it's Gothic 2 with grinding
And this is precisely why
Jasede likes it. At first I thought jasede was just bigging it up because he wanted to stick it to Grimoire after being oddly unenthusiastic about that game, jasede being a big blobber fan, but then, reading this thread made me realise, jasede loves this game because its a grinder whereas Grimoire probably wasn't grindy enough, what with it being too restricted in that department by Cleve's vision for the game. Are you going to deny this logic jasede?
Those games are completely different, why would you compare them?
I disliked Grimoire because the sound effects were annoying, the music bad, the graphics shoddy, the character creation boring, the combat fiddly, the encounters at the beginning unimaginative and the writing uneven. I am sure the game is 'good' in some way - maybe it has great puzzles, maybe it opens up later, maybe it has great dungeons -- but I am not gonna put up with all the flaws I mentioned just to get there. I love blobbers but honestly, I'd rather replay Wizardry 1-8 or Dungeon Master (even Dungeon Master 2). They are more... focused and do what they attempt to do better.
Look, I care about 'love' - I didn't feel much effort put into Grimoire. So many years and one can't at least make the writing snappy? One can't find SFX that aren't grating? One can't come up with encounters a bit more interesting? There's no love there; it feels cobbled together by someone who just wanted to finally get it over with and finish it - far from what I expected from someone who claims to have Asperger's and thus should be a perfectionist. I'd be more forgiving if this trash hadn't taken 25 years or whatever it took to be made. For that time, even as a 1-man project, it is pathetic. For a good 1-man project, look at hits like Stardew Valley or, yes, Undertale. Maybe not your type of game but their
execution is flawless. Cave Story comes to mind: tons of attention paid to every pixel, to every music used. Those people poured love and effort into their game.
Cleve did not. It's a scam, and trash, too.
Now, Elex, is the complete opposite. This game clearly wasn't made to be a mass market hit. This game is a love letter to everything people liked about Gothic. Some things work, some things don't. It has more or less the same flaws and strengths Gothic had. It feels like a return to form for PB who, IMO, have been trash for a while now. It's amazing in the sense that I never saw a developer recover from decline, but they somehow did it.
As to your remark about grinding - I wouldn't call it that, but yes, getting stronger and stronger -- from zero to hero -- is an integral part of Gothic and why it is so enjoyable. Elex on Ultra is precisely this. Until level 15 every tiny chicken can rape your ass; until you git good at the combat AND find some decent gear and train and learn and get stronger.
Maybe ten years ago we tried to define what an RPG is, and we love to do this constantly. But back then I said something like "an RPG is a game where you kill things to get loot/XP to make numbers get bigger" - this applies to Fallout, this applies to jRPGs, this applies to this game. The games where it doesn't apply I tend to hate. Example: Oblivion. My numbers getting bigger makes no difference because everything scales.
Edit:
^ that is my answer
