ELEX II

 PC
User Score
7.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 115 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 69 out of 115
  2. Mixed: 18 out of 115
  3. Negative: 28 out of 115
Buy Now
Buy on

Review this game

  1. Your Score
    0 out of 10
    Rate this:
    • 10
    • 9
    • 8
    • 7
    • 6
    • 5
    • 4
    • 3
    • 2
    • 1
    • 0
    • 0
  1. Submit
  2. Check Spelling
view
per page
  1. tyr8338
    Mar 31, 2022
    7
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I`ve ijust finshed this game after 52 hours so I can sumarise my experience with it
    alot of content
    +some parts of story are really flashed out, loved fort and berserkers quests where you help out cultivators, get to know many people in fort and thier little strugles, the whole area feels alive and detailed.

    -unfortunately other factions bases and quests arent nearly as detailed or rich so I was quite a bit underwhelmed by them, I really hoped all will be as good as fort/berserkers and it would be a 10/10 game for me

    +graphics are good enough
    -optimization is pretty bad, on 1080ti in 1440p ultra Ive got around 40 fps in cities but luckly while exploring its often over 60

    -later part of the game when you focus on finishing main story start to be a slog with a lot of main missions being like kill 100 mutants, kill 100 skyanids etc. Boring and repetetive.

    Overall it`s descent 7/10 game but really for firsts 20 hours while I was doing fort/berserkerers quests it was awesome 10/10 game so it`s sad piranha didnt menage to keep the quality even thru whole game.    … Expand
  2. Sinatra
    Mar 15, 2022
    5
    About 50 hours in game and I decided to stop playing. This will be my first Pyranha Bytes game, that I won´t finish. As this will be quite the long review, let me summarize first:

    Graphics: ok-ish Performance: atrocious and full of glitches and bugs Quests: mostly bad World design: not as good as the first Elex, but still good The new Jetpack: fantastic! Ai: mostly braindead,    About 50 hours in game and I decided to stop playing. This will be my first Pyranha Bytes game, that I won´t finish. As this will be quite the long review, let me summarize first:

    Graphics: ok-ish
    Performance: atrocious and full of glitches and bugs
    Quests: mostly bad
    World design: not as good as the first Elex, but still good
    The new Jetpack: fantastic!
    Ai: mostly braindead, especially companions
    Overall: boring, soulless

    But let me explain: Personally I really enjoyed Elex 1 and saw it as a fantastic successor to Gothic 2. Yeah, it had it´s problems, but I enjoyed it so much, that I played it 3 times. So what changed ?

    Graphics:
    ...look ok. But there´s something very wrong with the lighting (and shadows) in the game. Sometimes shadows are so dark (in the middle of the day), that I could not see an item 1 meter in front of me. (later I lowered the shader quality and this helped a bit). And sometimes indoors it gets so dark, that you won´t see anything at all, and sometimes the game "forgets" that you are inside and only some parts are dark, while others are very bright.
    And I won´t even start with the "uncanny valley"....

    Performance:
    ... so I just bought a new powerful PC. In the first hours it ran really smooth. Everything to max and I still got an average of 85 fps. Sometimes even 100 or more. I was just asking myself, why so many people complain about the performance.... well, a couple of minutes later I walked into my first city... yeah... suddenly I had an average of 35 fps, with occasional drops to 20!!!!!!! What a disaster!
    And on top of that, glitches , bugs, pop-ins.... wow....

    Quests and the world:
    And here is the main issue with the game - at least for me. Elex 1 had a world that felt alive and quests that complimented it. The quests had many twists and always told you something about the faction you were working for or the world itself. (as an example in Elex 1 the outlaws send you to collect scrap metal and the quest transforms into a conflict with the clerics. Or the quest searching for Calaan - wow, that really was something!). In Elex 2 the quests are: fetch 10 something, kill 5 then 10 then 20 then 40 of something or find someone. 95 % of the quests are so mundane and shallow, that even for an MMO they would be bad. The NPC´s did react to stories in Elex 1. In Elex 2 a faction can be under siege and no one will care, no one will react to changes in the world. On top of that, in Elex 1 you always had a choice on what to do, in Elex 2 they´ll give you 3 choices that are the same. So many times I just wanted to say "no", but that was not an option. But there is one quest I have to mention and careful ... minor spoilers now! About 25 hours into the game I was about to quit for the first time. Then I spoke to an Alb commander (I think her name was Larissa) and that started one of the best quests I have ever played!!!! The people you meet, the unexpected twists and how the story evoives... This quest is a masterpiece and I think the best quest I played in a Pyranha Bytes game.
    Do you see the problem? Suddenly all the other quests seem even more shallow and boring. And unfortunately this remained the only good quest in my playthrough.

    The jetpack:
    Just let me mention that it is a lot of fun running around finding tanks to upgrade your jetpack. What a fantastic and motivating idea!

    A.I. and NPC´s:
    Some NPC´s glitch, one of my trainers disappeared after the first patch and it took me some time to find him. He was glitched into the floor and only his head was visible under a table.... lol....
    Companions are useless. The melee companions will draw their weapon in a fight and then just stand there and contemplate how a monster wipes the floor with you. The ranged ones are a bit better. I usually ran around with Caja and she will shoot her fireballs, but mostly into rocks or buildings, and on rare occasions into enemies... but hey... at least she is trying!!

    Overall:
    This game is just bad! And it´s such a shame. If you consider that this was made by a small team, that manages to take on such a challenging project, that has so much work put into it (just consider that EVERY NPC is voiced and many of them by really good voice actors).... and then it ends up beeing mediocre at best.
    One last thing I NEED to complain about.... in the beginning you´ll learn that you became a father some years ago and you start the game by searching for your son. When you find him, the game will try very hard to make you like him. This part of the game is so bad, that I just wanted to run away. And Dev´s, it would help a lot, if this wasn´t the ugliest child I have seen in my life!

    If people give this mess a 10/10, then I am wondering if we have been playing the same game....    … Expand
  3. sweet
    Mar 25, 2022
    6
    The first Elex had rough edges but you could overlook them because it was an engaging game. You wanted to learn what happened to the world, you wanted to see where the story went. In Elex 2 those minor 'gamey' incoherencies turn into yawning chasms of nonsense. Nothing makes sense. Not the condition of the protagonist, not the way the NPCs behave towards you, not the changes to the world.The first Elex had rough edges but you could overlook them because it was an engaging game. You wanted to learn what happened to the world, you wanted to see where the story went. In Elex 2 those minor 'gamey' incoherencies turn into yawning chasms of nonsense. Nothing makes sense. Not the condition of the protagonist, not the way the NPCs behave towards you, not the changes to the world. Nothing. It's a huge mess.

    The second game exposes the developers for a lack of vision. The plot is cut and paste. The characters are a mockery of characters in prior games. Apart from some interesting quests the writing is generally lazy. I found myself not caring for anyone in the game or the story at all. Uncovering backstory through discovery of notes and logs, a key enjoyable aspect of exploration, is now irrelevant because of the way the world is written.

    The destruction system is meaningless, it creates artificial barriers in the game that make no sense. They can't seem to get their abstraction of this system right, and how it works with your companions and dialog choices. It's particularly annoying when companions don't react to dialog choices in a way you would expect from their personality.

    The triggering of cutscenes when approaching certain areas or NPCs is extremely annoying. Throwing you into quest dialogs unrequested is stealing away player agency. Exploring a building at night? BAM suddenly daytime and you're talking with someone trying to pull you into a quest. In the middle of a battle with a group of enemies? Wait! You must stop to have a chat with a guy wandering in to the middle of it. These cutscenes will drive you insane.

    It's not all bad. The start is much easier because of the smarter placement of enemies. The combat system is easier to get to grips with, although the game feels much less challenging now. The crafting system is far better because it gives much more value to loot and a more organic improvement to weapon upgrading. I like the changes to the skill system which make it much easier to understand. The personality skill branch still seems a poor investment though. There's still plenty of interesting places to explore. NPC variety is much better too.

    All the complaints about performance and weird graphics are valid. I had expected much better in that regard as Elex ran very well on old hardware and my current system should be running this game comfortably. At times frame rate drops to low 20s, which is absurd given I am well above minimum requirements.

    Elex 2 has left me feeling underwhelmed, but they have built the foundations for a much better game than this turned out to be. Hopefully their next game fixes the shortcomings and improves on the world building and writing.    … Expand
  4. UnKidreal
    Aug 5, 2023
    7
    Игра пройдена на уровне сложности – Ультра.

    Играя в Elex 2, постоянно вспоминал их первую Готику. То, как деградировали, за эти годы, разрабы из Piranha Bytes вызывает огромное сожаление. Постоянное упрощение всего и вся, в желании заработать денег на массовой аудитории, которой в основе своей нужно только собирать электронный мусор, понятно, но, когда-то у них была первая Готика, с её    Игра пройдена на уровне сложности – Ультра.

    Играя в Elex 2, постоянно вспоминал их первую Готику. То, как деградировали, за эти годы, разрабы из Piranha Bytes вызывает огромное сожаление. Постоянное упрощение всего и вся, в желании заработать денег на массовой аудитории, которой в основе своей нужно только собирать электронный мусор, понятно, но, когда-то у них была первая Готика, с её трёх уровневой механикой боя, удары, блоки, которую поначалу казалось нереально освоить, но которая, после освоения, оказалась той недосягаемой вершиной, которая дарует просто нереальное наслаждение от поединков, от ощущения того, что ты не просто машешь мечом составляя убогие комбо, а реально бьёшься, вырабатывая свою тактику под каждого противника, с тяжёлой добычей ресурсов от нахождения которых испытывал почти детскую радость, понимая что теперь-то у тебя получится смастерить что-то действительно стоящее, с её системой выбора заставляющей внимательно вчитываться-вслушиваться в то, что тебе говорят, дабы принять верное для себя решение, которое может изменить многое если не всё. И что же Elex 2, тупые диалоги, персонажи, которые практически не вызывают сопереживания от того, что с ними происходит, квест с сыном, это что-то, особенно реакция матери на его финал. Убогая графика и анимация, которые, кажется, не поменялись со времён первой Готики, система боя, заточенная под одноизвильные организмы, система выбора, которая не вызывает никакого интереса вникать в её перипетии, ибо нет в ней нерва осознания тяжёлых последствий от принятия тех или иных решений. Первый Elex, казалось, возвращает разрабов в их лучшие годы, несмотря на мерзкую, устаревшую графику и всё туже крайне упрощенную систему боя, но, сама игра, история и исследование Магалана, разность фракций и их мотиваций, а значит непростой выбор во взаимодействии с ними, всё это создавало, пусть и далеко не совсем, иллюзию первой Готики, второй же Elex вызывает большое разочарование своей упрощённостью, и сомнением в том, что разрабы способны сделать в будущем действительно настоящую CRPG а-ля первая Готика.

    Оценка: 7/10    … Expand
  5. watchm824
    Nov 17, 2022
    6
    I enjoyed the first part a lot. Waited for the second one. But as these developers love - they just released a copy of the first part. At the beginning, you can still enjoy the game (if you like the games of this studio). But in the end, it becomes excruciatingly tedious to play.

Awards & Rankings

51
#51 Most Discussed PC Game of 2022

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
64

Mixed or average reviews - based on 23 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 15 out of 23
  3. Negative: 2 out of 23
  1. Game World Navigator Magazine
    Oct 19, 2022
    62
    Two decades have passed since the first Gothic came out, but Piranha Bytes still sticks to the old formula in hopes that once again it will make a miracle. [Issue#259, p.66]
  2. RPG Site
    May 31, 2022
    60
    Elex II is a disappointing game that fails to build on the potential of the original. While at some moments it manages to capture some of the same strengths, it feels like a poorly implemented retread in several ways. Slight improvements to combat don't make up for a less interesting story, worse characters, weak quest design, and a stark lack of polish.
    Read full review
  3. Riot Pixels
    Mar 31, 2022
    67
    In contrast to the original Elex, this awkward sequel is a typical Piranha Bytes game. And no, it’s not a compliment.
    Read full review
See all critic reviews »