There’s a variety of weapons and playstyles in the game, from guns to bows to melee weapons. It’s not helped by the fact the game drags its feet on you. Unlike other open world games that are good about having something that you’d want to work your way towards, Elex II just gives you a dull forest while your milquetoast soldier man says he should get somewhere, but never really says what. Unfortunately the world of Elex II just isn’t fun to explore- screen-by-screen the game is just dull to look at. The game tries to go for a mix of sci fi and fantasy- with factions like the Berserkers looking like regular nord-punk people and things like Mana being a thing in the game. So a huge feature in Elex II is its open world, with various factions to try and appease. It just takes you out of what’s mechanically the best system in the game by a country mile, which is a shame since the game’s NPCs are actually really good about acknowledging your agency as a player. Characters just don’t talk like people, often feeling like the voice actors suddenly got direction mid-line. On the flipside, though, the game’s writing is pretty abysmal. These are really great for roleplay reasons, since they’re totally acknowledging your agency This acknowledgement works in friendly dialogue too- I’d started a questline before the main story required it of me, and you can just tell the big questgiver “yeah, I’m already hanging out with Wulf”. But just the acknowledgement that I *could* have snuck in, had a guard not seen me is a nice reminder that this is, in fact, a game and respecting player agency always feels good even if you don’t get your desired outcome. I don’t mind that the game forced me to listen to Gardar be a dick to me- fair game, that’s what you want. Unfortunately, as soon as a guard saw me they acknowledged that I’d snuck into the fort and threw me out. Rather than hit me with an invisible barrier, the game to its credit totally let me in. I was meant to do some busy work to get approval to be let into the Berserker Capital, and I tried to skip the quest by using the new Jetpack feature to vault the wall. Follow I really like about the quests is that even if it doesn’t always allow you to use various solutions, the game does make the effort to acknowledge your choices.
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