ELEX Review- A Very Poor Man’s Skyrim

Developer: Piranha Bytes

Publisher: THQ Nordic

Release date: October 17, 2017

Available on: PC, PS4, Xbox One (reviewed)

Disclaimer: I could not play this game to the story’s conclusion for fear of breaking my controller. Explanations will follow. I put 20 hours into the game, and that was more than enough. The score at the bottom reflects my time with the game.

Delivering large scale RPGs can be a tricky business. You need to be able to keep players interest with a solid main story, or barring that, lots of interesting side quests. Great characters help as well, even in those where the player creates their own main character. The worlds need to be begged to be explored, and the best games play fair and give you the resources to grow, even when being challenging. Developers like Bethesda, CD Projekt Red, and From Software have it down pat, and deliver games that are among the best in its genre. Games like Skyrim, Fallout 4, The Witcher 3, and the Dark Souls series give fans of the genre what they want. Other developers play within their strengths, and don’t try to overreach. Developer Piranha Bytes is one that hasn’t seemed to realize their limitations yet. While none of their games are out and out broken, it takes a lot of patience to get through them, and even then they are best picked up at a steep discount. The Risen series was a nice attempt to through pirates into a fantasy RPG, but bad mechanics hindered them and kept them from being any fun. Piranha Bytes seems to be a developer that has big ideas, but not the talent and/or the resources to pull them off.

Such is the case with their latest title, ELEX.

ELEX takes place on the planet Magalan, a paradise world until it gets hit by a comet. The comet leaves behind an element called ELEX, which can be used to power machines, grant magical powers, or re-sculpt life into new forms. Many of the creatures of the planet have become mutated monsters, making survival quite difficult. The world has split into multiple factions: the Albs, Separatists, Berserkers, Clerics, and Outlaws. The Albs consume ELEX to rid themselves of emotion and make themselves live by logic alone. The Separatists are Albs that have split off, realizing emotion is necessary to preserving their humanity. Berserkers eschew modern technology, and purify ELEX into mana to weave magic and restore nature. Clerics worship the god Calaan, and operate as a religious police state. For them personal use of ELEX is forbidden, but they use it to power their war technology. The Outlaws have no formal leaders, hold to the credo of “survival of the fittest”, and use ELEX as specialized stimulants. You play as an Alb commander named Jax, who survives an assassination attempt. Your quest for vengeance leads you across Magalan, and you can choose to join or aid any faction you wish. This is one aspect of the game that was done right. Piranha Bytes did establish a deep lore for their game-world. Had they written this as a sci-fi/fantasy novel or comic book, it might have been quite enjoyable.

As a video game, however, it’s a mess. At least it has a good save system, where you can save wherever and whenever you’d like. And you’ll need to save quite often so you don’t lose chunks of progress, at least in your travels. Too much can kill you too quickly, and often the deaths are cheap and undeserved. I found myself saving nearly every ten minutes or so, just so I wouldn’t have to travel the same distance over and over again. The game seems to encourage you more to avoid combat than enter it, yet if you don’t fight, you’re not going to be able to level up. Which will enable you to fight. It’s a Catch-22 that proves to be highly frustrating. The other problem is that you don’t know how many experience points you need to reach the next level. There is only a bar on the stats screen, and no way to know how many points advance the bar. And while you can allocate your points as you wish to various attributes (Strength, Dexterity, intelligence, and so on), you don’t know what will be the most beneficial for you. Some weapons are merely strength based, but to use the most effective melee weapons, you’ll have to put all of your points into one basket. Problem with that is, when you find ranged weapons, you’ll need to have other stats leveled up to use them. There doesn’t seem to be any in between, like a low grade bow or pulse rifle. This leads to a lot of forced grinding, and yet you get the most experience points from completing missions. Yet for many missions you need to be leveled up and be able to use the higher grade weapons to survive.

The control scheme itself feels clumsy for combat. The right shoulder button delivers your quick attack. Build up a meter at the bottom of the screen and you can trigger a special attack (Y on the Xbox, Triangle on the PS4). The thing is, there is a stamina meter, and you’ll deplete it quickly, and need to retreat for it to refill so you can attack again. But enemies don’t have that, and can attack relentlessly. Plus, the hit boxes are awful. Enemies could land massive damage, even though on the screen they weren’t close to me. Even lesser enemies will take half your life, while your attack may only take a small fraction of theirs. Healing during battle is very tricky, as you get locked in an animation using a potion, during which you can get attacked again. Having a companion doesn’t help, as the AI is so bad that allies will often stand by or run next to enemies, without attacking. They’re rarely reliable, unlike in other RPGs where having a companion would be a bonus. They also tend to get in the way, and even bump into you when using the rocket packs to get to higher places, causing you to fall to your death.

It doesn’t help that the voice acting is merely serviceable, and the dialogue is often poorly written. You get conversation choices, yet often conversations end up not making any sense when you have no “End” option present. Characters will be threatening one second, and approve of you the next. None of the characters are even memorable. Jax sounds like Riddick on depressants, and other characters are so cliched and bland. This removes any emotional weight to the game, and it doesn’t motivate you as to what faction to align with. The only thing most of the factions have in common is that they dislike the Albs, and they want you dead anyway, so they become the common enemy. But other factions will attack you for no reason, even though later you can meet up with members who’ll want your help. It makes for a very inconsistent experience, and it often leads to cheap deaths as you can easily be swarmed by multiple foes. And they’re not restricted in their use of ranged weapons like you are. I’m all for a challenge, but it needs to be fair. This game has the odds stacked against you. That does not make for a fun time.

Then there are other poor design choices. You can’t pick up or use an item while in stealth mode. You can assign four items to the directional buttons for quick access, but for anything else, including checking the map, you need to open up your device that mimics Fallout’s Pip Boy. Since your health bar doesn’t appear on those menus, using health items from your device has you going in and out of screens needlessly. Again, your gauges have no numeric value, so you never know just what you need to help you out. Movement can be clumsy in spots as well. One moment you’ll need a boost from your rocket pack to reach a spot, another you can simply climb up. The camera can often present a bad angle, making it hard to use the rocket pack to reach a higher spot in the environment. The gauge for the rocket pack depletes quickly and is slow to refill, so it’s easy to fall to a cheap death in spots. And giving your enemies perfect aim is just completely unfair, especially when some attack out of nowhere and before you know it, you’re dead.

The game, while having detailed environments, doesn’t look good compared to other current gen titles. It would’ve looked great on the PS2, but that doesn’t cut it visually for current AAA games. It would be different if this was a budget title, but it’s not. It’s a full priced, $60 game, and for that price it need to be much better to justify it. There are plenty of technical issues, from pop in to clipping, and even frame rate slowdown while moving around the map screen. The sound design is poor in a lot of cases, where the sounds just don’t match the picture. There are times when your companion will disappear then reappear. And in another nod to poor design, mission objectives are often on the other side of the map. There is some fast travel if you find and activate a teleportation pad, but there few and far between, and often not much use in getting to your objectives quickly. So this forces you into slow travel over long distances, and certain areas of the map are toxic to you, and can be blundered into without any real warning, leading to yet another cheap death.

In all, ELEX is just not fun. Sure, it has great lore and big ideas, but they seem to be beyond Piranha Bytes’ ability to competently pull off. While not completely unplayable and broken, it’s not a game you want to spend the reportedly 50 hours or so to complete the main story line. To be sure, some will enjoy this game. There always are fans of these games, or else the developer would have closed years ago. And if you enjoyed the Risen games, you’ll probably like ELEX. For many though, this is just going to come off as a very poor man’s Skyrim or Fallout, and for those curious to try it despite negative reviews I recommend waiting for a very steep discount. Piranha Bytes needs to think smaller and make games within their ability. Just having big ideas, a large map, and a lengthy story line does not a good game make. There’s more to it than that, and that’s missing here. One for RPG fans to pass on. There are far better games to spend your time with.