The first one. It’s probably not as good in a technical sense, but the second one really makes much more sense coming after it. It’s not like, say, the Witchers.
Thanks!
The favourite foes thread brought up Morrowind’s cliff racers, whose future cousins in Elex are much more enjoyable because of your jetpack-powered aerial attacks.
It’s a weirdness that adding in Batman-style auto-close-to-striking-distance when you airborne makes aerial melee much more fun than their same old ground-based melee, where everyone lumbers and lurches around. When I’m in charge the whole game might use jetpack-style combat.
Just started Elex 2. I really love exploration in Pirahna Byte games, it is just so rewarding. And they start you off with a Jet Pack! How will I even leave the starting area? I’m sure there is some awesome thing on a ledge somewhere…
I completely forgot that elex 2 existed, despite enjoying the first game. What’s the consensus?
If you liked the first one, you’ll like this one :)
I played them both. I thought the first one was better. The writing was to me the weakest part of both games. It was laugh out loud awful in the second game.
But the jet pack was fun and they did make improvements for the second game.
I played first four hours of Elex 2 and thought it was a downgrade across the board (and free Gothic game, Archolos, is vastly better in every way).
That said, I will continue and eventually enjoy it. But first impressions were certainly not great.
It’ll probably entertain you for a bit in the same way Elex did, because of the new space to explore and the (semi) freedom of the jetpack.
Personally, I only ended up with half the playtime in this than in the first game, but it is still installed so I kind of planned to pick it back up.
It was a bit rough when I played too, but that’s nothing unusual for Pirahna launches, so I’m fairly forgiving there. The exploration and dangerous world elements are typically the highlight for me, and the writing/dialogues - not so much. That’s true here too. :)
I will say if you liked the first one, you will like the second one. However, IMHO, the first one was better.
One thing I disliked is how the last 1/3rd of the game just became clearing waves of enemies over and over. I would highly recommend going down the magic line and getting the meteor spell because it is a great AoE to clear the waves of enemies. I think I would have given up on the game if it had not been for that spell.
I never had that spell, but I do think you should do all the optional content to get your equipment up to scratch before the combat heavy parts turn up. Or that’s what I did at least.
I just don’t get the dialogue in this game sometimes.
Can someone parse what the hell this is supposed to be? Like, what the hell is Caja about there? Or is it just random german bizzare?
Random German Bizarre was Autobahn’s acclaimed concept double album.
I…have no clue. It seems like Caja’s lines were, well, as you say, random. Just stuff that was taken from some other conversation tree and plopped down here just because? No friggin’ clue. Or why the model in the cutscene looks a lot different than the character in the game world, either.
I’m more confused by the fact you aren’t allowed inside the town after the first game having united all the clans against the albinos.
Well. I did eventually enjoy it. And then I didn’t. My short review:
At first, I could not get into it. I played about an hour a month for six months. Then I got to a larger settlement, got some quests going and it finally clicked. And for the next 50 hours or so, I was convinced I would give Elex 2 at least 7 or possibly 8/10, because I was having a blast, despite some annoyances. The handcrafted world was there, fun questing, great exploration with a jetpack, fun character progression. Good times!
But then chapter 3 and chapter 4 came, and…yeah. Piranha Bytes have always sucked at latter half of their games - always, even going back to Gothic 1 with its stupid boring dungeon - but Elex 2 takes the shit cake.
Basically all the companion missions are copy pasted laziness, and most of the ending quests are “go to X and kill 50 enemies”.
I expect this kind of trash in JRPGs. I do not expect it, nor want it, in WRPGs.
The only saving grace of the last two chapters is that with difficulty set to “story”, enemies can be dispatched fairly quickly and those two chapters combined took me some 15 hours. But it was still 15 hours too many, given their absence of quality.
Then there is the utterly bizzare writing, where I felt like half the dialogue flat out made no sense.
In the end…I am still glad I played it, and 50 hours of good fun is nothing to scoff at, but Elex 2 IS Piranha’s weakest game ever made.
Archolos: Chronicles of Myrtana team thoroughly schooled Piranha Bytes on how to make their own type of game.
It can sure look pretty at times though.
It cant be worse then Gothic 3 can it?
Glad I waited on this one. I finished the first game and it didn’t have the problems you cited. Why is there a trend now with PB botching their sequels.
Hmmm. I hated Varant and Nordmar in Gothic 3, but loved Myrtana. Its quests mostly sucked though. Elex 2 might be slightly better, but it is also 15 years later and one would expect Piranha to improve more over that time…
It’s weird to me PB don’t exploit the size of their community to crowd-source some dialog and QA. There can’t be any shortage of people willing to rework bits that suck. Maybe it all hangs together better in German.