Elex Elex First Impressions

There are a couple of really good weapons that, once you acquire and get the skills for, will pretty much decimate almost all of the content you'll run across. There are, of course, some obvious exceptions. Should we get a sequel, I'd hope that it would be set on the same world and that some of the factions would be better balanced the second time around.

Carnifex said:

Should we get a sequel, I'd hope that it would be set on the same world and that some of the factions would be better balanced the second time around.

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It's been reported that the sequel was greenlighted even before Elex was released. I assume they're already working on it.

They could have tweaked Elex post-release to better balance it. I'm disappointed that they didn't do that.

I enjoyed the game and would not mind a sequel. Only thing I really wished for was more involved companions but admittedly I am a huge companion fan in games.

Any news of an actual sequel is excellent news to me!

Yeah, Elex 2 will be a pre-order for me. Even with the flaws, Elex was the second-best game I played last year.

yeah, character progression is a bit off in the late game, but the PB worlds are so big with so many little hidey holes and secret loot, well..... by late game I feel kind of entitled to the goodies I find after 100 plus play hours

Dajjer said:

yeah, character progression is a bit off in the late game, but the PB worlds are so big with so many little hidey holes and secret loot, well….. by late game I feel kind of entitled to the goodies I find after 100 plus play hours

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True, it hasn't been a big problem in past games.

Risen 3 and Elex are the only PB games I remember being particularly bad in this way - but I honestly don't know if I've just been unlucky in picking the most powerful route - or they changed their design philosophy in some way.

Still, it shouldn't be possible to destroy everything with total ease at the mid-game stage on harder difficulties - in my opinion. Late game, sure, but not before then.

That said, I've always loved their games - and while Elex was something of an exception for me - I'm very keen on seeing their approach to a sequel.

Also, to be fair, I don't actually know of any huge open world game that nails balance. Some of the shorters ones do a decent job of it, like Witcher 2 and the original Gothic - but they're not huge to my mind.

You can achieve a reasonably balanced experience with Skyrim if you add enough mods and tweak stuff - and I think Fallout 4 Survival came the closest to a decently balanced experience considering the ridiculous size of the world.

I would really like to see developers, in general, evolve their designs and mechanics to provide a more fully realised challenge level. But, since most of them insist on having difficulty levels - that's a very hard thing to achieve.

PB games always had this "problem" (wimp at fist, demigod later), but to me it's part of their allure. If I wanted an unchanging difficulty and challenge, I'd play a game with horrible level scaling (*cough* Oblivion *cough*).

abharsair said:

PB games always had this "problem" (wimp at fist, demigod later), but to me it's part of their allure. If I wanted an unchanging difficulty and challenge, I'd play a game with horrible level scaling (*cough* Oblivion *cough*).

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Well, to me the ideal would be somewhere in between.

I don't like binary power curves - and I loathe not feeling my growth.

For me, personally, I prefer games where I will be very challenged from start to finish - if I make stupid progression choices.

However, if I make smart choices - I want to feel it, in-game. Also, if I keep making smart choices - I want the last ~third of the game to feel like I'm properly powerful - with only the occasional challenge to surprise me or make me rethink my choices.

There should never be a combination of powers/choices that will make ALL fights trivial at ANY stage in the game. That will ruin any desire of mine to consider a replay - because then I've already found the "solution" to the "challenge" problem.

That sort of describes my ideal RPG power fantasy.

Darth Tagnan said:

However, if I make smart choices - I want to feel it, in-game. Also, if I keep making smart choices - I want the last ~third of the game to feel properly powerful - with only the occasional challenge.

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Yes, that would be an ideal situation, but most games seem to be incapable of achieving it. As for PB games, I guess if you avoid all of the min-maxing and crank up the difficulty in later stages, you might get something similar to that.

abharsair said:

Yes, that would be an ideal situation, but most games seem to be incapable of achieving it. As for PB games, I guess if you avoid all of the min-maxing and crank up the difficulty in later stages, you might get something similar to that.

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Min-maxing is probably what I enjoy the most about CRPG progression - so I would have to sacrifice having fun to get more challenge

But we're all different in this way, and that's cool.

abharsair said:

PB games always had this "problem" (wimp at fist, demigod later), but to me it's part of their allure. If I wanted an unchanging difficulty and challenge, I'd play a game with horrible level scaling (*cough* Oblivion *cough*).

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That doesn't apply to all of their games. Gothic 2 + NotR might have the best balance of any open-world ARPG I've played. Risen was also a decent challenge until late in the game.

In Elex, the Clerics are very poorly balanced, but the Beserkers are a lot better in that aspect. I felt challenged for most of the game on the harder difficulty level with that faction.

Balance is certainly not PB's strong point in their more recent games, but I can't say it's one of the more important things to me when it comes to their titles. As long as they keep focusing on their style of atmosphere and exploration, I'm more than happy. That said, I certainly wouldn't mind a little more playtesting prior to release.

As someone that has defended Piranha Bytes in the past, I thought Elex was awful. If this is the quality to expect from them in the future, then I'm done playing their games.

Hopefully Spiders can fill the void they have left with Greedfall.

Silver Coin said:

As someone that has defended Piranha Bytes in the past, I thought Elex was awful. If this is the quality to expect from them in the future, then I'm done playing their games.

Hopefully Spiders can fill the void they have left with Greedfall.

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Shocking.

Exactly how much of Elex have you actually played?

JDR13 said:

Shocking.

Exactly how much of Elex have you actually played?

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Sigh here we go again.

Like I told dart in another thread just let it go.

On a good note does anyone have info on the sequel yet?

I finished it like I have every PB game, but in retrospect I wish I never bought it. It wasn't an enjoyable experience, and I'm still a bit salty about wasting a week of my free time.

Couchpotato said:

Sigh here we go again.

Like I told dart in another thread just let it go.

On a good note does anyone have info on the sequel yet?

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You're right. It was a rhetorical question anyways. I already knew his answer was going to be dishonest.

As far as the sequel, There hasn't been any announcements yet regarding a release date. I was hoping something would be mentioned at E3, but that was wishful thinking considering it hasn't even been a year since the release of the first game.

Elex was also my second favorite game last year. I played as a Berserker so the balance wasn't too bad at the end but I was still crushing most encounters. That was fine because I spent a lot of time raising my stats and getting the best armor and weapons.

I will have to do a replay and try the clerics.

It was a tossup for me between DOS2 and ELEX as most favorite from last year.

Prey was pretty close too.

Now I'm considering giving it another go

I'm still playing Witcher 3! You can't do this to me!