Forumite Members › General Topics › Tech › Gaming › Elex – any viewpoints?
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Ed P.
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September 28, 2017 at 7:25 pm #12249
Elex ‘looks’ to be my type of game. Unfortunately my experience of previous games by Piranha Bytes is very much in tune with the negative viewpoints of some of the linked Facebook comments. For me Gothic was a buggy disaster with a combat interface I just could not get on with, and Risen was only marginally better.
Was Risen 2&3 enough of an improvement to mean that Elex stands a chance of being enjoyable and playable?
I’m starting to get Fallout 4 withdrawal symptoms and I need another open-world game to play. Do I give Piranha Bytes yet another chance or write them off to experience and save my pennies for the moment?
October 11, 2017 at 3:03 pm #12565A week to go.
I’d give it a go.
October 27, 2017 at 4:21 pm #13110I spent my pennies!
Very initial review is that it is insanely difficult to play(you will die very frequently and find most opponents impossible even on a ‘do not hurt me level) and as usual Piranha Bites are not a Bethesda when it comes to game mechanics – combo attacks are not explained and are too difficult to carry-out. It is also difficult to build up the necessary skill points to do things such as getting trained really dumb! So there are quite a lot of criticisms I could level not least what the hell is ‘cold’!
On the positive side the game map is huge and graphics are excellent and the creatures well animated although AI is not brilliant. I do like the way you lose vision when going from bright light to shade and vice versa – very clever. Game play is open ended and it is quite possible (perhaps necessary) to avoid joining a faction until you have to do so.
Would I buy it again if I could go back in time ? At this stage I would have to say that the jury is out, and that despite all the odds they have managed to repeat some (not all) of the Game Play no-nos’ of both Gothic and Risen. Bottom line at this stage I’m afraid is to wait for the sales price, unless you want a game that will really stretch your monitor and gpu.
Maybe my view will change in a week or so.
October 27, 2017 at 10:02 pm #13114Thinking the same about the latest Dawn of War game. Bought it in the sale last weekend. Which was the whole reason I upgraded to a nVidia 1050 about three months ago but I didn’t pay full whack for it and now I think I’m relatively glad that’s the case.
However, I did buy Tooth and Tail in the latest Steam sale and first impressions are that’s it’s quite a well thought out indie game. Enjoying it so far anyhow – slightly different take on the RTS genre.
"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett
October 28, 2017 at 7:18 am #13116I played for a couple of hours yesterday. Although the game remains insanely hard, I eventually found myself able to carry out trivial attacks on very low level monsters. Even while accompanied by one of the super-human companions I spent most of my time running like hell from the nearest monsters as I still do not possess a decent set of armor. Maybe the play balance improves later, but I would at this stage only recommend this game to someone who likes running and flying away from everything. The game engine is however brilliant – pity that there were no novices in their the play-testers, and zero out of ten for the lack of documentation/hints. If you do buy this game spend a lot of time watching you-tubes from the play-testers and at least read this first!
October 30, 2017 at 8:21 am #13143I’ll play one last time then probably give up and go back to programming my Pi!
The game remains insanely difficult. Even though I’m on level 7 and playing at the ‘do not hurt me level’ my weapons just bounce off 90% of any opponents I meet and even my super-hero partner gets quickly zapped and fails to come to the rescue. The effort/reward logic is poor, it takes far too long to reach the point where maybe your weapons and armor put you on equal terms with your opponents (I’m nowhere near that point).
I’m getting fed up of running/flying like hell to escape yet another failed encounter with no experience points. The result is frustration. In my view, although the graphics/animation are superb (particle effects are a bit naff however), the game play is extremely badly flawed – even worse if that is possible than previous efforts from this studio. How anyone could write scenarios that pit super-human impervious grenade throwing mutants against someone armed with a blunt sword beats me. In Fall-out there was always the option to snipe from a distance or from a height when this happened – not however in this poorly balanced game, if the opponents cannot reach you they vomit extremely toxic gunk that has an equivalent range to your ranged weapon – a toy bow and arrow by comparison.
This is definitely the last game I ever buy from this Studio.
October 30, 2017 at 8:55 am #13144October 30, 2017 at 10:39 am #13149My first issue with it is, it just looks plain boring. The fighting looks like Brain numbing repetitive tedium.
October 30, 2017 at 4:38 pm #13154My first issue with it is, it just looks plain boring. The fighting looks like Brain numbing repetitive tedium.
Certainly the melees are close to your criticism at the initial levels. However there is a large variety of weapons used by opponents given its weird mix of magic wielding barbarians, high-tech SciFi, flame-throwing monsters etc.
Had they paid more attention to play balance it could have been a far more interesting game.
November 28, 2017 at 9:35 am #13833Because I do not have anything else, I persisted with Elex.
As may be gathered from the need to ‘persist’, the game is badly flawed with respect to early play balance and leveling. For the first 10 levels you are totally outmatched by nearly every monster and NPC that you meet. You therefore spend most of your time sneaking around or running like hell. It is also flawed in that not only are early weapons naff the character is made deliberately clumsy. All of which makes the first ten levels positively frustrating. After the tenth level things look up, the character stops bumbling around and can kill a few things. After the 15th level it starts to get interesting.It has its bugs but they are not (so far) killers.
On the positive side, the game is huge and the graphics are pretty good. I probably have a mid-level gaming box (early i7 and nVidia GTX970) but the game runs stutter free in a 4K window. While I complain about balance and game mechanics these are irritants rather than killer issues. The game itself has a lot of depth in terms of plot lines and has an immense plot structure which gets influenced by multiple decisions on your choice of action/strategy and alliances. The majority of many bugs and minor irritants flow from this complexity.
Bottom line this is quite a good game, but its many flaws in the early period of character development prevent it being a GOTY or FallOut rival.
November 28, 2017 at 3:49 pm #13835Not my bailiwick games, but I have spoken to my grandson No.1 about this one. “Bad way to lose an hour or so of your life and then wonder what it was all about when you stop playing, grandad.”
This from a 23 yo who has been playing EveOnline and many other games, since he was a nipper. He’s a Game fanatic: has a monster PC, buys all the latest when they come out and buys all the associated (printed) books, mags, souvenir and limited editions (“Future Collectors’ stuff, grandad!”). His spare bedroom has shelves of this stuff, with masses of SF and Game publications. On Eve he manufactures ships, mines ore, leads his group to war and makes deals. Whatever that all means.
When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.December 10, 2017 at 12:16 am #14223I have played Elex for several hours. You have to persevere at first, mainly doing quests local to the first town you come across. Eventually you will get more skills, better armour etc, and things start to get easier regarding fighting etc. Once I had levelled up, and got better equipment/armour I found I was enjoying the game a lot more, and the fighting does take a bit of getting used to. Not hack n slash, but sort of timing attacks, and watching the attack meter so you can do special/powerful attack. However, I have put it on hold for a while – lol, and will no doubt go back to it sometime. The HUD is so intrusive too – too large and blocky – spoils the immersion.
December 10, 2017 at 8:02 am #14235‘rockonbazza’ I agree with all your comments and unfortunately you have to persevere for many hours to reach level 14 before the game starts to become at all enjoyable.
It actually has a lot more depth to it than a simple hack & slash game as in addition to managing your own and your companions survival/needs you have three to five potential allies hell-bent on ‘doing a Trump’ on all your other allies rather than the real enemy. Nearly every ally has their own little Machiavellian sub-plot that they are pursuing which often conflicts with your own goals. – Game of Thrones writ small. You have to be careful not to let one of these allies become too powerful or they will play havoc when you are not looking. This part of the game I found both challenging and enjoyable – rather like herding cats!
While the early game suffers badly from balance, the later game suffers from naff ‘legendary’ treasures that require absurd strengths to use but are never the less quite weak compared with ordinary weapons. The usual hunt for money to fund character upgrading also becomes too much of a pain and again is unbalanced.
On the positive side, I have only had a couple of game crashes and the frequent autosave meant little was lost.
Bottom line – nowhere near as bad as the earlier games from this company, A flawed but potentially rich jewel, that is covered in unbalanced layers of ordure.
January 27, 2018 at 12:58 pm #16320I persisted with Elex and eventually ‘finished’ it.(It does not in fact end, but allows continued play with a slightly different class of opponents replacing previous ones.)
My final verdict is that it is a diamond in the rough (very rough in parts). It is however a very ‘different’ sort of hack/slash & shoot game. Without putting in too many spoilers you have three contending parties with different attributes and weapons and you can choose to join one of them. I’d recommend putting off that step as long as you can.
As noted before initial play is very imbalanced and you have to either run a lot or use npcs as unwitting companions/cannon fodder. Much later you gain the abilities you need. Being sneaky pays in this game! Each level opens up access to different abilities (mild spoiler – some of these are pretty useless, so choose carefully).
The game then devolves into one of balance – balancing contending parties that you will eventually need as allies, and balancing a player attribute that runs from ‘cold’ i.e. computer logic level to ‘irrational’. A major essential spoiler is that ‘irrational’ is not necessarily bad as it is easy to get ‘cold’ through use of the elex drugs and logical conversation responses, but irrational is only gained through the conversation process and emotional/b-minded responses. This latter is probably the roughest element of the game as being too cold locks you out of some essential choices. This would have been ok if warned about, but no warning is given. The balancing bit, while somewhat frustrating adds up to making the game more than just a hack & slash.
Worth a try if you are willing to go for a long haul.
I now need another open-world single player rpg. It has to be off-line as I just dip in and out of games at will.
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