ELEX II

Those expecting a well-polished AAA RPG experience with the highest possible production values will probably have to lower their expectations. For Piranha Bytes fans, however, ELEX II is exactly what they would want it, and expect it, to be.

Playing ELEX II left me with a strong impression that the game is largely geared towards those who have already spent a lot of time playing games from this studio. If that's you, your take from the game may be different than someone new to the series and you'll likely have a blast, especially if you loved the first game. If you're new to the series, you may want to bone up on YouTube videos about ELEX I before diving into an interesting, multi-faceted world albeit one fraught with performance and graphical issues. Chances are things will improve with time and patches so maybe it's best to wait a while and let the dev team catch up to the game's potential.

Elex II is not without its flaws and some of them can sometimes be quite jarring, but underneath them all is a nice action RPG that gets more than a few things right and that can provide many, many hours of entertainment.

In contrast to the original Elex, this awkward sequel is a typical Piranha Bytes game. And no, it’s not a compliment.

Elex II is a disappointing game that fails to build on the potential of the original. While at some moments it manages to capture some of the same strengths, it feels like a poorly implemented retread in several ways. Slight improvements to combat don't make up for a less interesting story, worse characters, weak quest design, and a stark lack of polish.

ELEX 2 has a distinctive approach to RPG game design and an engaging story, but while it finally bucks the trend of having technical issues at launch, there's still much work to be done on the quality of combat and presentation.

The saying that everything deserves a second chance should not have applied to Elex. Elex II takes so many steps backwards from an already poor game, it’s astounding. Its writing, optimisation, combat, and game systems all stand as a new benchmark on what to not do.

Nice improvements, ELEX 2 feels really great & we have got Billy Idol on Magalan, yeah! :D ..After 18 hrs of playing ELEX 2, I definitely recommend to anyone, who enjoyed the 1st part of ELEX! I also further enhanced the graphics for my taste with some config. file tweak, easily done, just like in the previous titles by PB. NOTE: ...After 92 hours playing time: Yep, this 2nd part is definitely a great instalment of this title, the world & the story is even more engaging than in the 1st part of ELEX, well done Piranha Bytes!!! :-))) I'm in Chapter 3 now anyway, so I just still doing my 1st playthrough, yep! :D

Lacks the depth of former PB games. And the second half is very obviously rushed

Gráficos - 8 Som - 6 Jogabilidade - 9 História - 8 Dificuldade - 8 Diversão - 7 BAD: the sound , the lack of characters "souls",

It's a shame that even though it seems like Elex 2 probably is a pretty good game and it has a lot to offer the pacing completely ruins it for me. After spending a little more than 10 hours on hard difficulty I was still so underpowered and I was still doing the most minescule fetch quests, even though I could see the potential I just couldn't possibly put myself through the unbelievably slow progression system. If this game was a third of the size that it actually is it could had been great, but playing it as it is feels like a big waste of time.

The game is like all past Piranha Bytes offerings in the past fifteen years or so. You begin as a wimp who can barely wield a weapon, SLOWLY build up your character, in a world where every enemy is much stronger than you. At some point, you manage to join a faction, which finally allows you to develop some really powerful abilities, and eventually you are strong enough to confront even the strongest enemies. Unfortunately, the combat system is possibly the worst I’ve ever seen. In any game. Characters move as through molasses; enemy movement harks back from the last century. I’m positive I’ve seen games from the 90s with much better combat animations. Reading their stance to decide when to parry or dodge, is completely random: they twitch and turn, but apparently some of these erratic movements count as attacks; you only realize it because your health drops to zero and you die. Since all creatures can kill you in two hits, even combat against minor enemies becomes a deadly danger (I'm playing on hard). Hitboxes that are so glitched as to be almost funny: an axe may cut the air one full meter away from you, and you still get the damage. Also, you can lock onto enemies, which helps in attacking and avoiding damage - that is, until the game decides you lose your lock for some reason: bam! You dodge the wrong way and die. Earlier today, I was fascinated and incredulous, as I watched my cyborg companion utterly failing to land a single hit against a tough enemy. The AI was broken, like most other things in this game, and he kept freezing, looking at the enemy without doing anything, even though I tried to interpose him between me and the attacker. When he did decide to attack, he regularly missed, because his attacks were too slow to ever connect. Essentially, I was alone – but fear not, he’s not the only companion available. At the moment, I have two more. A fire mage, whose slow fireballs rarely hit anything, and a small robot, whose sniper shots deal relatively low damage, but thankfully usually hit the intended target. But does he fly out of enemy range? Of course not, he usually remains where they can hit him with melee weapons. Save often! There is an auto save feature, but it doesn't work 90% of the time. Everything in this game costs in-game money, even level ups. Money is hard to come by; the best renewable source of income is trophies from monsters, but you need to attain the highest level in this ability, and this can only happen late in the game. So, for now, I have to grind like crazy to afford anything, while the game designers thought it fine to include stupid missions where the quest giver gives you money to buy something, but the actual price turns out to be much higher. Pure genius. Dialogs are boring and badly written. Even when discussing something straightforward, NPCs tend to antagonize you and ramble on and on, with nonsensical lines that only induce sleepiness. The temptation to right-click through the voice acting is strong. NPC attitude is inconsistent as well. The first companion you encounter, wants you to butcher a party of invaders. Makes sense, no problem (apart from the fact that you are WAY too weak to do that, and she won’t join forces with you until you do). Later on, I encounter a hiding alchemist, whose bodyguards have been killed by an outlaw. He asks me to deal with said outlaw, but if I accept to kill the murderer, the warmongering mage doesn’t like it, she is suddenly averse to violence. Fast forward a bit, and she becomes bloodthirsty again, asking me to kill someone for a minor slip. Duh. On the positive side, the jetpack is fun, especially after you upgrade it with sprint jets, which allow you to zoom over the terrain like a missile. I really like the environment and the graphics, it’s a relaxing world, at least if you forget all the monsters that want to eat you. And character growth is satisfying. This keeps me playing, at least for now, but really: both the Gothic and the Risen series had better combat and equally satisfying character progression. I preordered this game after liking the first Elex in spite of its shortcomings, but I won’t certainly preorder a third one, if it ever comes out. They NEED to fix combat; as things are, it's simply atrocious.