Welcome to my review of Elex II which is an open-world RPG shooter from Piranha Bytes (Gothic, Risen) and publishers THQ Nordic (Darksiders, Biomutant). Elex II is the sequel to Elex which was also brought to us by the same devs and publishers. This game is available now on the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Series X|S, and PC.
Elex II… Loud Clunky Combat Sim!
For the purpose of this review, I played Elex II on the PlayStation 5. Check out my previous review where I played Elden Ring.
The Game
In Elex II we play as Jax, who conquered the Hybrid in the first game. A new threat has arrived and came from the sky. This new threat has unleashed new and dangerous powers of dark Elex which is endangering all life on the planet.
Jax has to go on a mission to convince all of the factions on their planet, Magalan to protect against the invasion before it’s too late.
Magalan is a fairly big open world that we must travel, completing quests and leveling up as we go. Whilst exploring you can collect items which will help you on your travels.
The game has plenty of quests to keep you playing for a long time if you can handle the clunky combat, and NPCs that have the personality of a dead tree.
You can choose from five factions to take sides with, each having its own character designs, weapons, and more. There are plenty of melee weapons to be had, but the fun comes when you start to get proper weapons, the big boy’s toys, guns. Again, there are tons of those to collect and use during your time in Elex II.
Unfortunately, I just felt like this game got boring rather quickly, this is a real shame because I enjoyed the first.
Look & Sound
The graphics are an odd one. In places, it looks quite nice, but in other areas, it doesn’t really try anything challenging or remotely good-looking. I also noticed there were no performance/quality options, which is a shame as I seemed to be having frame rate issues on the PS5. The game wasn’t locked to 30fps, nor was it a solid 60fps.
The audio. I can’t even think of where to start. The audio is very loud, so should you play this game, please be aware of this. I had my headphones at normal volume and before you know it I was teleported right into the middle of a torture chamber where they were trying to blow my eardrums open. I genuinely just threw my headphones off until I could turn the in-game volume down.
It doesn’t end there though, the actual quality of the sound effects and voiceovers isn’t fantastic. It sounds like I am just being negative against this game, but this isn’t the way I like to post comments about reviews unless I have to.
Length & Replayability
Due to this being an open-world RPG game, it will genuinely last you a long time. The first Elex took 80+ hours to complete, and Elex II looks huge so this will last you a great amount of time for the price.
The game has 51 trophies for players to unlock on the PlayStation, of course on other platforms we also have achievements to unlock.
Conclusions
I don’t usually like posting negative comments in my reviews as I mentioned above, but unfortunately, Elex II just didn’t feel right at all. The combat felt really clunky, the audio is obscenely loud to the point I had to turn the volume down a lot to be able to play the game comfortably without my ears bleeding. The graphics are good but could be better, as could the framerate on the PS5.
I was really excited to play Elex II, but unfortunately, it just didn’t deliver for me. I score Elex II a 3/10. Hopefully, after a few patches, it may improve on the framerate. If you wish to check out more about this series, you can visit the official Elex site.
A code was kindly provided for us to review this.