Elex II

[Maryokutai]

Played roughly five hours of this over the weekend. It's very similar to the first game to the point where I was thinking of just hijacking that other topic, but I'll play by the rules.

 

When I say similar, I mean that you play as the same character, in the same world, meeting up with the same NPCs. It's been too long for me to remember if the world is actually 1:1 or rather some sort of "remake", but I think it's the latter. The story is a bit weird (alien invasion, protagonist gets infected, mumbo jumbo) and there's absolutely zero explanation as to why he has to start from scratch again in terms of skills and abilities, which I actually found very charming in an unapologetic 'I'm sequel to videogame!' kind of way.

 

The biggest difference to 1 so far is that you don't start off as a walking paper cutout. Sure, most of the enemies can and will kill you, but against mutated rats and insects you actually stand a chance. I see this as neither a good nor a bad thing. It's obviously designed in a way to be more approachable and short-term rewarding, but I actually enjoyed the feeling of being at the absolute bottom of the food chain in Elex 1 and having to rely on Quest XP to level up or companions to do the dirty work for you. But I realise just as many if not more people will prefer being able to swing a pipe and do actual damage from the first hour onward.

 

There's a couple of cool little details I noticed about NPCs. For one, they use that Uncharted system where, if someone in your party gets interrupted during dialogue because a combat encounter happens, they actually finish their lines later when everything has settled. There was also one cool moment where I saw two NPCs talking to each other and I pressed the button to talk to one of them. She then said I shouldn't interrupt her, finished her discussion, and then went back to me to scold me before the actual dialogue branch started. I've actually never seen that in an RPG, or any game for that matter. It also negatively influenced my standing with her, as there's some invisible relationship thing with major NPCs going on, too.

 

Of course this being a certified eurojankTM game, you have to accept that it's not a looker, that combat is still very wonky, and the unusual unpolished aspects that come with it. But I'm really enjoying it so far, particularly as I've always liked PB's dual progression system with skill points and trainer perks. Makes the whole thing a bit more tangible as it bypasses the illogical construct of the classic RPG fundamentals. Not that this is an issue in other games, but it's a design idea I find very clever. Sidenote, this is also their first game that runs almost flawlessly on console. Performance mode on Series X only ever drops a few frames in very busy village settings, otherwise it's rock solid.

Definitely not a game for everyone, but I think shiny and dwarf and some others might enjoy this. I'm not sure if I'd recommend playing both Elex games and I'm not far enough into this to say which one is better. So far this seems a bit more streamlined, but I've also read that the mid- to endgame is inferior to the original -- guess I'll see, but so far, so good.

 

[shinymcshine]

I ended up liking Elex - but agree the PB template isn't for everyone.

 

It'll be interesting to read whether the sequel develops enough of its own identity to tempt me to play it.

[one-armed dwarf]

I find these sorts of games very interesting cause of their diegetic approach to progression and teaching players how do to stuff. Even stuff like the world outside a settlement being too dangerous to go alone, so you find someone to escort you from place to place for low levels. It's not something that a lot of games in this space are as interested in these days, where it's very much a sign-posted theme park of attractions with minimal friction. So I really think the RPG space needs these lower to mid budget and, yes, janky games to kinda keep this sort of game going. 'Jank' is mostly used as pejorative but with that lack of polish it's cause they are doing lots of things that are pushing their resources a bit, which is the opposite of what can happen in other games that are very polished and carefully built

 

With Elex II in particular I'm not sure what the deal is, reading on the world-of-gothic subreddit it seems to have a fairly mixed reputation. But then so does Elex 1, and even Risen. The first two gothics are the only ones people seem to agree about, as well as the third I suppose (in the sense of how bad it is). Having a less than high quality endgame is also something that Gothic suffers from, you kinda forgive it a bit in II cause leading up to it is so good but when they have you fight the dragons it's a bit like someone had to rush the concluding paragraph to their homework the night before

[Maryokutai]

My first PB game was Risen and that had a dreadful last chapter. I didn't even bother playing through it and just considered the game done by that point. Shitty endings seem almost like a trademark of theirs I guess. The thing with Gothic is that the first two were made under different leadership, who then left the studio. With Gothic 3 you could sense that, that was kind of their RE4 -> RE5 moment where they tried to build upon the old foundation while reaching for the stars and it backfired because the main guru wasn't there anymore. But like Capcom I think they found their rhythm again later with Risen and Elex, but some purists still see Gothic as the holy grail and everything else like a step back. Can't really comment on that, never having played those, but as a 'newcomer' I'd say both Risen and Elex are very competent RPGs in their own right.

 

But there's an alarming amount of people among the Gothic fandom who keep saying that PB 'deserve' their current troubles and whatnot because they don't like Elex as much as Gothic. Definitely one of those shitty fanbases, at least on the German side of things (haven't really interacted with their global audience so far).

 

Anyway ... haven't had much time for it today but I'll let you know @shinymcshine whether or not it differentiates itself enough from the first to be worth a look. Tendency towards no, but we'll see.

[Maryokutai]

Got a solid 2 hours time for this yesterday, and half of that was running around a Berserker village trying to fix their broken economy by talking to leadership people and trying to rearrange their budget. At some point in that quest a new answer during dialogue unlocks telling people you're getting kind of tired of running around and they can go to the other guy themselves. Felt really liberating. It actually has some really funny moments. I know Gothic was like that as well, Risen also, but the first Elex not so much, at least as far as I remember. 

 

There's also a quest that started in a somewhat banal fashion and has now developed into this kind of conspiracy thing with an underground group acting in the shadows and whatnot. I suppose it's standard RPG fare, but it's very engaging. One thing I don't like is how binary the effect of your choices are on your companions. Right now I'm running around with the protagonist's 'wife' (or more accurately, the mother of his child), who is considered a 'good' person ingame. So for every 'good' answer you give your relationship with her becomes stronger and vice-versa when you answer in a way that's maybe less noble, even if you are lying and by extent she should know. Slight spoiler:

 

Spoiler

The quest about the aforementioned underground group starts by some officer asking you to infiltrate them. So when I got to their leader, I told them I wanted to join, which was obviously in context of my mission and not my true agenda. But if you pick that answer, you lose a truckload of loyalty points with your companion, even if they were along for the entirety of the questline and its setup, simply because that answer is considered a 'bad' choice.

 

It's a bit unfortunate, especially since the game otherwise very accurately tracks nuances and variables and acknowledges them during dialogue.

[Maryokutai]

Went back to this after a bit of a break, I think it has a more straight motivational line than the first, which I had dropped at this point in time (roughly 30 hours in, about to make a choice which faction to join). In that sense I prefer it to the first, I've yet to find myself in a situation where I couldn't look ahead and find something interesting to do. I do think the world is less interesting though, now that I have spend more time with it. The first one was this kind of post-apocalyptic thing, but enough time had passed for civilisation to start going again. This is more of a post-post-apocalyptic world where everyone tries to survive in the rubble, so you have layers upon layers of derelict stuff, which can be a bit of a downer at times, especially in the eastern part of the map. There's also an underground city there that's an absolute nightmare to navigate because the map only shows the satellite surface level of the world.

 

Right now moving on with the story or choosing a faction would cancel a lot of open quests, so I'm cleaning my questlog a bit and can then finally move on to the part people seem to absolutely hate. Wonder how that'll go. One thing I have noticed though is that it feels just that tiny bit more mainstream-aligned that their other stuff. It's still very much a PB game, but think ME1 -> ME2, just to a significantly lesser extent. I'll elaborate a bit more on that when I'm through, because there's still quite a bit of stuff (like faction-exclusive skill trees) I haven't experienced yet.

[Maryokutai]

Unlocked the PB Pandora's Box today: I'm now a certified chemist who can brew his own potions. These not only include basic health and mana potions, but also those that permanently increase stats or just straight up give you skill- and ability points. Some rare ingredients needed of course but I love how the game just hands you the tools to break it all if you're willing to (though, admittedly, only after a certain time commitment, so it doesn't feel like a shortcut).

 

40 hours now or so (I'm off work), maybe I'l see the end sometime next week.