News ELEX 2 - Official Release Trailer

[merp]

I didn't even know it came out yesterday.

I enjoyed the first game but I dropped it eventually. This looks great and all, and I don't mind Eurojank, but I haven't finished the first game so I doubt I'll know what's going on. Ah well.

Thoughts?

 

[Krvavi Abadas]

Literally all i know about this is that Jonathan Davis, of all people. Was supposed to be doing the main theme. (Notably not the first time he's worked on a video game either, his main band did a track for HAZE.)
It doesn't seem to be in the official soundtrack.


So i'm curious about what happened to it.

 

[Koren Lesthe]

Man, do I HATE these edgy "trying too much to be cool" trailers.

Last one was for Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance and look how great it did.

 

[Koren Lesthe]

Man, do I HATE these edgy "trying too much to be cool" trailers.

Last one was for Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance and look how great it did.

Yeah, way to participate in the thread and completely kill it.

Anyway, turns out I have ELEX 2 on my PS5 (don't know if it is part of the PS Plus) and since I got the news that Piranha Bytes was in peril thanks to Embracer, I wanted to give it a try. Also got the port of Gothic 1 on Switch.

So, right out of the bat, everything is much better than Elex 1, starting by the sound design. In the first game, just jumping was hilarious and everytime your character, Jax (not that one, Ed Boon) feets touched the ground, no matter what it was, you heard a very loud "STOMP". It was like "We made Gothic 1, 2 and 3, Risen 1, 2 and 3 but now we don't know how to animate characters correctly nor how to design sound anymore".

The jumping animation was bad enough to make Wii Xenoblade Shulk blush. Elex 1 was a complete mess but despite its numerous... no sorry, countless flaws, had something in it, pretty much like every Piranha Bytes but I still think that Elex 1 was their worst game (IMO) so far.

So I started Elex 2 by knowing that I could be very badly surprised... and I wasn't ? Yeah, the pre-rendered cutscenes aren't very good looking, the voice acting is still pretty average and Jax have still the charisma of a snail but you know what ? The game already fixed pretty much everything that was terrible in the first one.

Sadly, Elex 2 commits two very, very big crimes that were already in the first one :

- Lack of V-Sync (on consoles), because European game devs still believe that if they force V-Sync in their games, the world will end. Either that or maybe they prefer screeching your eyes rather than see big frame drops. While it's screen tearing free for a while in the wilderness, anytime you approach a town, it's tearing time. And you'll spend a lot of time in towns. A. LOT. They even referenced an Asterix gag (a french comic book !) with the "permit A38" achivement.

- The difficulty balancing or lack thereof. Yeah, like, no balancing at all.
For a massive part of the game, you're encouraged to meet all of the most important faction leaders to get their help, but you can only join ONE leader, after you made clear that you are worthy. Joining a Faction for good gives you access to much better equipment that is only reserved for this faction and also their own skills.

This means that in order to meet the other factions and see which one you'll choose, you'll make a TON of missions and exploration without having access to the stuff that should make your life easier. Because oh boi, will you meet foes that can one-shot you. This is no Elder Scrolls, this is pure Gothic, except in Gothic 3 you could pretend to the rebels that you were "not" an ally of the Orcs (just don't wear their stuff near a rebel camp and keep a low profile), not forever but still.

It also means that some quests are pretty much impossible to finish if the enemies you have to fight are way above your level. So for the first time in a Piranha Bytes, I had to lower the difficulty to "Story mode" in order to win some fights. Amazing.

I'm around 11 hours in, finished the Berserkers quests but haven't joined them yet because I'm at the Albes HQ, and knowing that pretty much half of them hates me for killing their godlike machine hybrid in the first game, it's quite fun.

Kudos to the game for making it quite easy to learn what happened in the first game, including flashbacks.

Also the new Jetpack controls are pretty good and being able to upgrade it is great. Any openworld RPG is better with a jetpack. Take note, Monolith Soft.