ELEX 2 - Is Coming @ C4G
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Nereida
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It baffles me how people anticipate the sequel of a mediocre game that racked a whooping 6.5 metacritic score both from media and users. If any RPG I ever looked forward got a score under 8, I'd be highly disappointed.
Gothic-like games from PB getting low scores world-wide is a tradition by now.
In East-Europe and Germany these games have a very large fan base.
Piranha Bytes doesn't care anymore - they make games for their fans and make a lot of money with it.
I'll will certainly buy it - I have finished every PB game a least twice.
In East-Europe and Germany these games have a very large fan base.
Piranha Bytes doesn't care anymore - they make games for their fans and make a lot of money with it.
I'll will certainly buy it - I have finished every PB game a least twice.
Popular opinion and quality are two different things. Do you only like music, which has been in the top ten of some popular charts?
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vanedor
Keeper of the Watch
Have you tried it?
A critic score doesn't tell it all (it's 7.0 from users, btw). It's a PB game. Combat in PB games can be frustrating, unforgiving. Most people who liked Elex knew this and enjoyed the playstyle and the vast living worlds of the previous PB games. And since they enjoyed Elex 1, chance are fair that they are going to enjoy Elex 2 and highly anticipate it.
Carnifex
SasqWatch
Going by someone else's rating system is a seriously damaging thing to inflict on yourself. I'd recommend either trying products for yourself or going by the words of folks that you actually know, rather than limiting yourself to what some paid person might think/force upon you. PB enjoys quite a bit of good word-of-mouth by those that enjoy good open world gaming coupled with exploration, character growth, and choices/consequences.
LaHolt
Watchdog
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Except Elex isn't anywhere near Gothic quality. I'm a huge Gothic fan and I tried Elex, it's amateur hour. Gothic 2 was ahead of its time, Elex? A joke. It had neither the production value of AAA nor the innovative quality of indie. It's in no man's land.
Why? The answer is simple: PB is not the PB of the old. Their stuff has gotten worse and worse since Risen.
Couldn't agree more.
Elex is vastly overrated. The reviews are too kind honestly.
Why? The answer is simple: PB is not the PB of the old. Their stuff has gotten worse and worse since Risen.
Couldn't agree more.
Elex is vastly overrated. The reviews are too kind honestly.
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Nereida
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I tired it for about 1 hour and I agree with the general sentiment. "Big, ambitious, but dull, dated and generally bland". A 6.5 is fair score. The only reason I mention bigger score pools is to point out that it's not just a personal opinion.
I'm not saying it's bad game, just that it gets a lot of spotlight for such an average product. They must have a real good PR to get all this coverage and "hype".
I'm not saying it's bad game, just that it gets a lot of spotlight for such an average product. They must have a real good PR to get all this coverage and "hype".
Carnifex
SasqWatch
Ahh, fair enough, then. Not every game is for every single person, that's for sure. And good thing, too! Variety being the spice of life and all that. 
I actually agree that the game was mediocre. I especially didn’t like that for the first 10 hours I had to run from many fights but at the 10 hour mark and beyond the difficulty took a huge swing in the opposite direction and was laughably easy. Hopefully they can keep the difficulty more balanced through out the entire game this time.
Having said that I am looking forward to the sequel. Why? Because they did enough stuff right to see with some tweaking it could be a great game imo. So I want to see if they can take the next step with the second game.
Just because the first game was mediocre is not a guarantee that the second will be. For instance I though BG1 was mediocre but BG2 blew me away.
As for metacritic never been to the site never will. The only score that matters to me is mine. After all if someone give a game a 10 and I hate it does it matter?
SSIGuy
An Islander Returned
Elex was a very good game imo - and definitely captured more of that Gothic feel than the Risens did. Looking forward to this next installment... I don't even really need to look at the trailer. PB has never really let me down... well, the community patch helped with Gothic 3, but otherwise...
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Nereida
Guest
Ahh, fair enough, then. Not every game is for every single person, that's for sure. And good thing, too! Variety being the spice of life and all that.
I agree with that.
I just wonder why there are games that aren't popular, but when you talk to people who played it, they say "Hey, it's actually pretty good". It's like 4 years ago everyone I talked to thought Trump was an idiot but he still won the elections. Who is voting this guy, then? And who is saying Elex is good but when it comes the time to give it a score they go "Meh, 6/10".
There is something mysterious there. Probably has to do with a combination of having sympathy for the studio and having low expectations for the product to start with, then really anything feels like it's good enough.
Games could be likened to food. If most people have been raised on highly processed junk, then something more esoteric might seem distasteful.
If the games that are most familiar are mass-appeal, button-mashing shoot 'em ups, then something that requires a bit more patience and skill would be frustrating.
If the games that are most familiar are mass-appeal, button-mashing shoot 'em ups, then something that requires a bit more patience and skill would be frustrating.
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Nereida
Guest
That would make sense if all action/story RPGs had low scores, and we could conclude that they get downvoted because they are not button-massing games for mass appeal, but in truth some of the highest rated games of all time have been pretty story-heavy RPGs similar to Elex in many ways, such as Mass Effect 2, Wtcher 3, Skyrim, Zelda OoT, Bioshock, Fallout NV, etc. If a game gets a low score it's because it's not good enough, not because it doesn't appeal the button-mashing masses.
This is not very logical. Why should the same people, who say that Elex is good, give it a Score of 6.5? The average number only says that the people, who like Elex, are a minority. This means that the game doesn't appeal to the mainstream, which is completely ok for me.
But it is also completely ok to be a casual player who only likes games appealing to the majority.
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Nereida
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Doesn't feel like a minority to me. I feel like I am the minority in thinking 6.5 score is fair.
On RPGWatch may be. But people here don't represent the gaming mainstream.
It is like in your Trump example: You had the luck to speak only to sane people, who all agreed that trump is an idiot. But that doesn't mean that they lied to you and voted for Trump later on. That would require that your discussion partners gave a representative image of society as a whole. But I rather assume that you were simply lucky to know the more civilized people.
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Nereida
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:lol:
It's a good point, but I don't think RPGWatch has that higher standards when it comes to games. I used to think that kinda, but then PhoenixPoint got 2nd place for best RPG of the year and that sand castle crumbled hard.
Besides, good RPGs do get good scores from reviews and in sites like Metacritic, even when they are not that mainstream. Still a mystery to me, other than the two reasons I mentioned before: PB has good/likeable rep as a studio for niche RPG audiences, and when you don't expect much, "decent" seems pretty good.
Priranha Bytes' games are valued by their fans, because
All in all I admire Björn & Jennifer Pankratz and their team for their game design skills and agree with many of their game design principles.
If you can speak German just watch their latest video about player types and you get a hint how much thought they put into their game design decisions. (They can even evaluate what type of player you are by looking at your achievements)
- the open world is not a free scaling open world - you can go everywhere in theory, but you have to overcome bigger and bigger enemies, quests and puzzles to advance - they reward exploring
- the games are challenging (at least in the beginning) - you have to build a better and better character over time to make things easier in the end - they reward character building
- PB games often offer very different solutions to quests (talk your way through, find a hidden door or lure animals to an enemy city …) - they reward thinking of the player
- PB games provide a living world - animals, NPCs react to your behavior, NPCs have schedules
- social interaction, connected quests, exclusive quests for joining a faction/working for a faction - it is fun to replay a PB game, because you have to make hard choices
- good loot is rare and often unique - when you find new gear in PB games it is often a game changer
- crafting, cooking, collecting, world interaction in general makes PB worlds more alive and fun
All in all I admire Björn & Jennifer Pankratz and their team for their game design skills and agree with many of their game design principles.
If you can speak German just watch their latest video about player types and you get a hint how much thought they put into their game design decisions. (They can even evaluate what type of player you are by looking at your achievements)
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An hour isn't really trying Elex tbh. You don't even scratch the surface of that game until 10+.
Elex has a 7.0 on Metacritic, so I'm not sure why you keep repeating 6.5, but you probably already know that Metacritic scores are largely useless anyways. For example, PoE II only has a 7.8, and I'm willing to bet you think that should be significantly higher.
Piranha Bytes doesn't make games to please the mainstream, they make games that appeal to a specific fanbase. In that way, they're one of the few long-time developers that hasn't sold out.