70 hours in and having a blast. The melee awkwardness seems to go away as you skill up and don’t get stun-locked by passing gnats. I think I’ve outleveled the content now, which I’m fine with for a while. I think the plot is going to make me join a faction.
I’ve been curious about this one and reading from your comments, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea to get it!
Do you play as a set character or do you create your own?
You play as a set character. You just pick what faction to play. The early game is very tough. NPCs will give you quests to go places or kill things that will wipe the floor with you. The game seems to have a level based combat system. By this, I mean simply that your actual level has a huge impact on how well you can damage or be damaged by other mobs. Meaning, at level 5 with a rusty axe you will do almost no damage to some critter. At level 10, with the same rusty axe you will tear it up.
Stats do not matter much other than qualifying for gear / skills. The UI is horrible.
However, it is an interesting world to explore and the story is good too. You will eventually become very powerful, but it will take a while. Save often, you will die a lot.
I am loving the game, but it’s very slow going at first. I think I’m around 35hrs in and only level 13. Still not visited the Clerics but I’ve done a bunch of quests each for the Berserkers, Outlaws and the Dome. It’s only now I’ve gotten some decent weapons and levelled enough that I can damage some of the “skull” enemies.
Great story and exploration experience though. I already think this is PB’s best game.
I am done. I have 93 hours play time but I restarted so it’s probably more in the 60-70 range. I was level 40+ when I finished. I quite enjoyed going on animal slaughtering runs to fuel my elex potion consumption habits in the second half of the game (the trophy 3 skill is a must. It will produce quite a bit of natural elex over time).
Part of the reason I made it that high is because I wanted to get to 91 con to use a named Axe I found called The Killer. This proved disappointing; the 2h axe light attack moves had really peculiar hit boxes and were unreliable. I liked the 2h cleric hammers better. I went with a mixed of melee and ranged. Using a couple of named energy weapons and a Flamethrower B2 (or somesuch) for funsies.
I was wanted twice in Goliet. The first time I was trying to talk to Sinda and accidentally wound up icking something up. I am so fucking sick of games who make a single key universal and make looting shit/talking to people more complicated becuase you have to “dodge” displayed store inventory or fucking chairs. Also, more games need to learn from Assassin’s Creeds: whatever the latest version is. They didn’t do a loot animation there. It’s not the first game to go down that road IIRC but if I’m going to pick up 6000 things please for othe love of god spare me the animations. And consider AoE looting. And allowing me to safely talk to people. And never fucking sit in chairs.
The character progression is weird because of the misleading attributes and inability to tell if some skills are even contributing but this is an easy fix. The first level of ranged/melee attacks should have added flat damage (it’s apparently %) to make the early game less frustrating. Overall though, I got satisfaction out of the system. It’s better than the progression mechanics of several Mass Effects and Elder Scrolls games (I have not made up my mind whether I include Skyrim in that category, but I’ve thought about it; I did think Skyrim was Bethesda’s best progression mechanics since Daggerfall but was overall not especially fond of the system).
The story I also enjoyed. I must have drank a billion elex potions but never moved beyond “neutral” and was emotional enough for a number of dialog options down the strerch. I inadvertantly romanced Caja (was speed clicking through some dialog) although I have no immediate qualm about that. I think I’d prefer to romance Nasty though. She’s hilarious.
Some of the quest design was interesting and some was problematic. I quite liked. e.g. the quest to find the missing Elex in Goliet. In my first game I basically let the thief off. Later I returned to discover his brother had gone full mutant and killed him. Now that’s the kind of world building and consequence I can get behind. Also, my Dome city wound up in a pretty nice equilibrium. But in a streamer’s game I saw where the entirety of the Berserkers and Seperatists were executed. o_O. OTOH, there are several quests that are 100% clearly a terrible idea but you have to do them, only to discover all is not as it seems with the quest. I am not especially a fan of this sort of design.
The game is still rough around the edges. In fact, while recent patches have improved some things I found the controller support became erratic. It’s a shame PB isn’t capable of polishing their games more (a problem I suspect is partly due to them being small and largely at the mercy of publishers).
Overall I am pleased with the money I spent on this game.
* Tei will remember this *
I just like epic huge complex rpg that give the player a lot of freedom. Despite the absolutely massive problems with the game, I enjoy running from enemies, picking flowers, slowly leveling and getting powerful. The companions are also interesting (and yea, they have stuff to say about locations and events, and thats great). The game have this internal dialog about emotions and rationality extremes. I like it.
There were a number of places in the game where it would say something like “X will remember this.” or “These actions will have a major impact on the outcome of the story.”.
So I play the game, and kill the big boss and the credits roll. I was expecting a story summary something like fallout does (that is every fallout game but fallout 4). Yet there was nothing. After the credits I just had a quest to talk to some people, which I did just a few of and then just quit the game. Did I miss something? Some explanation of how the world turned out?
All the talking to people is just prepping everyone for the coming of the Comet Sender Folks, as you saw. But I think instead of a “closing vignette”, the game opted for everything being done in game. As I noted in a spoiler, what happens in Abessa ca be very different depending on your choices. I still wouldn’t have minded a run down of the state of affairs at the end (and hints at what e.g. any existing power vacuums could mean; I left one in the Fort).
So when you do talk to all the people, you get parts of how the story turned out? The few I did talk to didn’t have anything like that. Oh well. I nuked my save so its too late now.
That’s not what I mean. Rather, everything you are expecting already played out in game, during the game at some point. Entire factions can be gone from Dome City by end game (in my game there was an equilibrium of sorts). But you may not necessarily notice it unless you stop back by. It’s certainly a different way to do things.
Perhaps a spoiler thread :/
And done. 100 hours. Probably GOTY just for trying.
Roll on Elex 2: Elexiter.
They probably can’t upgrade their technology much, but they could do a fair amount with better writing or translation (after identifying where the issue actually is there). I’m not sure if the occasional semi-broken dialog is a writing or scripting issue or if some the weaker voice work would also be helped along with better lines. But that’s where they need some personnel changes IMO.
Having played 7 PB games I think exactly none of this will happen :)
I’ve been playing for 10 hours or so. Still at level 5.
- Getting one-shotted by everything is discouraging. :(
- Not having labels or locations marked on the map (except for teleporters) hurts too. The directions to locate some locations are also missing from the quest log.
- I wish the compass also showed the map underneath, instead of just the occasional colored dot.
I like this game a lot, but wow, they outdid themselves on the voice acting this time. I mean, even for Piranha Bytes.
Just realized you can set the current quest as the map marker. Should speed up the game quite a bit, though maybe PB made things too easy for us?
I have been playing this a lot, and really like it. But I have to admit that being out-leveled by critters and having to run all the time is frustrating. :(
I suppose I could set the difficulty to a lower value. (I am playing on Normal or Hard difficulty at the moment.)
The difficulty levels do have sub options, so you could just change the one for ease of getting a combo or something. I felt the same at some points.
The beginning of this game is brutal because of the level stuff, but I love it. It does get a bit frustrating some times, though.
Just started playing this over the long weekend and I’m loving it (long time PB fan, Risen 1 being my favorite). It looks great for a Gothic/Risen game, but man, that voice “acting”. Thankfully there’s a slider to kill the voice volume. Enable subtitles and you are good to go.
It’s not all terrible, unless you hate the main guy. Some of it’s fine!