Original Elex to be share, to say the least. It was a game in which I was forever alone, confused, and beaten to death by cancerous birds, but it must have been a profitable venture on its own terms to ensure a sequel. Next is Elex II, which is still a few months away from being released right now, but I played the initial preview build of the recent, showing the first chapter of the game.
I spoke to Graham (RPS in peace) about this and he said, “Ultimately one of these sci-fi fantasy RPGs is going to be close enough to be a BioWare game it earns. a lot of money.” This is the game equivalent of monkey and typewriter. But although I agreed with Graham at the time, I think comparing it to BioWare might confuse the specific appeal of the Elex II. It would be too simplistic to say that I “enjoy” the hours I’ve spent with it so far. I did not Not enjoy it. I mostly respect it because of how little it respects me. Like the famous kids on the playground making your life so difficult that you want to be their best friend.
The world of Elex is a curious blend of post-apocalyptic science fiction and medieval fantasy (aka “science fiction”). Imagine, if you will, Mad Max NS Kingdoms Of Amalur. In Elex II, you play as Jax, a bald warrior as grumpy as last time. In the previous game, you united three war-themed factions against a common enemy, and thank God a mysterious group of aliens has now appeared to threaten that fragile piece, if not. Jax will have no reason to do the same thing again in this game. Jax is also scratched by an alien monster, turning him into a weak boy who can only use a pipe to toss things.
In the first chapter I played, it became clear that Elex II wouldn’t be bad if you played the first game – or, if you did, whether you remember any games from four years ago or not. The initial dialogue is a recursive stream of continuing sentences that each contain at least one more term that requires explanation. People are called things like Thialg and Caja. They use a combination of tails, axes, and shotguns. Elex itself is a (probably radioactive, possibly magical) mineral from space, but it is also the basis of the world economy. Elex must flow. Except, uh, now there’s the “dark elex”. Look, I’m not clear on a lot of things. Sometimes I like to imagine people getting up high to snort like cocaine, other times I like to imagine people having a bit of a New Zealand accent and it’s all talking about a really important man named Alex .
Either way, it’s your job to set up a sort of stand-alone siege of cool bois that will rise above faction scrambles to save the world. This world is impressive in terms of size and scope of exploration. Elex II has that “see the mountains? You can go there!” vibe – or maybe “you can rocket there!” assumed that Jax had a small jet pack strapped to his beggar.
This is a landscape that cuts quite impressively from the whispering forest to the rocky plain, to the terrifyingly exploding city. The whole place is littered with rusty car wrecks or empty buildings, as well as interesting little nooks and crannies. Sometimes you are walking on a sunny day, and find a large patch of grass covered in blood and bones, hidden in a corner. I arrived at a settlement and realized that I had stepped on two men trying to run away, and was able to track them down to see where they had gone. This kind of stuff is awesome. But there’s a problem.
An expected feature of Elex is that you will be tasted by a mixture of dinosaurs and large but carnivorous creatures like giant rats, giant lizards, giant mosquitoes, etc. Many of them This spits out some kind of poison or stings. There are also some very angry people. Most enemies, whether monsters or humans, will kill you in one hit. This makes the early stages of the game very tense.
Thus, the sense of wonder that the world creates comes into conflict with the fact that everything has turned into a complete wretch. You can try to explore, sure, but you’ll quickly be turned back to snapping jaws and swiping. But Elex II is better at gradually giving you harder, more complex quests than the previous Elex prime, so you should start from the center of the new zone and work. But although Elex II begs that the difficulty is intentional, there are things that make it harder just by bother.
Important things like teleport pads, some quest providers, and even traders, are not automatically marked on the map. You have to go and talk to all the guys in the fort or camp or whatever until one of them says, “Yo, do you want to sell me a bunch of spoons?” He won’t scream, “Spoon, bought and sold!” every five seconds to give you a clue around you just talk to every bearded man standing around to check this beard may be useful to you. There’s a balance that needs to be struck between players exploring a rich world and players feeling as if they’re left alone in the heart of Swindon town without a map, money, or shoes.
The smallest but most annoying thing, which I didn’t find out until about two hours later, is that you can’t loot or pick up anything if you have a weapon. This meant I didn’t spot some pretty powerful weapons on a pile of corpses very early on. They were right next to a merchant I didn’t even recognize.
However, it probably wouldn’t have mattered if I had seen them, because leveling (although many of its nebulous points are still a mystery to me) is relatively slow and the use of Using weapons is controlled by quite high ability points. For example, to go from my trusty pipe to a sword, I need 25 strength and 17 degrees of dexterity. It’s a system that discourages experimentation: you need a build plan, and if you’ve never played Elex before, the safest, fastest option is to default to hitty-Sword melee.
But the problem is… even though I’ve spent a lot of time playing this game and reloading (the ratio of hours actually spent in preview to hours recorded by my save file is currently at around 3:1, I calculate), the first time I successfully beat a group of marauders to death with my conduit was awesome. I could have cried. It was a tough victory. And when I finally switched to a sword, it transformed! I slayed a carnivorous dinosaur, a monster from which I had previously fled in terror! I can imagine people getting involved in Elex II. It looks like it will be a better version of Elex, which means you’re getting too much sci-fi fantasy, some fun side quests, and absolutely no concessions.
I don’t know if the cycle of gradual failure with fewer failures can sustain me for the whole game, especially since I find it so hard to get into the plot. But damn it and the typewriter, I can still see why people like the Elex II. If, over the next few months, they make the quest markers less obtrusive, the menus easier to use, and the main NPCs easier to find (and good God if they fix that with looting) !) then it might open up even more fans.
