Gothic, Risen... ELEX

I think they expect too much. PB develop large-ish, dense worlds and Gothic 3 excepted, 100% handmade content. They operate on a fraction of the budgets of AAA games.

Oh man, Bigsby is a hoot.

Am I missing something with this game or does it not simply not mark the minor quests? I’ve talked to some npcs and got some vague directions to go and do something for them, and when I interact with the items it triggers the quest progress update, but I didn’t have the quest in my log before that point.

Jesus this game can be brutal…and I love it. It’s like being transported back to the mid 90s when devs didn’t give two shits about balancing and ruining your day. After hitting level 10 or 11 I finally managed to upgrade my stats high enough to upgrade the Energy Sword I that I found in some poisonous cellar that required chugging antitoxin potions like they’re going out of style. Now I’m comfortably taking on the skull level baddies and getting used to the intricacies jankiness of the combat system, trying to make the best of it.

Quests are probably the biggest surprise in this game, I’ve had a number of them unfold very differently from expectations so far, which is a huge plus.

I liked Elex, but its very difficult at low levels. It also uses some kind level based combat mechanics. For example, I had a low level weapon that was a spear or something. It sucked and everything kicked my ass. Then much later, when I was like level 40+ I came back to an area with the same enemies as before and then used that same low level weapon and I could totally destroy the enemies.

I thought Elex was supposed to have a very detailed menu to configure the difficulty level.

It does, you can configure virtually every aspect of the gameplay, from minigames to combo timing sensitivity.

But you were much higher level, so wouldn’t that make sense?

Well the game doesn’t exactly tell you that you get automatically stronger with each level (personally I don’t feel it yet at lvl 12). You only see your stats, which are supposedly only used for unlocking perks and access to gear, and the damage on the weapon. Going by that it’s easy to see why someone would be surprised to learn they’re dealing more damage with the same gear at higher level.

It’s like most RPG, where strength boosts melee damage
image

That’s what it says, but if you go to official and steam forums you will find plenty of posts stating it doesn’t do anything, same for dexterity. And if it does, the effect is negligible to the point that it’s nearly impossible to notice.

Weren’t you just saying how you come back with a higher level and the same melee weapon, you do a lot more damage? Is this with no extra points in strength or something?

Given the tooltip, and the standard RPG mechanic, I think people would be more surprised to learn it doesn’t do that!

That was @DeepT. It wouldn’t be the first game that uses such a mechanic.

Exactly! That’s why I was surprised too when I started looking at forums (for unrelated information) and came across these posts. I can tell you from my own experience that bumping my dexterity from 10 to 43 had no noticeable effect on my ranged damage (using the same weapon), and that was on normal difficulty.

I got this in a recent humblebundle and as hoped, it is giving me Gothic deja vu in a big way. I’ve restarted a couple of times, and settled on playing with a controller as I just couldn’t get the combat timings with mouse and keyboard. Loving the exploration and danger around every corner, not just danger but one shot death. The addition of the verticality via the jetpack is taking some time to get used to as I have come to realize I simply don’t look up in first person games. This will be an enjoyable one I think!

According to RPGWatch PB have a play-throughable if not finished version of their current project, expected to be Elex 2… Nice to hear.

Yeah I’ll be all over that when it finally releases!

Oh sign me up! I enjoyed Elex quite a bit.

Jax is back!

Nothing much to be seen, but at least now we know for sure I guess…?

Let’s hope animations and balance will join us in the 21st century.

Terrible trailer. Why do Piranha games always have bad marketing.