Elex Game Review

I started my time with the sci-fi action RPG Elex a little later than most. I had seen information surrounding its release and I was intrigued by the look of the game. I did, however, find a lot of negative press surrounding the game upon its release with some mediocre and bad scores from some reviewers. I decided to hold off getting it and waited for some patches to be released. I find nowadays with the size and ambition of large open world RPGs there is never a perfect game release, just look at Skyrim for example, it took months to fix all the bugged quests and crashing yet it is still a fantastic game. I have now had a chance to play Elex and I can now share with you my feelings and experience on this game. Better late than never so they say. If you were to ask me what Elex looked and played like I’d say that my first impressions were that the environment had a similar art style and colours to that of the popular game Fortnite.

This is only represented in the forest region where you first start your adventure. I also had a flashback to playing the 2013 game from Trion worlds called “Defiance” which also had a similar feel to its open world. There was also a Mass Effect vibe in places too which isn’t a bad thing.

The graphics within Elex are not the best I have ever seen and in some areas are a bit basic but there’s still enough detail to the environments to be easy on the eye. The game runs at a pretty steady 60fps on PS4 Pro most of the time with me only experiencing frame rate drop a couple of times so far. The scavenging and survival mechanics reminded me of games such as Fallout and Skyrim.

You can loot junk, pick locked chests, hack electronic locks, cook meat for sustenance and even pick herbs and mushrooms to make potions or just eat raw for a minor pick me up. Upgrading weapons and other items can also be done with the right skills and ingredients. The combat feels relatively smooth, it reminded me of the Elder Scrolls Online combat from the 3rd person perspective. It didn’t feel as free-flowing as I would have liked, but it was not flawed enough to stop me enjoying it. Elex has a stamina management system similar to that of Dark Souls, correctly managing it when you attack, dodge and defend is the difference between winning or losing in a fight.

You can mix up the combat with a mix of weapons and powers. You get a good selection of weapons to choose from, some require certain skill levels to use which requires you to level up but they range from swords, axes, bows, energy weapons and shotguns to name a few. You can even make use of magic to make the combat more varied. There are also different armour options which also vary depending on which faction you choose. I found the voice acting and story to be good, I had previously seen negativity surrounding this, I’m not sure why as the voice acting was pretty good and as long as you can get past the static facial movements of the NPCs in conversations then interactions are enjoyable and sometimes funny.

I did find the voice for the main character Jax a little emotionless and gravelly in his tone although that does work with the fact he is an Alb and that is one of their main characteristics. So if you were to ask me if you should get the game, I’d say that if you are looking for a post-apocalyptic sci-fi action RPG with an open world, one with a good challenge then I’d say get it. The fact that it has been on sale now a few times means you can pick it up for a bargain price and its one for the collection. It’s not one of the best games out there but in my book, its far from bad and I’m enjoying it.

I’d like to give a shout out to Lina at THQ Nordic, thank you.

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