*sniffs
Aaaaaaaahhhh Eeeelex.
Ok jokes aside lets start with the review.

This review is spoiler free, not discussing the story of the game.

Piranha Bytes classic design is nailed on this one, with a few exceptions. It reminds me a lot to the old gothic games, that wasnt achieved with Risen 2, and even 3.

Early game is tough or even harder than souls games even on the easy difficulty (I played on hard, ultra is just too much in my opinion), like it should be expected from Piranha games. While the endgame is an easy time, but a cluster of enemies.
Its a good but also a bad thing at the same time.

Starting with the graphics, they are good for its time when the game got released, not the best, but also not the worst. Lighting could really be improved, but the color palette is great. The biomes variety is also pretty nice, this 2 things were made a bit better than in Elex 2.

The animations, now thats something that isnt great at all, animation bugs are very common on this title, with npcs walking into walls even on the latest patch, getting stuck somewhere when u are in the middle of a conversation, or just enemies freezing like it happened to me with the Colossus related to a quest, which btw, wasnt a bad thing for me because you just feel like you have to fight it too early.
Other animation issues and bug i found was t posing clerics a few times in the Hord, and well, lets just say the animations in general that do work are a bit poor in quality. But if we compare it for example to Gothic 3, its indeed an improvement.

The combat, well, PB is well known for having terrible combat systems, especially mele. This one have improved if compared to Risen 2 and 3, and it is a bit better than in Risen 1 IMHO, but still falls down to mediocre hit, dodge, hit and dodge on the early game, and only gets better once you adquire jet pack attack ability, and once you are powerful enough to be able to execute combos and not get one shot by literally anything big enough, which comes to the next part. BTW the combo system is the thing that adds fun to the mele combat, and definitely a good addition.
But yeah like everyone else says in the reviews, the jank, the inputs failure, the ganking and the clunky bs will cause 50% of your deaths. Fighting a pack of raptors and accidentally aggro a slugbeast? GG.

The enemies, from the first minutes of the game, regardless of your difficulty, will one-two hit kill you, you cannot stand a chance against anything that arent rats or small mutants till you joined a faction and till you get to level 15-20. And this big enemies will spawn everywhere, even close to the starting location where you just complete the tutorial, there is literally a slugbeast on the lake of Edan, there are 2 Trolls close to Goliet, there are packs of raptors that wont hesitate to gank you if you decide to confront them before midgame and before level 20 or so. There are just no safe areas with recommended levels to go, but, the toughest places are gonna be Ignadon and Xacor. Every place on the map has either strong enemies, weak enemies or a misc of both. A good example that opened my eyes was the lake close to Goliet.

Basically the early game is run and collect type of gameplay, you do quests, you dont kill anything that arent small mutants, not even reavers or other npc enemies, and you do most of the easier quests that may require you to go to an area with strong enemies but you do not have to kill them, just collect whatever is needed, run away, and return to the quest giver for xp and level ups. Or, you can cheese your way thru with bow and the jetpack, you dodge the mutants projectiles, and time your shots right.

Do not feel bad about cheesing certain enemies encounters, because thats just how the game works in the early/midgame, this is how the combat system works, you either cheese the enemies, run away, or get cheesed by the enemies themselves, its all about strategic positioning and hit-run stategy, and there are encounters you are put on as a consequence after completeting certain quests, like the time i died over 30 times and had to reload after the tavern keeper of the Fort sent 3 reavers after me, while i was still under leveled. Or the arena situation i had, where i abused the grenades, in order to beat the second oponent (Skull level ofc). Or first quest with nasty, where i let her and her troops kill the mutants instead, by luring them into eachother.
Most creatures on this game are skull level till you are level 15 or above so dont try to fight them legit. Stick to messenger, run and collect quest items or gather info kind of quests.

Luring enemies to neutral npcs works wonders here as well as in Gothic 3, if you want to get rid of an enemy in your way that is being annoying, just lure it to a city and its GG, also good if you level up your trophy hunter ability, which btw, is the only solid way to make money on this game (sadly).

The enemies variety is quite nice tho, having mutants, human npcs and tech to fight, all of which are strong or weak against certain elemental damage. I found fire damage to be a bit op against anything that didnt live in Ignadon tho, especially in endgame against mutans in Xacor. And i found poison to be a bit weak.

The story. Good in the early/midgame, falls down a lot on the endgame (Last 2 chapters). Also have some parts on the midgame where it can be a mess or sleep inducing, so it can get boring but then get interesting again. Not the greatest aspect of Elex for sure.

The quests general quality is solid but not the best either, many fetch quests, but still, a lot of quality quests like finding a specific thing that revels what/who is Calaan, that quest i absolutely loved, well if it wasnt for the collectibles i had to get in order to unlock the quest itself, reaching the volcano and finding out something, was such a surprise.
Main quests generally are awesome with a few exceptions, and the side questline that decide the faith of Dome City, is just, awesome.

The magic and the long distance combat can get boring really quick, especially if you level up your dex/int way too much and use laser beamers, you end up killing anything that moves before it reaches you. Or if you use black void spell from the clerics, you basically stunlock enemies with it. I didnt abuse it unless i wanted to get rid of certain enemies fast in endgame.

And finally the elex potions themselves is a completely broken aspect of the game, they are easy to craft and they grant basically free stat boosts, or AP (ability points), and its always fun to craft 10 of them and take them all in front of Ragnar while you say "hmmmm yeeees eeelex baby", maybe its just me cuz im weird lol. Or maybe cuz i hate Ragnar sooo much and could not stand that guy in my playthrough. Thats why i went with clerics.

I personally went with a hybrid of a 2h sword and laser guns for variety, joining the clerics, and maxing out dex and str stats. Ended up being too op on the endgame, but thats just me who likes power gaming, even since i played Lhiver Gothic 2, and warband prophesy of pendor, i found out that i like that type of stuff personally on the games i play, but i can understand its not for everyone.

If you like PB games, you will like Elex, if you never played a PB game before, you will absolutely have a bad time and may even hate the game.

I would give Elex a solid 7/10, could have been better but a good game i put more than 100 hours.

Also irrelevant but i stopped using the usual template i used for my reviews back in the days.