LifeisXbox’s Elex II review | Elex II takes place after the events of Elex, when Jax defeated the Hybrid, saved the world and left his wife and son. An alien race called the Skyands have invaded the earth, which is known as Magalan. It’s up to Jax to try and co-operate with the other factions, reunite his family and save the world once again. This openworld RPG was developed by Piranha Bytes and published by THQ Nordic. In this game, you will meet many people, fight a lot of creatures and, most importantly, save the world once more…
Most Memorable Moment
While I didn’t stay in any factions, I found trying to figure out my favourite to be quite an experience. In order to join a faction, I first had to interact with the factions themselves. Some had more missions than others, but they all had nice stories to them. In some cases, the factions’ missions made me interact with one of the other factions, both in good and bad ways. My favourite faction ended up being the Clerics, mainly because of its setting.
ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox Series X | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion from the writer.
What we Liked!
- Great Soundtrack | One of the few things that I actually liked about Elex II was its soundtrack. The feeling of the soundtrack is easily comparable with that of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Red Dead Redemption 2. While you explore the world, you’ll hear this quiet, relaxing music that never really seemed to bore me. Every faction also has its own theme in a similar style. There’s also music while you’re battling, which is more action-based, of course, but it still sounds pretty nice in my opinion!
- Factions | What I personally really liked about Elex II was finding out what faction I wanted to team up with. In this game, you’ll be making your own faction, which will be called The Sixth Power. You can’t build this faction all by yourself, so you’ll need companions and even the help of other factions. These factions consist of the Albs (the faction where the protagonist stayed in its prequel), the Morkons, the Berserkers, the Clerics and the Outlaws. Joining one of these factions has its benefits. It is possible to not team up with any of these factions, which will make the game a little more difficult, but you’ll be rewarded with a shiny achievement later on. While I personally wanted to join the Clerics, because of its medieval theme, I ended up not doing so because I wanted to get all of the achievements. And also because the requirements for joining the Clerics were quite challenging on its own; in order to become a Cleric, I first had to join the Albs, be a higher rank amongst the Albs, and be at least level 20. The Clerics are quite a hard faction to join, but the Outlaws’ requirements were even more difficult. Don’t worry though, the other 3 factions are a lot easier to join if you’re rather looking for a more simple experience.
Mixed Feelings
- Fine Graphics | Elex II’s visuals look quite stunning, from a distance, that is… While distant views of the game look quite well, when taking a closer look, the game starts to look a little rougher. And if I’m going to be honest, while these graphics look decent, these are definitely not next-gen graphics, especially for a game that is exclusive to next-gen consoles. Where the visuals actually looked really bad, was when it came to characters. I mean, look at these, they look so, SO rough… The faces look like plastic, the hair is okay, and the resolution on clothing items look rather low. And then you have the fact that I’ve come across so many characters that have the same faces, even characters you actually interact with, which is really off-putting in my opinion.
- Decent Openworld | First of all, the open world feels rather a little small in comparison to other games, but I’ve seen smaller open world games. Throughout the world, you’ll find the factions I talked about earlier, all 6 placed in different areas. The game’s also filled with these teleporters, which allow you to teleport to them upon activation, which can be pretty handy if you want to go from one place to another in a short amount time – and a quick side note; the loading times in this game are almost instant, and I really liked that! Besides the factions, teleporters, and (obviously) missions, there are also a few collectables hidden: audio logs and map pieces. I can’t really talk about these collectables, as I haven’t been able to find all of them.
- Achievements | The majority of the achievements are fairly easy to collect, however, some may prove to be fairly grindy. Thanks to the manual loading and saving, it is possible to grind achievements like “100 locks picked” or “500 enemies killed” in a matter of minutes. But then come the achievements that I hate the most; missable achievements. Yes, Elex II has missable achievements, and I find these kinds of achievements to be quite disgusting. There’s an achievement for every faction that you join, but keep in mind, once you join a faction, there’s no way out – so if you hadn’t made a save before you joined one, you’re basically screwed, and you’ll be forced to restart this 40+ hour game just to get these achievements. From what I’ve read online, one of the “skill tree” achievements also seems to be missable, but I am not really able to confirm this one, so be on the lookout for that.
What we Disliked
- Boring Combat | At first, I enjoyed the combat, but that seemed to wear off very quickly. The combat is just way too simplistic and boring. All you can really do is swing a sword, roll and counter attacks with a shield or something. The difficulty also seemed to be quite inconsistent – one minute, I’m fighting enemies that can be killed with 2 hits, the other I am fighting enemies that require you to hit them a hundred times…
- Long & Repetitive Missions | Talking, talking, walking, talking… that’s how the missions looked in my opinion. Maybe I’m just not used to RPGs like this one, but I found myself listening to long pieces of dialogue more than actually playing the game. There were a few fighting sections, but those were just areas with what felt like a random amount of enemies, just scattered around with little to no thought to them.
How long to beat the story | About 40 hours
How long to achieve 1000G | About 50 hours
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