Piranha Bytes, developers of the Gothic and Risen series, has announced Elex II.

Elex II

I know hagatha played the first game.

Thanks for the notice, Marian. I enjoyed the first game quite a bit and will watch for this one.

Great, Pokey! Nice to have a game to look forward to. Good to know you liked the first one. If I ever finish playing the Gothic and Risen series, I will look into it.

Did you see my post about the Gothic remake? That might be of interest to you, too.

Yes, I saw it and am definitely interested. I very seldom replay games, but Gothic, Thief, and System Shock 2 are the exceptions. I am replaying Thief 1 and 2 right now and it is like playing a new game. Great fun.

I really enjoyed Elex. I've been thinking about replay for a while but there's just so many games out there I want to play. But this is good news.

Pokey, I love Thief, of course, and System Shock 2 became an instant favourite the first time I played it about 5 years ago.

It will be released on GOG on March 1st; the order page can be found here. There is a small preorder discount.

I assume that Steam will have the same release date.

Cool. I really enjoyed the first Elex. Not the best in any way, but just an enjoyable, typical Piranha Bytes game that rewards exploration and Being Tough and Manly.

The game is out and can be purchased from GOG here.

So I poked my nose into Elex II, and, yes, it's Gothic, Science Fiction version II. Same clunkiness, same kind of combat, same camera angles, same lame voice acting. In short, I love it.


If you loved the Gothics, too, you'll probbly love this as well.

Glad to hear it!

Well, phooy. A few more hours in and I'm disappointed. Elex 2 plays like the original, but the game world is now utterly boring.

They used the same map, which started out being very cool, but they stripped out of it anything ineresting, simplified it and dumbed it down It's supposed to be a few years later, after the events of Elex, so I expected a few differences, but there's none of the fascination of the old map. Buildings I remember having fun exlporing for half an hour or more are now just empty sheds. In fact, most of the buildings are just clones of each other. I went looking for my favourite places, and some of them, a few of them, are still there, sort of, but featureless. The old hotel? Not there. The old Motel? Not there. Old castle ruins dotted around the landscape? Not there any more. Areas that were detailed and dangerous and just plain fun to explore are now just flattened empty versions of their former selves.

And the map, although the same, is shrunken, much smaller than the original. Everything is all squashed together. The settlements are all close to each other. I don't even feel like exploring any more. It's just rinse, repeat, kill monsters.

The quests are much the same as the original, as are the factions, but again, the settings of the settlements are dumbed down, too. Character progression is the most fum part of the game now, and its pretty darned good. I was ddeveloping my usual archer/thief combo and it was going well even at level 12 or so.

Not sure I'll bother to finish it, and I liked Elex enough that I played it twice in a row.

Maybe think about buying it on sale.

Thank you for the info. That does sound rather disappointing. I suppose there is always a chance that patches might improve things somewhat.

There have already been a couple of patches, so it's possible.

Technically, the game ran well on my lap top, until I got to the northern most part of the map and then my frame rate dropped so low that the game became unplayable. That;s one of the big concerns people have, so I'm sure it'll be adressed in a patch. No crashes, either.

Continuing on with the game, apart from the one disappointment above, it's a lot of fun. I'm just kind of meandering around, doing random quests, exploring the terrain. At some point I'll have to get serious with the main questline, of course.

One thing I'd forgotten from the Gothic games in general is that potion-making is very important. At the highest level you can craft permanent potions. Permanent potions are also everywhere if you look in the more out-of-the-way and harder-to-reach places, which makes exploration eminently worthwhile.

As usual I'm playing a ranged character with some skill in One-Handed for emergencies, and of course the mandatory thieving skills. This being sci-fi/fantasy, I'm also equipped with a shotgun, which is pretty effective for large foes, and I'm an expert safe-cracker, too.

The game gives you a jet pack right off the bat, so you can fight in the air and drop down from dizzying heights.

So, apart for the disappointing lack of vaariety in the buildings, the game is much the same as the first, and loads of fun. Still pretty much a macho world, but at least two companions are women.

Now that's great news that you are having loads of fun after all!

Yes, I am. Also, the farther out you explore, the more interesting things get, old villages and so on.


......

Okay, so i'm now level 40and almost invincible in most situatons. I went the Berserker route for the Ranged and Fire Magic options. With my fully-upgraded jet pack I can be a real monster zipping around throwing fire down. Even the heftiest of trolls can't escape.

For future reference, the one skill to avoid completely is the jetpack upgrade Retrorockets, which are supposed to stop you falling out of the sky if you run our of fuel. It's an utter waste of four Skill points. You don't need them beause you can brake on the way down anyway, and the rockets are one-use only, requiring you to find or buy them all the time, making them utterly obsolete.

Coming near the end, with most quests done and a couple of minor faction quests I just don't care about. Level 50, and absolutely nothing left to spend Skill points on, so I guess it' time to head for the end-game final boss fight.

Good luck!

Oh and this is the first PB game I've played where there are some "romance" options for our Hero. I mean romance in the sense of "I'm with you" as opposed to any meaningful romance dialogue. But still.

Interesting.

Given that PB games are all so tough-guy, it's a bit odd, in an amusing sort of way.

I finished this a couple of days ago. Well worth playing if you like PB games. I thought the first Elex was te better game, though. But Elex 2 has the jetpack, and let's face it, who doesn't like a jetpack?

My only frame of reference is a jetpack in Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy, but I certainly enjoyed it.

Well, with this jetpack, you can hover and dart around in the air while your opponents run around haplessly on the ground.

Sounds good to me.