ELEX

4/10: Clunky and poorly designed. (Played on normal difficulty) The environment and storytelling was fairly decent, but was crushed by the overwhelmingly poor gameplay design. Exploring: One of the most important parts of an open world that is dropped on this game as a side note. The world itself is nice, but that's it. Exploring yields minimal rewards and resources while being HEAVILY sectioned off by power-crept enemies. Getting around those enemies isn't too hard, but it is rather tedious when the ENTIRE MAP is built this way. I often roam in open worlds to explore the general map before going back to the "starter" or "main quest" area, bringing along some random items from new places, but normally never any high level or op gear, just materials I can use later. This game doesn't reward you for this. Running around outside of the first area just results in you tediously dodging everything that wants to kill you before replacing large areas with literally nothing. In the desert area, this makes sense, but this is for the ENTIRE map. After finding several areas, including an entire settlement that should be found by every player yet only ~10% of players have found it, and exploring for quite a bit of time, I returned to the starter zone to find the exact same problem and more. It was unrewarding, unfulfilling, and frustrating to get such pitiful rewards for a core mechanic of open worlds. Combat: The combat is okay. Nothing special about it, you just aim and attack with some extras here and there. I wish there was some more depth to it (weapons crafting/usage and variety). Most of my time in combat was spent being annoyed at the lack of damage I was dealing, even after getting better gear. It felt like I had wet noodles until I was over-leveled and over-geared. There was nothing that stood out as useful, so I just ended up not bothering with killing enemies unless it was for story. Story: Without any spoilers on the direct content of the story, it was simple but empty. You essentially had to choose a faction and do their quests..... except 90% of the factions were in high level difficult zones. So if you wanted to attempt to join a faction other that the starter one... you had to not only get to the area, but you had to level up and gear up to even be able to complete their missions and find them in general. Finding these mysterious factions was enjoyable, but only 2 of them were realistic for me to attempt in the time I played. It didn't feel like a traditional open world faction system, being able to start quests right away or having a clear level/strength set to clear missions. Everything was mostly up in the air and very ambiguous on the requirements to complete or find objectives. On top of that, the missions you did get ended up taking you places TOO STRONG for you to complete right off the bat, which means you had to hit the grindstone constantly. Overall, this game falls short of most areas of enjoyment. It's not hopeless, but it feels horribly untuned and unpolished in the critical gameplay aspects. Should this game ever get polished, I would love to give it another try, I loved the world-building ideas and groundwork that they laid down.

This game is a lot of fun. If you have enjoyed games such as fallout 4 etc. I believe you will get some enjoyment from this game. Some of the enjoyable aspects of this game: - Great interesting and unique story. - Some decisions you make will impact other areas of the game. - The choice of factions. - The fact it is a hard game at the start as you slowly build your skills. Don't get me wrong there are some bugs and minor issues with the game, but these aren't game breaking or even noticeable most of the time. I've spent a lot of time just exploring the scenery, which is a major enjoyment of this game. Unless you are a perfectionist with your games I would recommend it.

This is a tough game to review. If your a Piranha Bytes fan then you will most likely enjoy this. Its a tough game to get into if your not used to PB's jank RPG's. In my opinion, this is their best game after the first 2 Gothics. I enjoyed Risen 1 and its a close race but Elex is much bigger, longer and more in depth so I give it the edge. Risen 2 was hot garbage and 3 was mid. I don't even want to talk about Elex 2. If you can get past the first few hours, the jank-fest combat, terrible UI that doesn't explain much, super confusing skill trees and the use of elex and all the other mechanics you have to learn yourself you can get a good 40 plus hours out of this. Don't even try to ask what the alignment mechanic with hot and col even means lol. The world map is great and all hand crafted, no loading screens and semi reactive NPC's that don't just stand in one spot. You eneter someones house when your not invited, better get out quick and dont get caught stealing. No level scaling crap w enemies and loot to find everywhere including unique weapons that can be found. Nearly every NPC can be killed. Their are different clans to join with their own quests, companions and clan specific Armour. The world building is pretty dense but also hard to crack at first. Its mostly found in notes and recordings through out the world. I am still not completely sure what the hell is going on. something about a meteor destroying the world, alien races, elex crystals are like super crack etc. but the world and quests are the high points for me anyway. If your having trouble, go online and check out some guides and maps etc. Heck, even cheat a little in the beginning if you want just to get you deeper into the game before giving up. I think most fans of PB's earlier games will find some stuff to enjoy here. If you have never played a Piranha Bytes game, don't start with this. Maybe try Risen 1 first or go for the gold standard, Gothic 2.

juegazo. Good game, following the pb formula from all the previos games but with a plot twist. The story get a bit confusing, you have so much freedom that you can and will fuck up some quests, and that can make the main story a bit weird to follow, but is good and is there. The combat is clunky under 2025 gameplay mechanics but is not thaaaaaat bad... good game, probably gonna replay it for the other endings.

I have had this in my library for a long time when I got it from some nice Steam sale. Now that I finally got around to trying it out, I just can't get into it. I played Gothic 1+2 (on a windows 7 VM because they are that old) and lived with the outdated graphics and horrible voice acting. Fast forward to a game made in 2017, and this game has better visuals but the clunky controls and voice acting/writing is still atrocious. I gave up just under 10 hours of thinking I could just push through and live with it. The trailer videos on the store page oversell's this product. I have uninstalled this game rather than move it to my external Steam library storage drive, it is that much of a waste of space.

It's janky. It's awkward. It's clunky. And it's a whole lot of fun.

does the main character need to narrate his actions?