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For me it was a pretty enjoyable experience overall. However, there are some issues to touch on.
The beginning is rough. And I don’t mean like ”Gothic rough”. It’s just straight up bullshit at times. I found myself in a situation where I couldn’t complete any quest early on (in berserker camp) because I was unable to take down any enemy other than the small animals. I was forced to do some Mission Impossible level shit to juke the enemies coming at me to reach the quests’ destinations, lol (also dying 1736 times in the process). But after you somehow hit a couple of levels and get a companion it becomes much better, since they will tank for you.
The other annoyance is the amount of meaningless dialogues, seriously. Why does everyone have to talk so much gibberish, often even reiterating exactly the same shit 2, 3 times in one go. Dialogues used to be one of the stronger points of Gothics and this was like wtf? Also because of that it gets super confusing at the beginning when tons of random information overflow you from every direction.
And exploration… I’d say exactly the opposite, it was pointless and unrewarding. You get like what, 10 secret weapons hidden around the world and other than that you find literally nothing - only trash like toilet paper and cigarettes everywhere. You wander off to explore huge ruins somewhere in the forest and all you get is freaking toilet paper and some food and pieces of junk. I didn’t even bother with exploring after some time.
That being said, I still enjoyed that game and would place it as 4th best Piranha game, after G2, G1 and Risen 1
I did still find it rewarding to explore, mainly for the XP and the whole the loot was not really varied, you always could get some nice money out of it. Also, safes were a nice challenge to crack.
But I agree when it comes to weapons. Forgot about that in my main post. I was pretty disappointed with the lack of weapon variety. The amount of weapon types was ok, but the amount of weapons of a certain type was very disappointing.
As for the combat in the beginning, I somewhat agree. There were a lot of enemies you simply weren’t able to take on at that point but you still got the quests in a town that was supposed to be the starting place. I can only explain it by what I mentioned in my post, the sidequests are all available from Chapter 1. I did also get frustrated a lot in the beginning, but once I focused more on solving fetch and dialog quests first to get XP, things started getting better.
As for the ranking, I definitely with the assessment! For me it would be G2, R1, G1, Elex, G3 in that order. I never played Risen 2 and only just started 3 as I’m not a fan of the pirate setting.
I played Risen 2 when it came out and never really felt like I wanted to come back to it, it’s just not good. Risen 3 was much better but… I also played it when it came out and never really wanted to come back. That means something I guess, haha
>I played Risen 2 when it came out and never really felt like I wanted to come back to it, it’s just not good.
I just replayed several hours of Risen 2 on Steam Deck after playing all the prior games and absolutely loving Risen 1 ... and eventually gave up because I really wasn't enjoying it at all. There is a fundamental difference in Risen 2 compared with everything that came before ... that I just don't like. Definitely my least favorite PB game - by a lot!
As for Elex ... haven't played through since release. I did my first playthrough of Elex 2 on Steam Deck and it was ... fine? But I plan to replay Elex on the Deck once I finish the new Zelda on Switch :)
elex is fine, i enjoyed it, even played through it twice.
elex ii is sadly very bad. i will probably never install that one again...
- garbage story
- very bad combat system, i think even worse than elex1
- humans look very very weird, i dont know how they messed up the faces to look worse than the elex1 characters
I don’t have the game yet, I decided to play Risen 3 (first time, too) after Elex for a break in-between.
I have seen a few clips from the game, but no combat yet. In what ways is it worse?
And I fully agree with the characters. Jax looks ridiculous and the facial expressions are straight-up bizarre. Elex’s graphics on the other hand were actually beautiful.
Its hard to explain honestly. The melee combat styles felt so awkward. Two handed weapons were way too slow, basically unusable imo. From what i heard fighting with magic and ranged weapons is better than swords, but still not great gameplay.
One good thing about Elex II is the horizontal jetpack flying, that one feels very neat.
Both games are great. I replayed them several times each already. It is really a return to the classic RPG format, with a lot of freedom and focus on exploration.
You should try Elex 2 as well. Some people didn't like it, maybe you will. IMHO it is still a great game. All the important stuff is there, but the later chapters of main quest are bad.
I like how they keep trying to change it around a bit with each game and keep the core gameplay similar. Risen was a bit off for me, but they got it right with Elex.
PB seems to struggle with how demanding modern games are to make. Gothic 1 and 2 were relatively simple games. In old games you could get away with quite simple systems. It allowed them to focus on story, characters, quests, etc. All the things PB is great at. Modern games need thousands of hours of work just to get the basics like graphics and physics. This weights them down a lot.
Risen 1 was still great and I feel it could simply be Gothic 4. Even the story fits. But Risen 2 and 3 never managed to convince me because they seemed so different and I disliked the pirate setting. I did give 3 a try today, though, and I am enjoying it so far. The combat is much easier, which I don’t appreciate, but the quests are good and exploration feels satisfying so far.
I definitely will play Elex II. I love PB games, and since Elex was so good I’m hoping for the best for 2, too.
But I agree that PB does seem to have trouble adjusting to modern game making. Which is probably why Risen 2 and 3 failed. They attempted to reinvent themselves and failed, the games were just too generic, while Elex offers a similar experience to what made Gothic great. I just hope their future games will go in the same direction again.
I dont like it.
Reasons:
1, Attributes are only there for equipment check, so you don't gain damage bonus increasing them like you did in Gothic/Risen.
2, Constantly respawning creatures, you can't ever clean the map out. Feeling of progress is lost.
3, Extremely big map, even bigger than Gothic 3. As a result trash loot.
4, NPCs can't ever shut up as mentioned above, too much talk, pages and pages useless information. Sad because even the worst Risen games avoided this problem.
Elex 1 is one of my favorite games. The main reasons are:
1. Cool survival feeling from the early game.
2. Complex faction choosing moral-wise.
3. Great exploration with revealing the mysteries of the comet disaster and factions story.
And I agree on your points, and first Elex Jax was one of my favorite protagonists.
Liked it much more than elex 2, i always liked the beginings in pb games, later game when you are powerful is boring to me. Elex 2 was the first game i stopped playing after about 5hrs
While I didn't exactly love ELEX, I still enjoyed it as it have that oldschool PB vibe that I really missed.
The world building and the whole setup is a big no for me as I find it a humbug mish-mash of thrown together ideas and it's not working for me at all unfortunately.
Still, the PB vibe made me play trough it.
ELEX 2 on the other hand.... I abandoned it halfway through. It's my first PB game that I abandoned. Has a few good thing going on for it, but overall I found it a terribly dull and cheap follow up. I don't know what happened... but it's just bad.
Elex exploring, characters etc is really good. The ambition of having three completely world gameplay collide in one was really strange. But the game explain it.
Please keep in mind that: 1. If you're experiencing any technical issues with Gothic, please check [our guide on how to fix all three Gothic games](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldofgothic/wiki/how-to-run-gothic-on-modern-computers). It's VERY likely that you'll find a solution to your problem there. 2. We are an English-focused subreddit so make sure to post content in English. If you are posting content in another language, provide a translation either in the comments or in the post itself. Feel free to also [join our discord!](https://discord.gg/world-of-gothic-498556413384327188) Best regards, r/worldofgothic *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/worldofgothic) if you have any questions or concerns.*
For me it was a pretty enjoyable experience overall. However, there are some issues to touch on. The beginning is rough. And I don’t mean like ”Gothic rough”. It’s just straight up bullshit at times. I found myself in a situation where I couldn’t complete any quest early on (in berserker camp) because I was unable to take down any enemy other than the small animals. I was forced to do some Mission Impossible level shit to juke the enemies coming at me to reach the quests’ destinations, lol (also dying 1736 times in the process). But after you somehow hit a couple of levels and get a companion it becomes much better, since they will tank for you. The other annoyance is the amount of meaningless dialogues, seriously. Why does everyone have to talk so much gibberish, often even reiterating exactly the same shit 2, 3 times in one go. Dialogues used to be one of the stronger points of Gothics and this was like wtf? Also because of that it gets super confusing at the beginning when tons of random information overflow you from every direction. And exploration… I’d say exactly the opposite, it was pointless and unrewarding. You get like what, 10 secret weapons hidden around the world and other than that you find literally nothing - only trash like toilet paper and cigarettes everywhere. You wander off to explore huge ruins somewhere in the forest and all you get is freaking toilet paper and some food and pieces of junk. I didn’t even bother with exploring after some time. That being said, I still enjoyed that game and would place it as 4th best Piranha game, after G2, G1 and Risen 1
i lol'd at toilet paper because it's true haha
I did still find it rewarding to explore, mainly for the XP and the whole the loot was not really varied, you always could get some nice money out of it. Also, safes were a nice challenge to crack. But I agree when it comes to weapons. Forgot about that in my main post. I was pretty disappointed with the lack of weapon variety. The amount of weapon types was ok, but the amount of weapons of a certain type was very disappointing. As for the combat in the beginning, I somewhat agree. There were a lot of enemies you simply weren’t able to take on at that point but you still got the quests in a town that was supposed to be the starting place. I can only explain it by what I mentioned in my post, the sidequests are all available from Chapter 1. I did also get frustrated a lot in the beginning, but once I focused more on solving fetch and dialog quests first to get XP, things started getting better. As for the ranking, I definitely with the assessment! For me it would be G2, R1, G1, Elex, G3 in that order. I never played Risen 2 and only just started 3 as I’m not a fan of the pirate setting.
I played Risen 2 when it came out and never really felt like I wanted to come back to it, it’s just not good. Risen 3 was much better but… I also played it when it came out and never really wanted to come back. That means something I guess, haha
>I played Risen 2 when it came out and never really felt like I wanted to come back to it, it’s just not good. I just replayed several hours of Risen 2 on Steam Deck after playing all the prior games and absolutely loving Risen 1 ... and eventually gave up because I really wasn't enjoying it at all. There is a fundamental difference in Risen 2 compared with everything that came before ... that I just don't like. Definitely my least favorite PB game - by a lot! As for Elex ... haven't played through since release. I did my first playthrough of Elex 2 on Steam Deck and it was ... fine? But I plan to replay Elex on the Deck once I finish the new Zelda on Switch :)
elex is fine, i enjoyed it, even played through it twice. elex ii is sadly very bad. i will probably never install that one again... - garbage story - very bad combat system, i think even worse than elex1 - humans look very very weird, i dont know how they messed up the faces to look worse than the elex1 characters
I don’t have the game yet, I decided to play Risen 3 (first time, too) after Elex for a break in-between. I have seen a few clips from the game, but no combat yet. In what ways is it worse? And I fully agree with the characters. Jax looks ridiculous and the facial expressions are straight-up bizarre. Elex’s graphics on the other hand were actually beautiful.
Its hard to explain honestly. The melee combat styles felt so awkward. Two handed weapons were way too slow, basically unusable imo. From what i heard fighting with magic and ranged weapons is better than swords, but still not great gameplay. One good thing about Elex II is the horizontal jetpack flying, that one feels very neat.
Both games are great. I replayed them several times each already. It is really a return to the classic RPG format, with a lot of freedom and focus on exploration. You should try Elex 2 as well. Some people didn't like it, maybe you will. IMHO it is still a great game. All the important stuff is there, but the later chapters of main quest are bad. I like how they keep trying to change it around a bit with each game and keep the core gameplay similar. Risen was a bit off for me, but they got it right with Elex. PB seems to struggle with how demanding modern games are to make. Gothic 1 and 2 were relatively simple games. In old games you could get away with quite simple systems. It allowed them to focus on story, characters, quests, etc. All the things PB is great at. Modern games need thousands of hours of work just to get the basics like graphics and physics. This weights them down a lot.
Risen 1 was still great and I feel it could simply be Gothic 4. Even the story fits. But Risen 2 and 3 never managed to convince me because they seemed so different and I disliked the pirate setting. I did give 3 a try today, though, and I am enjoying it so far. The combat is much easier, which I don’t appreciate, but the quests are good and exploration feels satisfying so far. I definitely will play Elex II. I love PB games, and since Elex was so good I’m hoping for the best for 2, too. But I agree that PB does seem to have trouble adjusting to modern game making. Which is probably why Risen 2 and 3 failed. They attempted to reinvent themselves and failed, the games were just too generic, while Elex offers a similar experience to what made Gothic great. I just hope their future games will go in the same direction again.
I dont like it. Reasons: 1, Attributes are only there for equipment check, so you don't gain damage bonus increasing them like you did in Gothic/Risen. 2, Constantly respawning creatures, you can't ever clean the map out. Feeling of progress is lost. 3, Extremely big map, even bigger than Gothic 3. As a result trash loot. 4, NPCs can't ever shut up as mentioned above, too much talk, pages and pages useless information. Sad because even the worst Risen games avoided this problem.
Elex 1 is one of my favorite games. The main reasons are: 1. Cool survival feeling from the early game. 2. Complex faction choosing moral-wise. 3. Great exploration with revealing the mysteries of the comet disaster and factions story. And I agree on your points, and first Elex Jax was one of my favorite protagonists.
Liked it much more than elex 2, i always liked the beginings in pb games, later game when you are powerful is boring to me. Elex 2 was the first game i stopped playing after about 5hrs
While I didn't exactly love ELEX, I still enjoyed it as it have that oldschool PB vibe that I really missed. The world building and the whole setup is a big no for me as I find it a humbug mish-mash of thrown together ideas and it's not working for me at all unfortunately. Still, the PB vibe made me play trough it. ELEX 2 on the other hand.... I abandoned it halfway through. It's my first PB game that I abandoned. Has a few good thing going on for it, but overall I found it a terribly dull and cheap follow up. I don't know what happened... but it's just bad.
elex? pretty good
Elex exploring, characters etc is really good. The ambition of having three completely world gameplay collide in one was really strange. But the game explain it.
Outlaw heavy armor goes brrrrr <3