every mob, and you will get to a small shed where a NPC will run out and greet you. It's an Alb that will follow you immediately without a quest. Break aggro from everything, teleport back to the town, and then you can just play normally with a follower 10x your power level. Doing this you can do the early quests. If you try to do the early quests by yourself, you will undoubtedly have the same issues as that reviewer mentioned. Dying everywhere and feel you can't progress.

PS: The gear (weapons) of the follower on that road changes. So you can get him as 1h or 2h, range weapons can differ too. So, once you see the jets, save. Then run until you see some items on the ground next to a car where some rats are. Save there too, not sure when the NPC "locks" their equipment. Then run up to the npcs, skip past all dialog and enter combat to see the weapons he has. If you don't like them, reload and run up again.