Having finished Elex recently (around 50 hours doing just about all the content and exploring the full map, maybe missing the odd fetch quest) I'm excited to see what Elex 2 has to offer but at the same time I have some reservations.
When it comes to what they should keep here are my thoughts on Elex itself:
Pros:
- Exploration is as good as ever, there's no other developer that ensures exploration is as rewarding as it is in PB games, Bethesda games and The Witcher pale in comparison to Elex. Why is this? Bethesda games are too reliant on the overworld simply being a hub for dungeons and the world can feel like something that's simply there to break up going from place to place. Elex's world IS the content of the game and thus the world is the focus and is the reason it's far better to traverse and explore. As for the Witcher 3, it suffers from Ubisoft game syndrome where the world is a base for a series of similar activities for the most part (monster dens etc) which breaks the immersion and ensures the game becomes a checklist, it's got some good moments however, but doesn't reach the heights of Gothic and Elex in this regard.
- Domed City (deserves a special mention). To me this was probably the highlight of the game, a neutral city of sorts which felt like a game within a game if you will. The C&C was at it's strongest here and I hope they can build on this going forward as this is the sort of quality I want to see in future games.
- Cities - The Beserker and Outlaw cities were great too me, full of things to do with some great characters, my favourite quest involved Rat in the Outlaw city and I was constantly intrigued as to where it would go, these two cities also felt pretty well crafted. The Cleric city I found looked way too similar from region to region and I found it more difficulty to distinguish everything, I found the whole aesthetic of the Cleric area to be a bit dull and would prefer they didn't go down that route in the city. That said there were some good quests and I know joining the Clerics was a popular choice here.
- Main Story/End game - while the main story, as usual was nothing special I appreciated that it mostly tied into me exploring the regions and factions, I also liked that the end game was mostly short and didn't fall into the trap of some earlier titles where it became a dungeon crawl, the end section was quick and intriguing enough to not feel boring and I appreciated the epilogue as well.
Cons:
- I'm going to say Questing, not all the quests but it just didn't feel as strong as in Gothic 1/2 and to an extent Risen. There are a LOT of fetch quests in this game and while I found myself not needing the quest marker in Edan too much, as the game pressed on it started to feel necessary and far too many of the quests give you little information or almost none at all. This comes down to some of my points below where I feel PB wanted to make use of a lot of locations and ensure there were quests tied to most of them, this resulted in filler quests with little choice, I want quests in these games to be something I love to stumble upon, not something that makes you think "here we go again" offering you another generic quest relying on the quest marker.
- The world is too big, while they did a good job of exploration as mentioned I'd much prefer they tightened the experience. Risen felt like the perfect sized game world, go back to this, doing so along with 3-4 cities would be absolutely perfect.
- Re-spawning enemies - the issue with this is it ties into the world being too big again, in previous titles, not only did killing enemies feel like progress and more rewarding exploration, they also helped with traversing the map and knowing where you had and hadn't been. Given those games were smaller, it's stupid to NOT continue this trend with a huge game map. A lot of the forests look very similar and no re spawning enemies (aside from chapter to chapter) would've really helped with this.
- The perk system. I appreciated that they tried to expand on something that's pretty similar in earlier games but I feel like it fell a bit flat. There's far too many useless perks and I feel like it's just more hassle for a developer that's likely already on a tight budget. This territory is not their strength and rather then trying to be a jack of all trades, I'd prefer they focus on their strengths.
Mixed:
- Combat I'm in different on, I don't think it needs to be a huge focus as I prefer combat to complement the exploration in that I want to continue to feel like I'm best off running away from enemies who're too strong for me, and come back, approaching the exploration like a jigsaw puzzle that way rather then being able to go anywhere I want. That's signature PB so my only change would be to either make melee more of a focus or make ammo far more scarce and a resource that can't be crafted.
- Companions. I didn't mind the companions but I felt their quests were a little lacking. Now I read that Duras' quest is a lot more interesting in the German version and the translation was supposedly botched here which is why it doesn't make as much sense. That's a shame but I'm guessing the reasons may have been beyond their control so I won't critisise that one too heavily. Most of the other quests fell into fetch quest territory with not a whole lot of interest, I think if they're going to go down this road again I'd prefer they tighten things up again, perhaps fewer companions with higher quality quest lines and maybe generic characters you can hire in town to go with you if you want something different.
Now for Elex 2. I'll keep this brief but Piranha Bytes should stick to their strengths, instead of trying to make their games move towards a AA version of a better Skyrim etc. they need to strip it back and spend their development time on the things they're really good at. Domed City, exploration within a tight environment where everything has a place, factions and towns should be the focus, not a "bigger is better" world with tons of fetch quests, meaningless perks etc.
. I think I did most of the secondary quests, but not so sure. Very Gothic-like in totality, including the movement model and movesets, OP companions like the pirate from Die Nacht des Rabens, PB-humour and dialogues. I was conditioned by bioware / other western RPGs so I got fooled basically by everyone (and triple scammed in Tavar), it was an interesting experience.
