December 10, 2023 - Day 343 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 363
Game: Elex II
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 2, 2022
Installation Date: Dec 10, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 52m
Elex II is a third-person open-world "sci-fi" ARPG; it's a sequel to Elex, which I reviewed on May 19th. and the third game in this month's Humble Choice bundle.
Usually, when someone's making a sequel, they'll take the things that worked about the first game or movie, try and amp those up, while introducing something new to give those same elements a twist.
As I'm playing through a game, I'm making notes in my head about the game, things I want to touch on when I write about it.
Elex II was released four and a half years after Elex; after playing through Elex II, I went back and read my review of Elex from May.
With Elex II, the devs decided to so something different to the usual strategy for a sequel. They instead took the elements that didn't work in the predecessor, and amped those up instead. The review almost writes itself.
The game opens with a narrator drawling the story of the planet Magalan, and the terrible disaster that befell them, leaving them in a post-apocalypse that feels like the designs of Skyrim, Fallout, and Destiny 2's EDZ got put in a blender, but the devs decided to roll their own gameplay. [Check]
They kept the aspect of Fallout's "collect all the things just in case" gameplay, but while I managed to collect a stash of stuff, an hour in I still have no idea what to do with any of it. [Check]
Combat feels mushy, and the mobs I've run into feel overpowered. [Mobs seem a little less OP now]
...and then there's the voice acting. Our protagonist is a gruff emotionless white guy who's been done wrong, and left to die by his faction. Early on, he meets a character from a different faction, and the conversation itself felt like a grind. [Check]
To call the voice acting wooden would be an insult to trees. [Actually, this changed. It's now wooden with a thick cheesy topping.]
Unfortunately, I think Elex is another game that might have been interesting in 2017, but suffers in comparison to everything that's come since, and there's little here that makes me want to keep playing.
[Dec 10] The worst thing is that last paragraph from the Elex review feels accurate for Elex II in the worst possible way. This game from 2022 FEELS like a game from 2017.
The UI is clunky, the character graphics feel firmly lodged in the uncanny valley, and don't get me started on the teeth. They're going to give me nightmares.
Oh, and one more thing. This game takes up 86.5Gb. That's bigger than Death Stranding, Horizon Zero Dawn Complete, and bigger than Cyberpunk 2077 (WITH DLC!). Wut? Why??
Elex II takes everything I disliked about Elex and gives more of the same; so, uh...