Over the past twenty years, developer Piranha Bytes has been responsible for three major IPs: Gothic, Risen, and Elex. Gothic went on to develop a cult following, while Risen and Elex have maintained their own fandoms. Piranha Bytes’ games are arguably an acquired taste, as they embrace and truly define the “Eurojank” subgenre. While many give Eurojank negative connotations, it’s simply not true—these games are often described as super ambitious and only lack the extra polish and budget of big AAA titles.
There is no lacking in creativity, though, and that’s what Piranha Bytes’ sequel, Elex 2, proves beyond a doubt. Elex 2 takes the events of the first game, lays out the results for players, and sends them on a new epic quest in the world of Magalan. Game ZXC recently previewed the first chapter of the game, and indeed, it sets up an epic quest defined by creativity.
Six years after the events of the first game, Commander Jax (the PC) has gone from war hero to neglected doomsayer. The factions of Elex 2 do not care about the threat from the sky and instead engage in petty land grabs and small-scale skirmishes. The game begins when this threat Jax has been warning the world of arrives, and still very few seem to look beyond their petty squabbles.
For the first chapter, Elex 2's story basically lays out everything players need to do to prepare for the Skyand invasion—the aliens the Hybrid warned of in the first game—and has players go out into Magalan, prepared or otherwise. Equipped with a trusty lead pipe, we managed to build a new operating base for our emerging faction (The 6th Power), meet old allies and enemies, make new ones, and visit each of the factions in Magalan.
Indeed, the power dynamic has changed incredibly from the first game. The Albs are still powerful, but they are not antagonistic. They are also embracing new ways of life after Jax defeated the Hybrid. The Clerics, on the other hand, are a shell of what they once were—paying the biggest price as a result of the past war. The Berserkers have taken over Outlaw land and are terraforming it with their magic, while the Outlaws find themselves bunkered down in a new city in a crater. Elex 2 also introduces a new faction, the Morkons, a tribe of underground dwellers with strict rules, harsh ways, and who worship a "God of Destruction."
Suffice it to say, engaging with the politics of each faction, learning more about the new enemy Skyands, seeing the changed world of Magalan, meeting the companions, and all Elex 2 has to offer was an absolute blast. Piranha Bytes set out to make Magalan a more “living world” instead of upping the size of the open-world format, and it absolutely works.
Elex 2 shines in its presentation of the world, the invasion, and the potential consequences, and it does so with a new focus on “Destruction,” or the player’s destructive tendencies. In the first game, it was a split between the cold logic of the Albs or the emotions of the Free People for Jax, but now it seems to focus on how hateful, heartless, destructive, and murderous players are feeling.
Aside from that, it has an array of standard RPG features—attributes, skills, companions, and more. Attributes are based on strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, and cunning that determine weapon usage, conversation choices, and so on. Skills require players to invest earned skill points, money, and other requirements to level up, all through the conduit of a Trainer (who is luckily marked on the Elex 2 map).
Companions are able to join players in their adventures but have their own quests and stories players must assist as well. Caja and Crony return, but there are other new companions too. Most interestingly, there’s Jax's son Dex who obviously cannot fight but accompanies Jax a couple of times in the first chapter and develops a new dynamic for Jax and Caja.
The gameplay and quests are pretty standard fare in format—it’s an open-world game with no limits. Players can go just about anywhere they want, especially with the help of their jetpack, but they’ll need to be wary about stumbling into a powerful enemy. Some quests require players to fetch items, escort characters, or kill X number of enemies, but for every basic quest, there’s a unique one. In the first chapter alone, we were invited to a Billy Idol concert, had to solve an in-depth and surprising murder mystery (which we were accused of perpetrating), became a double-agent, and so on. Overall, it was a wild ride that brought out the best of open-world games.
Of course, there’s the general lack of polish fans can expect from the genre in Elex 2. Some of the combat and movement animations are a bit awkward, set pieces and open-world items like mountains have a general lack of definition, but overall, it’s all very nit-picky things. Elex 2 very much feels like a triple-A title through the scope of an older computer game. Sure, the game also features a handful of bugs and it crashed on us twice, but it is nothing comparable to a Bethesda game. These technical issues occurred far less compared to Skyrim’s bugs, and that’s what stands out.
Elex 2 is an open-world structure best compared to the post-apocalyptic nature of Fallout, the open-world elements and environments of Skyrim, and maybe even with a dash of the Sci-Fi elements shown off for Starfield so far, but it is not as polished. Still, it manages to be less buggy in comparison even for a “Eurojank” title. Indeed, the worst part of playing through Elex 2’s first chapter is watching it come to an end, and knowing that March is still a few months away.
ELEX 2 releases for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on March 1st, 2022.
