🦖Elex II | XSX Review | 6.5/10 | "More RPG action from the team behind the Gothic and Risen series" 🦖 @Piranha_Bytes #IndieGame #IndieGameDev

When I came across Elex in 2017, it really made an impact on me. I resonated with the dry humour that was scattered throughout the game and, whilst it had technical issues, the sense of character that ran throughout made it stand out from the crowd, despite not being a graphical showcase.

I’ve been eagerly awaiting this sequel and, whilst it retains the humour and fixes some problems that were present in the first game, I couldn’t quite relax fully, due to some vague mission design and implementation which ultimately marred the experience.

Set several years after Elex, this sequel finds Jax with an estranged wife and son in a world that is being devoured by seemingly alien lifeforms that are polluting the lands with Dark Elex. Following a pretty exhilarating intro sequence, Jax is bitten by one of the invaders and regains consciousness sometime later, having lost the majority of his powers and strength (a pretty blunt way of making the players build Jax up from scratch) and sets out to try and rid himself of the growing infection, get souped-up and also possibly save the planet of Magalan (again) from this new extra-terrestrial threat.

Following the smooth, action-packed introduction cutscene - when the game hands control over to the player it is initially quite jarring, as the controls and combat instantly lack impact – which was an issue in the original. Whilst this only takes a few minutes to adjust to, it makes it clear from the start that this is a game based on the same engine as its predecessor and so isn’t a generational leap so much as a technical touch-up in terms of what’s under the bonnet.

Beyond this, players of the first game will find themselves in familiar territory as they move Jax around the pretty hefty (and enjoyably vertical) map; catching up with old acquaintances, getting hips deep into the myriad side quests and of course, levelling up – taking the path that most appeals to them; the nature-driven Berserkers, the technologically advanced Albs, the uncontrollable Outlaws, religion-driven clerics, underground-dwelling Morkons or maybe Jax will forever be a wandering mercenary? It’s up to you.

Elex 2 is certainly a game that rewards exploration, there will pretty much always be something hidden in the ruins (aside from a few oddly barren places), a corpse with the possessions scattered nearby, a chest to loot or a safe to hack, and I found the quests fit with the style of each group – giving each area an identity.

You will also pick up companions along the way, comprising of characters from the original as well as some new faces to get to know. With plenty of content, it’s easy to lose a couple of dozen hours pottering about and getting into some pretty saucy scrapes (will I ever get bored of luring animals into settlements to cause havoc whilst I go around nicking? I think not!).

Yes, as with the original, a huge amount of enemies will kill you in one hit if you take a wrong turn, but the jetpack makes traversal fun – and escape a possibility – and when you do get the heavier weapons and armour, it’s really satisfying to launch a load of grenades and rockets at wandering trolls, ogres and other monstrosities that would have used you as a suppository earlier in the game.

I like the world of Elex a lot, the writing feels wonderfully idiosyncratic, is often coarse and clearly not filtered through a committee - I also found the music surprisingly engaging and understated. Running at a relatively solid 30 fps on the Xbox Series X (unless you go near a waterfall) and with minimal loading times, the experience is mostly smooth, except for the usual issues found in these huge open-world games such as texture pop-in, clashing visuals and the occasional enemy whose brain appears to have melted under the Magalan sun, making them easy pickings. All the usual antics that feel like part of the territory, I welcome them as old friends.

My most prominent issue with Elex was with the main questline. Quite close to the start of the game, you meet a character called Adam who states that you need to amass the greatest army that the world has ever seen…and then repeats a line of dialogue about your best weapon being your willpower. I soon pegged it away from him and, thirsty for adventure, wandered Magalan in search of jetpack fuel, spoils… and garlic bread, natch.

It was only almost twenty-five hours later after I had exhausted all the quests I’d fancied and Jax, after meeting a certain character, said “I’d better tell Adam what I’ve learned” - or something to that effect - that I teleported back to the main hub (Bastion) and talked to Adam once more to advance the main plot for a bit…only for him to repeat the same line of dialogue as before.

I spent a further five hours pottering around and questing, eventually exhausting pretty much everything on my quest page to the point that not even my companions had anything for me and another main character at a key point in the narrative was again just repeating a vague line of dialogue - that I wondered if there had been a game-breaking bug somewhere along the line.

The problem is that quite often, in-game characters will give you obtuse timings on missions such as ‘I’ll see you in a few days’ or, ‘come back in a while’. On occasion, I’d be walking around, and a character would seemingly randomly run up to me to move things forward in a narrative sense, so it’s not clear when/if there is an issue that you need to reload a save for because everything appears ok. You can sleep in the game, so I basically dropped into a coma for a week just in case there was some untriggered time/event that needed to happen.

Alas, it appears not.

I really enjoyed my time with Elex, but I really feel shaky on the quest implementation, if it relies on invisible triggers, and they glitch…well…the game is effectively unwinnable. There’s a chance that I’m missing something obvious but again, I have been given no aim or objective that suggests otherwise, and it was this major point that really hampered my enjoyment of the game.

Piranha Bytes are now well into their third trilogy of games following Gothic, Risen and now Elex and I’ve enjoyed the ride. This is very much a slightly improved version of the original, tightening up several aspects but still retaining the same janky charm that gives it underdog appeal – and has been present throughout the Piranha Bytes releases for the past decade.