Yeah, I don't know why I keep giving Piranha Bytes so many chances. Elex has the exact same issues all of their games have, and the fact that they do nothing to improve upon it is annoying as shit.
Gothic games were great for their time, despite the bad combat. Risen had one of the best worlds in any RPG I've played, while the combat was worse than ever. I appreciated how small and detailed it was in an industry where every open world tries so hard to be gigantic and meaningless, and could generally forgive the horrible combat. The sequels were really bad, which is one of the biggest disappointments of the last 10 years or so. The worlds were a lot worse (though they still had some great quests) and they didn't do anything to improve the bad gameplay.
I was expecting so much more out of Elex. Elex is the same game they always do, except somehow more unbalanced and with a completely uninteresting world and set of factions. The worlds were what kept me going in their games with terrible gameplay, but Elex is just booorrrriing. Everyone and every faction feels exactly the same, and almost no one has any personality at all. I mean, not a single character in the entire game has any sense or urgency or even seem like they give a shit at all. The environments also are boring as hell and have no personality, and the world is too big with very little that's interesting in it. A loooott of empty environments and boring ruined buildings.
Such a disappointment. This is their third franchise (I'm assuming they are gonna make sequels) in this style of game, yet they do nothing to try and improve themselves.
I have 35 hours in the game. It's still decent enough where it has that same Gothic addiction, but every single corner is riddled with bad game design and a boring ass world. I'd say in general it's a better game than Gothic 3 and Risen 3, but it's worse than all their others. But in terms of disappointment, this is by far their most disappointing title. It should have been so much more.