ELEX II

Elex felt like most other most other Piranha Bytes games, just different skins and story. If you like the Gothic series and found Risen to be entertaining, Elex filled that niche. It wasn't an amazing, knock your socks off type of game, but it was decent enough to be entertaining. Elex II, on the other hand, felt more empty and lacking compared to the first game and I found it hard to continue wanting to play through it.

Elex II looks and plays just like Elex. There are zero improvements in terms of graphic quality, NPC models or the surrounding environments. Don't be surprised if you think you're playing Elex that was released 6 years ago and keeping that in mind, I'll divulge into what I thought about the game and everything I experienced in it.

You come back to the world of Magalan and continue the fight as Jax. The story starts out with alien invaders crashing down to earth, literally into Jax's home. He escapes by the skin of his teeth after being immediately set upon by what you'll eventually come to know in game as Trackers. He's bitten in the process of him trying to survive and this right here is the aspect of the storyline that they go with on how Jax becomes weakened. If you played Elex you'll recall how powerful you became at the end, well, you're a weakling now and you start all over with needing to level up and build up your attributes.

You immediately come to find out that Jax had a kid sometime soon after Elex and it was with Caja. I'm not sure how old the kid is, but if I had to guess he's maybe 8-10 years old which seems to play Elex II's timeline about 10 years after Elex. Based on what I gathered from the beginning storyline the writers make it sound like Jax is a deadbeat dad that ran and hid away from his son and Caja for a while - gee, great and powerful Jax is just a lowlife, deadbeat dad. Nice. But the writers try to make up for that feeling by making it sound like his son (Dex) is okay with him not being around much and that Jax cares a lot for Dex's wellbeing.

To sum up the start of the game - Jax is a deadbeat father living away from his son and his son's mom, only to visit from time to time when he was in the mood. Wow. Good job there with a crummy backstory with Jax during the about 10 year hiatus between Elex and Elex II.

As we move away from the beginning storyline we do start to take notice of the world around us. Yep, same locations with some differences, but it is pretty much the same world you left in Elex. Some locations in Elex are not accessible, but you will notice and remember many of the places you visit - assuming you played the first game. You'll also notice that character models, skins on the old run down and rusted vehicles are bland and the environment looks just like the game in Elex. I'm honestly starting to think I'm playing Elex and not Elex II and I'm only about an hour into the game at this point. Graphically, there aren't any improvements here over Elex. I guess that would be expected since both games run off the same game engine, Genome Engine.

Controls and combat feel the same. Just like in Elex when you start out you're just a weak pathetic loser (more so in this case because you come off seeming like a deadbeat father). You have to make sure you're managing your stamina bar and keeping your distance from creatures. Basically you stick and move, stick and move, let your stamina regen, stick and move, stick and move, regen your stamina, stick and move ad nauseam. This is the way you will handle melee combat through the entire game. Once you have this down you won't have to worry about dying during melee combat. Ranged combat is pretty basic, there is some auto aiming help with it (I didn't look to see if it's an option to disable in settings or not). Once a target is in range of whatever ranged weapon type you're using, your reticle is red and you fire, your ranged ammo (rocket, arrow, laser, etc) will home in on the target and hit it - it is kind of comical to watch. With ranged combat you can generally sit in a high position and lazily shoot at your enemies below. Enemies will try to path to you and even sometimes some of the NPCs will have jetpacks and fly to your position, but for the most part you're pretty safe just staying away and raining hell down upon them with ranged combat. Flying creatures are the only ones that can be a bit difficult to kill, their movement can be kind of janky at times and you might find yourself missing about 1/3 of your ranged attacks as they move around.

If you want to use melee/shield combo I will give you one piece of advice, disable the tutorials. If you don't, you'll get constant popups about low stamina while you're in the middle of combat. This is frustrating because combat doesn't pause when this happens, however you're stuck trying to click the stupid popup away while you're getting knocked around by bad guys. I personally didn't bother with using the shield, it felt unnecessary because it is easier to dodge/roll out of the way than it is to block an incoming attack that still causes you some damage (shields only provide some damage reduction unless you find or maybe construct a shield that offers 100% damage blocking).

Attributes, this works just like in Elex. You have 5 attributes you'll build up:

• Strength (required for better melee weapons, helps boost your melee damage)
• Constitution (required for some weapons, helps boost your health)
• Dexterity (required for better ranged weapons, helps boost your ranged damage)
• Intelligence (required for boosting mana and magic damage)
• Cunning (required for skills such as lockpicking, ammo crafting and boosts your critical damage)

All your attributes start at 10. Every level you're granted attribute points (AP). You can apply these APs how you see fit. You'll come to find that you'll need certain APs up to certain thresholds to increase skill levels from trainers (more about this to come). You will also need to know what direction you wish to go with combat so you can train in the proper attributes to wield better weapons. If you want better ranged weapons, you won't be dumping points into Intelligence, for example. The cost for each attribute does eventually increase as you get them higher and higher. The first 40 points you spend in a single attribute will only cost you 1 AP (since you start at 10 in each attribute, once you hit 50 is when it'll cost your more APs to level up that attribute). The next 20 points in an attribute will cost you 2 APs per point (from your 50-70 points in an attribute will cost you 2 APs per point). After that each time you want to raise an attribute up a point it'll cost you 5 APs. (Here's a tip - throughout the game you will find potions that will permanently raise attribute points, save all of these until you hit the point it costs you 5 AP. For example if you're strength is at 70, start chugging any potion you have found or even crafted that permanently raises your strength.)

Weapons. Not much to say about them. You can use ranged (vary in forms from bows, laser rifles, crossbows, to even rocket launchers). Some ranged weapons are "Heavy Weapons" (see rocket launcher) and when you have them equipped to shoot, you move like a sloth. Be aware. Melee you get OHE (one-handed) or THW (two-handed) weapons. OHE you swing faster and you can use a shield at the same time if you want. THW swing slower, have a tendency to knock your target prone easier. Experiment with each type to see what you prefer.

One thing that was removed from the game of Elex II that Elex had was different weapon firing options. For example, in Elex, if you had a laser gun you could change the fire mode to fire explosive rounds and even change fire mode a third time to shoot EMP rounds. You don't get that option with any weapon in Elex 2. Weapons were simplified, a laser gun just shoots lasers.

You will notice that beginner weapons are awfully weak. Coupled with the fact that Jax is a wimp at the start combat can feel a bit overwhelming, even if you wanted to use a ranged weapon to try and whittle down a bad guy. Be patient and eventually things will improve as you can wield better weapons and you build up your damage power.

As you progress through the game you'll find that you can roam around anywhere you want, whenever you want. The only limitations are perhaps your jetpack's ability to get to higher spots (you can find jetpack fuel tanks to help boost your jetpack's fuel reserve) and how hearty Jax is because at the early levels he is weak and more dangerous foes can easily kill him in one, maybe two hits. You'll also come to find that voice acting is kind of hit and miss just like in the first Elex, some characters you're better off just reading the captions quickly and clicking through instead of waiting for them to talk.

You will get companions to join you as you progress through the game. All companions have their own side quests that trigger as the main story line progresses. When the companions accompany you, you can only have 1 companion at a time (however, there are bugs in the game where multiple companions would tag along with me as side missions/cut scenes intermingled) and the AI for them is not that good, just like in the first game. Pathing is okay, but combat is annoying because sometimes they never attack and other times when they do attack their timing is so bad that all they're doing is hitting air. There are two good things about your companions: One is that they can't die. If they are depleted of health, they get "stunned" and lay on the ground like a sack of potatoes until you either kill the bad guys or you escape the area. The second good thing is that they can take the aggro of NPCs/monsters, thus allowing you to kill them with ease.

Speaking of companions and their side missions, regardless of what you might be doing, if one of these companions wants to progress their side stories and you're near them, you will be forced into dialogue. It is very annoying. You don't have to do their side missions, but if you choose to you will be automatically whisked away to handle whatever their storyline mission is.

The game offers crafting, a very limited crafting system, but it does offer one. You can craft better weapons, potions, food and gems for socketing. To be able to do these things (aside from food, you only need a recipe) you need to use your Learning Points (LP) with an appropriate trainer that you'll come across. Each time you level you earn 1 LP. Each person that offers training may only offer a few skills to train in, such as someone that does combat may only teach you things with combat. You'll be required to have your attributes up high enough to learn many of these skills, so be careful that you're not simply dumping all your LPs into low level skills you come across. You want to try and focus on building up these skills and boosting up the proper attributes first.

Back to crafting. Crafting a weapon requires knowledge in blacksmithing. When you craft a weapon you're not really crafting a new weapon. You're using "damaged" weapons (a damaged weapon is just a naming scheme for the weakest version of that weapon that you can wield) and it requires 3 damaged weapons to make an improved version of that weapon. You can even make a top-tier of that improved weapon, but it requires 2 improved weapons and some other crafting material (such as elex or iron ore, for example). Improved and top-tier weapons of the "damaged" version do not require any higher attributes to use over the "damaged" version. The improved versions offer a good increased damage amount and if it's a melee weapon it'll allow socketing of gems. Only melee weapons allow you to socket gems. Gem socketing is very limited and the only gems I found worth using are the green ones that give back health on every successful hit. If you can get a couple of these gems in one weapon you rarely have to worry about needing to use food or potions to regenerate health during fights.

Money in the world is called elexit. You earn it from doing missions and selling stuff. Stuff includes the mountainous amount of random junk you collect as you wander and explore the world. Vendors really don't offer better weapons so you never need to worry about buying a weapon. You will have to pay for top-end armor once you've achieved the opportunity to buy it as you progress through the story. Only things I found myself buying from vendors was ammo for my ranged weapons and healing potions.

Skills I trained in to find that they were pretty much useless: hacking, picking pockets and lockpicking. I only bothered to pick a couple of pockets and the couple of ranks I put into free 10 APs was pointless. I did come across some missions that required one to pick locks or hack a safe, so there is at least a little merit to learning those two skills, but overall you find almost next to nothing useful hidden in a locked safe or chest. The only thing I would consider useful that I found in locked safes or chests were gems you can use for socketing and even then since socketing is a very limited system you're not really missing anything if you don't use gems to socket your melee weapon(s).

Factions in the world, they're the same as Elex. However, since Elex the factions have changed locations where their main bases are. As you work your way up the ranks in the factions via quests you eventually have to decide what faction you want to finalize your self towards, be it the Albs, Outlaws, Clerics, Berserkers or Morkons. I went the path of the Outlaws because at the time I found the side missions to becoming an Outlaw more entertaining over what was expected of you to become a Paladin for the Berserkers. I'm not sure how beneficial other factions are over each other, but I do know is that once I became a Warrior for the Berserkers I could now train in magic should I have wanted to go that route. I never bothered with magic so I can't personally comment on how useful it may or may not be, but if it functions anything like ranged combat my guess is that you just keep your distance and blast away at creatures.

With all that said, I do have some glaring issues I want to bring up that really irritated me about the game, these are in no particular order:

1. Unable to kill most NPCs in villages/camps. Most of these NPCs you could knock out and only knock them out. They would get up and then go about their business (you may have to pay a fine if the game flags your actions as criminal), but they could become irritated with you because of it and not want to talk you to anymore. I actually did this to NPC that I needed to progress part of a main storyline mission and he wouldn't talk to me anymore. I couldn't complete the mission. Thankfully I had saved the game just before this all took place so I could restart it, otherwise I never would have been able to go on with the game's main storyline and I would have been stuck.
2. Your main decisions in conversations don't seem to really hold any weight in the game world. Sure, some choices might mean a NPC lives or dies, but overall that doesn't really impact anything in the end and no other NPCs really remember or care about your actions that ultimately ended or spared a NPC's life.
3. Graphical and bug problems:
   1. HUD's health/mana bars would flicker at times and the stamina bar would outright just vanish. Switching weapons would sometimes fix these issues or reloading a save or teleporting to a new location to force the game to reload things would work.
   2. A handful of times I ran into issues where I couldn't fast travel. I had to save and then reload the game to get fast travel to work again.
   3. NPCs and invisible enemies. Sometimes you'd find an NPC with their weapon out like they were trying to engage a monster/enemy, but there was nothing there. The NPC would be walking out into the world like they were chasing this invisible monster/enemy and would ignore the rest of the world (the player - you - and other monsters/enemies it trigged that it walked by. The only way to fix this problem is to reload the game.
   4. Companions, as I had already mentioned earlier, you would sometimes get two of them following you if you were working on several missions at once and you ended up with two companions following you instead of only being limited to one. This issue happened to me multiple times during my playthrough.
4. Invisible boundaries: trying to traverse too far off the edge of the map or into an area that isn't used in this game (example would be the far northwest section of the map) you will run into hostile environments of poison or freezing. If you continue to move in these directions you will eventually die. In these areas you cannot use items that give you freeze or poison protection, it doesn't matter how much of it you have stacked up, you will still die.
5. The game world feels empty, even with all the NPCs that live in it, it still felt empty. None of the factions had "enough people" to handle their problems. So all problems were basically handled by a one person army - you. Even when you did story missions and got factions to agree to work with you in the end fight, it was still pretty much just you on your own. None of the factions would help fight enemies/NPCs unless you were close enough to lure the bad guys into the area that these faction NPCs were.
6. Towards the end of the game the missions were all pretty much the same - faction needs you to clear out a bunch of mutants so they could survive or NPCs so they could survive. You were pretty much a one-man-wrecking machine at the end. Go out, kill a lot of things, go on to the next mission to kill a lot of things ad nauseum. It felt like the writers got tired of trying to think of actual ways to write the story so they just reverted having you do a bunch of "kill everything" missions.
7. Towards the end when I was in areas where I didn't have to "kill everything" I found myself just flying past (with my jetpack) mob, after mob, after mob because combat had become so tedious. Combat was boring once you figured out how to survive. Even at level 10 I was slowly cutting away at forest/mountain trolls that could kill me in one hit. It was slow going, but very doable. Combat became dull and tedious that in the end I just outright avoided doing it.

Overall I found the game to be lacking with the story, voice acting, combat and mission types. Exploring was probably the best part of the game, especially when you got 50 (max amount) extra fuel tanks for your jetpack added in. It got even better once you finished the game because your jetpack fuel became unlimited, you could fly forever and never need to land (but you still needed to watch out for the invisible barriers). If I had to score this game, it would be 5 stars out of 10. The game wasn't bad, but it wasn't something I can easily say go out and play. If you are a huge fan of Piranha Bytes games this one may appeal enough to you if you enjoyed the first Elex game. If you haven't played Elex or if you're not a fan of Piranha Bytes games, you'd just be wasting your time here.