ATTRIBUTES (STRENGTH, CONSTITUTION, ETC.) DO NOTHING AND ARE ONLY USED FOR GATEKEEPING STRONGER WEAPONS IN THE EARLY GAME, DESPITE THEIR DESCRIPTIONS SAYING OTHERWISE

this is the only bit of lore you need to know and then flush this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time waste down the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ where all PB games belong after Gothic 2, just remember the fact that the same studio gave us Gothic 1 where you could punch stone golem to death only by leveling strength

--- you can finish reading here ----








but in case you want more...

Elex is very similar to Gothic in regards to replacing everything that worked with absolutely broken and unnecessary fluff (stamina meter, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ATTRIBUTES that DO NOTHING), here's some more key points:

- useless stamina meter, I guess they want their own soulslike now, better turn it off in the difficulty settings if you don't want to dance around scavenger for half an hour while it easily tanks all of your hits because you can't finish a combo to do some visible damage - or better yet just set the general difficulty to easy, which will resemble the regular gothic difficulty, I assume the game wants you to tackle story first or something making all of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ entry level enemies hit sponges

- the world is too big, it's far from being empty yet it's still too big for its own sake, teleports are sparse and far between, also why the ♥♥♥♥ there are two teleports inside berserkers camp, it's probably elex-powered so why wouldn't they throw them to the pit? also placing two teleports so close to each other is peak idiot game design

- exploration will give you rewards from time to time, too bad you won't be able to equip them without griding for necessary attributes for the next 12 hours

- absolutly stupid lockpicking minigame, which is not explained a bit, it generally comes down to making clusters of pins, yet the tutorial popup only says about moving the lockpick left and right, which is basically what it was in Risen or Gothic but more cryptic, just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ RANDOMIZE THE COMBINATION ON GAME LOAD, DON'T REINVENT THE WHEEL

- even the most basic peasant wimp will wield a shotgun, on the other hand you will be weilding the same pipe or axe you've found a the beginnig for the first 40 hours of gameplay because of the very first sentence of this review

- enemy hitboxes are all over the place, sometimes enemy axe will extend far beyond its model reach

- unmemorable characters, flyers and logs hidden in ruins were more interesting that whatever power struggle was taking place here and now

- weird movement, jax seems to be instantly glued to the floor whenever each of his feet connect with the ground like some kind of root motion going horribly wrong in the engine, I guess it was added to give him more weight, not gamebreaking but just feels weird and will make landing with jetpack unprecise at times

- also the sound effects are very artificial, walking on concrete pavement sounds like someone in the studio hitting empty shoe at the corner of the table, paired with "weighty" movement it creates unwanted contrast

- piranha bytes dipped in HDR workflow and implemented the latest feature known to us mere mortals by the name of auto exposure, too bad they didn't tweak it right so entering any building will render you absolutely blind for 2 to 3 seconds or even longer if your flare isn't visible enough, the effect is too strong and the game tries to fill the dark colors more than the bright ones rendering it too dark in non-LED screens, for comparison take the auto exposure in MGS V which is nearly perfect, also one of the patches completely broke nights which are now as bright as days; there is also no in-game clock unlike in gothic so sometimes people will be off their schedules sleeping and you will be searching for them in the wrong place thinking it's still daytime

- inventory as a vertical scrolling list, which mere concept of should be punished by death with preceeding tortures and a hard labor camp - inventories with more than 10 entries should be grids for a reason

- the less said about the combat the better

Very good game highly underrated by reviewers.

Absolute vile poo, clunky and crashes for no reason