I really appreciate the care you put into every of your videos. The mix of different kinds of humor, the way you approach those games, strip them down to the core, while observing, analyzing them like your favorite goth chick in the 90s. And especially those videos/video portions where you talk about your personal life or deep dive into a topic really makes the content you put out a unique experience. In my case it even was life changing, because the perspectives you gave on some topics made me reconsider the way how I approached some things and life in general. Overall I have to say it really made me a better man. So, thank you for the passion and care you put into your videos and thank you for making a significant change happen in some random German dudes life.
@@StratEdgyProductions you deserve it man, I have enjoyed your videos for a long time. You crack us up while giving us deeper insight into these games. Love your work, and you are damned good at it!
I played ELEX for 30-something hours, felt I have seen/done anything and stopped mid-way through it because I couldn't care less about the plot. The game does provide a sense of wonder and danger throughout exploration. Seeing those giant spiders for the first time was terrifying.
About the economy in games,I think there is a solution for the "respawn economy" problem. It can be simply solved by making time itself a currency, making so that you can't just wait around indefinetly. Kenshi does this pretty well, it has the same mechanic of getting more and more profit based on the growth of your skills, but at the same time you can't just fast foward everything in the game and just wait for everything to respawn, time passing means that you are getting hungry (and food is very expensive on that game), or you are more time exposed somewhere dangerous with the risk of getting attack by something that will either eat you or enslave you, overall unless you are way more estabilished in the game you can't just wait around until inventory restocks, it forces you to be way more active. This is also improved by the fact that each city has price mark ups for each item, meaning your profit will vary from place to place, while also allowing you make a living from simply trading stuff.
You could also just have an actual economy, instead of just NPCs who walk around doing nothing It would be hard But it would be cool You have peasants who grow and gather herbs for alchemists The alchemist can pay you to gather herbs as well Potion sellers won’t get more potions until the herbs are gathered and the potions are mixed.
@@photosyntheticzee9915 this is very cool too, but sadly takes lot of work and requires a lot of balance. However there are some games that actually use this system, like X4 and the rest of the X series. There everything is simulated, ships need materials to be built on wharfs, stations need consumer goods for the crew and every good must be produced and carried around, which means it is an very dynamic system, that can be affected by many external factors.
@@olivierrodriguesneto5995 Now I just want to imagine a scenario in which the player carelessly slaughters a bunch of rats to farm their drops and causes the rats to go extinct, which causes predators for the rats to starve but prey for the rats (including plantlife) to thrive and somehow as a result nukes the entire economy of a local fishing town and they're all desolate hobos now.
Here's the problem with that: for most of us, time is already a valuable resource, one that we don't just frivolously waste on games with high ceilings. That's why games like Kenshi never reach widespread appeal: they stay relegated to niche communities of sardonic TH-cam personalities and their parasocial electron clouds.
The reason you were struggling with melee is because you probably weren't using the flurry/power attack that you get at tge end of a combo. The best way to get into the combat at the hardest difficulty is to watch the enemies stamina bar(they can't attack when it's empty), when the enemy whiffs an attack and has low stamina, go in for a full combo. The reason the power attacks are so important is because Elxe's armor is additive/directly subtracted from damage, it's not multiplicative, which means that if an enemy has 5 armor and you do 4 damage, you'll only do 4 damage, while if you do 10 damage, you'll do 5 damage. I believe there's like a minimum of 1ish damage per hit but mostly melee is all about overcoming an enemies armor/DT so you can deal decent damage per hit, which makes the power attacks/combos incredibly important. I played this game after finding out about if through this video and I really enjoyed melee :on the hardest difficulty :) It took me some time to learn, but by the time I got ranged attacks they totally invalidated the combat; I think I'll do a replay some day with melee only. Anyways, I hope that helped, and thanks for introducing me to Gothic/Elex/Piranha Bytes
I want to say that I appreciate the effort you put in analyzing games. particularly ones that are hard to recommend like this one. While I knew I will never play the game you just showed I am grateful for the time and work you put into showing it. I'm especially grateful for those videos that touch on real life subjects and have nothing to do with games. Nice Work!
@@peddazz2365 Gothic 3 is actually pretty decent it's a solid 7.5 the game has massive potential... Gothic in this day an age if it ever releases has to be open world like gothic 3 but needs a bunch of major changes to be successful but it's already VASTLY unique to any open world game out there.
I feel like you would appreciate the economy in MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries. When you first start out, the galaxy is your oyster. You can damage mechs and weapons and as long as you have the money, you can replace them for comparable parts or repairs in the markets. However, later in the game, you have to actively start picking your shots so that you don't accidentally core an enemy mech, lest you lose the salvageable parts, cause you've bought all of those parts on the market...I literally ran the galaxy dry of PPC's in one run, mostly because I suck at the combat and wanted to master every Solaris competitive circuit cause I'm a greedy bastard
I am now playing this game, the normal way I normally played open RPG. Once I hit level 10 and joined a faction, the game actually become harder and slower than before, because you won't gain level fast anymore, you can't use the cool weapons that require high stats, and the majority enemies still overpower you easily
Elex 2's story is probably 10x more convoluted. It gets hilariously weird - like really, REALLY weird. Like WTF weird. I loved it. And I'm absolutely going to play Elex 3 if it ever gets made.
Sadly, the devs got shut down by their publisher Embracer. However, every single game of theirs since Risen first started out as a wiki-like database for every dev to access the entire lore, world building, characterizations, etc. Elex III was listed as WIKI6 in the German Ministry of Economie's list of public funding. I hope the Wiki leaks, so modders can mod it into Elex II.
I've not watched the full video and normally I'd wait but this is also 2 hours long and I'll probably forget by the end. The thing about stat requirement bloat and attribute scaling is kind of intentional as far as I can tell. The Albs are supposed to be much stronger than the average person because they consume elex, and if you as a player begin to consume elex potions, they grant you attribute points and learning points, enabling you to become stronger than your level would otherwise allow. The game basically says "Average humans reach their peak around here but Albs consuming Elex are much stronger." I always imagined it to be a gameplay representation of the difference in power. Also, consuming elex drains your emotions and if you're too "cold" at the end of the game, the final boss will make a logical statement that you're incapable of disagreeing with because you lack emotional fortitude and you'll be locked into a single ending. I won't call it a bad ending cause his logic is kinda right.
hey strat, robot chicken batman here, I'm always excited to see every new video you come ouut with, regardless of the time that has passed between uploads. I love your content man!
While I've never even heard of this one it was still an entertaining video. Good job again man. As for video length- longer ones like this are definitely preferable. TH-cam is FULL of shorthand reviews. They're a dime a dozen, and literally the only ones that are worth a damn or stand out are skit-heavy ones. Long reviews aren't as common, and even then a lot of them aren't quite as in-depth like this as they should be. Plus your comedy works a lot better when you can unload it on people for an hour straight. It's crude, and we REALLY don't get enough of that these days. Question since I haven't really heard you mention anything about it- do you plan to get back to Fallout and the Skyrim DLC/factions you mentioned wanting to get to a while back? Been waiting for you to finish those franchises off for a while now.
Right now, I'm just trying to survive. Inflation hit me hard and I am barely keeping my head above water so I have to do trending games for a while to get back what I lost doing this video, lol.
Gothic 3 at least allowed you to loot all weapons (even though you couldn't equip any) and since weapons were cheap and armour so expensive it didn't break econonmy.
Regarding the attributes description, In Gothic, especially Gothic 2 there was some relation between the attributes and the damage if I remember correctly. maybe they intended to use the same engine but changed their mind in the end
I've never found the potion thing suuuuuuper unimmersive honestly because medieval-based societies don't/shouldn't have the idea that anyone can be a valid seller of anything and most townspeople are probably going to look sideways at the wandering outsider who kills monsters for a living selling unlabeled potions. Alchemists especially wouldn't be inclined to actively pay someone to essentially do THEIR craft for them, well, most likely anyways.
Guilds! A lot of medieval towns had guild run monopolies on certain goods and you needed a license from them to operate in the area. If some dickweed came in town to sell his concoctions to people, the alchemists guild would certainly fuck 'em up for disturbing their business. It's usually selling that breaks game economies and they're often just way too easy to metagame. I'd honestly appreciate if devs put even an inchling of thought into their economics. Not being able to sell is preferable to whatever the fuck is happening in most rpg games.
I don't normally listen to the whole "Show your friends and what not" bits at the beginning of videos, but ya know what, I watched this whole thing with my little gray kitty named baby, And she loved it C: Thanks for making my kitty purr for like two hours :3 Shes my best friend and I love watchin stuff with my cat :) Also It was really nice actually SEEING you do the Nick voice, for some reason that made it funnier to me ;)
absolutely adore these long form vids from this channel, rewatch on the reg while working on projects or housework or gaming New Vegas for the 300th time.
It was a pretty decent game imo. It never came close to g1 and 2 though, but those are games I grew up on and fell in truly in love with. Few games get close to those two for me, they will probably always be my favorites.
I love Elex and am really enjoying Elex 2. I disagree about avoiding melee in the first one. My first play through was a primarily melee build (still used bows) and once you have some higher stamina and can master the rhythmic attack system it is pretty damn effective. Also was fun.
I played this game because it seemed cool. Managed to find my way to the technology christians, and they gave me a quest to go snuff out a traitor. I'm thinking "okay a human is gonna be harder to fight against but I got this". No, I did not got this. It took me like 2 hours of just side stepping and tickling his butthole with my feather of a weapon until he died, and that was if the game didn't crash for some random reason.
0:33:0 is not completely valid because each consecutive attack deals almost double damage of the last one. If you play on easy where attacks don't drain stamina, you can attack air for 20+ hits before an enemy and then 1 shot it when it charges you. 1:15:0 cannibal
My favorite thing about this game is that one part of the map where lava is flowing into water. It's just...spectacular. Beautiful. I stood there just watching it for quite some time. I've barely engaged in the actual gameplay at all, but I got my money's worth from that experience of just farting around in the open world and finding something amazing.
I love your retrospectives, Strat; you're absolutely hilarious. Your monologues are always super on point, and I love that you cover RPGs and Immersive Sims that the other big channels don't necessarily cover.
Would be cool to see an in-depth comparison between Elex 1 & 2 from you. What got better/worse/different. You're pretty good at this stuff. Maybe even almost great.
also in Titan Quest the drop chance for those items the enemy is holding is at best around 0,25% and worst 0,0100% Its really fucked up how the devs made the drop rates..
@@elitereptilian200 I played the game for a really long time and sometimes you find a lot of uniques. Sometimes like none. It's a weird system. Some characters feel more lucky than others even though I found no proof of that. Overall you can make it work if you know where to farm and you don't mind the process.
@@PandemoniumGameDev you really can't make it work, not really, even if you know where to farm and don't mind the process.. the drop chances are so ridiculouss that there are people who have put thousands of hours in to the game and not have seen certain items drop once..
@@elitereptilian200 in that sense yes, I agree, it doesn't work. The low drop rate makes the unique items more special for me though, but I am biased because I really like the game.
@@PandemoniumGameDev oh I like the game, but the stonebinder's cuffs took over 5 hours and if they wouldn't have dropped with attack speed I would have broken something.. and my conqueror kills all three gorgon gueens in less than 10 seconds so I killed them quite many a time during that over 5 hours.. and the same awaits me at legendary difficulty when I get there..
One point to note here is that Titan Quest actually drops all of the monsters equipment to the ground, but most of those are poor quality item, below normal (white) quality, and are usually just filtered out (maybe even by default).
After you asked for Patreon support at the beginning I was like "yeah, whatever", but after watching the whole video and realizing you actually had to force yourself to play this stinking pile of crap for two months just to be able to put together this lousy review I just want to say - I salute you, you deserve it, you deserve every single penny.
Some say Bethesda never changes, and it's true. But Piranha Bytes... they REALLY never change even more. Their games have potential. But that's it. Every new game they make has potential, and they never go past this barrier to actually make them good.
Im very happy about this video. I played the Elex last Year & its so hard to talk about this game. You summarized it so well in the opening it is both more & less than Gothic with guns. it has the charms & flaws of other Piranahbyte's games plus unique problems like the stats not working. But i did enjoy it, i just wish the betrayal of Jak wasnt so much of the plot & it got polished enough to say have stats do what they're descriptions claim.
Repeating earlier designed choices is about saving money - nothing more, nothing less. Even if you go with all new tech and hire more people - cutting out a lot of design and testing and blah blah saves money, and if you do it all over the place, its millions of dollars saved.
Played this game a couple years ago and enjoyed it. I had no expectations and by the end thought, hey it's about as good as Fallout 4 and made with a way smaller budget.
totally agree with you at 54:30 I love the feeling of playing a fallout or an elder scrolls game and whatever I see on that guy, he has it, whether I kill him and strip him, or steal it from him or whatever, and the tough choice of a friendly npc that did nothing wrong to you but hes got a unique weapon or armor or gear and I feel tempted to wrong him for his items, and in fallout 76 when they removed that in favor of random garbage on bodies it was a sad day
Couldn't play the game past the 30-40% mark, after watching the video I'm thankful I didn't continue. Love the video though, you can tell you've been working on it for a long time!
I remember buying this game at launch. Ended up rage quitting... This shit makes Elden Ring combat seem as easy as the Assassin's Creed combat. It was just so clunky that I couldn't get into it... Edit: I wrote that not 1 minute into the video. Glad to see you are on the same page. Your jokes and perseverance make my memories of this game not hurt quite as much anymore. Thank you for suffering for us, good sir! Love your content!
Really big thanks for your content, man! You have a style which is both distinctive and addictive. I joined the channel from your Elder Scrolls videos and I keep coming back for more. I have never felt disappointed. All the best and thank you for the work you put in!
So let’s get this straight. Combat is crappy or at least very clunky, with bad hit boxes, to the point where Melee is unviable. Stat points don’t do what the game says they do. And at the end of the day the story is convoluted and stupid, and repeats things for 40 hours that you already knew from the first 2. Really solid recommendation lol. It’s a harrrrrd pass for me after watching this. Great vid as always!
"If this place is so bad, why don't you move?" I heard this from americans all the time. They really don't get how can you possibly not have the possibility of moving, cause shit is so expensive you probably endup homeless. That's why Elex is the greatest third world simulator.
I think you might have missed the joke, but also, I am American the only Americans who say this unironically are the asshole kind who also say it to other Americans. I mean, even people who can easily afford to move dont want to - its very stressful - so its even dumber to say that you might first think.
Thank you for the video, I feel really happy when I see a new one in my subbox. I've played Elex beforehand on the recommendation of a friend and indeed, it has a lot of problems. I remember how I got through the early game was just stealing everything and selling it to make elex drinks. I absolutely hated, that I found a cool weapon upgrade and wasn't able to use it for another X hours. It sat in my inventory whilst I was getting gangbanged by enemies. When it came to the main story, I just stopped caring when I met those Separatists at the converter. I just skipped those flashbacks, ran through the dialogue and that ended up me having to kill them all. I also accidentally skipped the end cards and then I just... didn't care enough to reload and went along with my day. I really wish it was more refined, cause I do like the magic meets sci-fi meets post apocalypse thing it has going for it.
The problem with piranha bites is that they wait too long actually communicate to the player what it is they want them to do. Like this game doesn't want you to use melee, but for a good stretch of time that's all you have access to, and a huge chunk of the tutorial is dedicated to teaching you melee combat. You know what would teach players 'use a ranged weapon'? Probably giving them a ranged weapon.
I've never had such a love-like relationship with a game before. Maybe Skyrim comes close, in a way, but all the mods save it. Elex has plenty of potential, but the strange game design choices like the lying attributes information, the enigmatic combat system (damage type, combat abilites, resistances...) and just the overall fact of the game visibly being barely finished - all leave a really bad taste after the legendary Gothic series, and even after Risen. And I love Your delivery. Fine comedy talent right here.
i actually joined the outlaws cause i like their armor style and general raider/cowboy aesthetic. also they seem to be the only faction that doesnt have a clear dogma and i dont do cults. the Berserkers are a hippie commune all anti-tech and pro-nature and shit, the Clerics are religious fundamentalists which is just stupid cause its based on sweet FA like Mormons AND they favor laser tech and sharp angular black/red armor which reads as edgy and lame , and finally we have the Alb defector faction which i'll admit has its merits! they seem to understand that Elix is a weapon with a serious drawback that you have to keep in check, its a trade-off and not a way of life so ideology wise i tend to like them BUT... they are REALLY stupid for being so obvious and out in the open so its like a bunch of autists minus the rain-man shit!
Berserkers are the only faction, that actually does something to make their world a better place. Pretty much all of the forests and greenery you see in the game is their job. Otherwise everything would be a wasteland
@@TheKarabanera i'd argue that most of the factions think they are making a better world outside of the Outlaws but yea, the Berserkers are the only faction growing trees and shit.
@@Felix.Fictus Albs just eat Elex and kill everyone else, Clerics are praising a failed rocked as a god and do nothing, Outlaws do drugs and do nothing. I mean, it's even canon. Fro mthe first to the second - Berserkers grew as a faction and turned a desert into a grassland and forest. Outlaws died off and their old boss now has a new town, Clerics almost completely died off, because they are useless, don't know much about the albs.
hey now, don't dis Titans Quest, one of the games selling points is that enemies actually drop their weapons. Including enchanted or rare ones they were using against you before they died. Great video though, very entertaining to watch, even if it makes me want to avoid Elex like the plague.
80% off on Gog this week. Also, if you stayed the entire time, your pizza bites are in the mail. Thanks!
af.gog.com/redeem/ElexStrategy?as=1659526585
You look different without the labcoat.
I can't wait for my bites
commented
wait until you see elex 2 >:3 MWAHAHAHAHAHR
How much did the devs pay you to suffer through this shit.
"The game acts like there's STAKES, but there isn't." he says, while talking to Sestak. What was "Sestak" rearrange into? Stakes.
Holy... fucking... shit...
did someone say... steak(s)
certified schizoid moment
Are you the type of person to make words outta other words? I'm the type of guy that tryst to make numbers add up to 21.
@schnarfschnarf5886 as a casino dealer, id say work on a time vs win vs loss ratio and examine when you have diminishing returns 😂
I saw Seths Elex review and thought everyone is going to forget this game really fast, but Strat-Edgy is not everyone.
Strat-edgy is a dumbass who only covers games when they have completely lost their relevance.
Hey hey people
He is better then most people:
@@StratEdgyProductions Ah, the Nerrel method: "Too Late, Who Gives A Shit?"
It works, dontcha know.
Depends if you are a long-time PB/Gothic fan or not really. I can imagine most people probably did forget about the game pretty quickly.
I really appreciate the care you put into every of your videos.
The mix of different kinds of humor, the way you approach those games, strip them down to the core, while observing, analyzing them like your favorite goth chick in the 90s.
And especially those videos/video portions where you talk about your personal life or deep dive into a topic really makes the content you put out a unique experience.
In my case it even was life changing, because the perspectives you gave on some topics made me reconsider the way how I approached some things and life in general. Overall I have to say it really made me a better man.
So, thank you for the passion and care you put into your videos and thank you for making a significant change happen in some random German dudes life.
Damn, that's the happiest a comment has made me in a long time. Thanks for that.
@@StratEdgyProductions you deserve it man, I have enjoyed your videos for a long time. You crack us up while giving us deeper insight into these games.
Love your work, and you are damned good at it!
Make it two random German dudes. :D
"God was like ew, gay, get off me.." I had to pause to properly appreciate and laugh at this joke. So far this video is worth the wait.
I played ELEX for 30-something hours, felt I have seen/done anything and stopped mid-way through it because I couldn't care less about the plot. The game does provide a sense of wonder and danger throughout exploration. Seeing those giant spiders for the first time was terrifying.
About the economy in games,I think there is a solution for the "respawn economy" problem. It can be simply solved by making time itself a currency, making so that you can't just wait around indefinetly. Kenshi does this pretty well, it has the same mechanic of getting more and more profit based on the growth of your skills, but at the same time you can't just fast foward everything in the game and just wait for everything to respawn, time passing means that you are getting hungry (and food is very expensive on that game), or you are more time exposed somewhere dangerous with the risk of getting attack by something that will either eat you or enslave you, overall unless you are way more estabilished in the game you can't just wait around until inventory restocks, it forces you to be way more active. This is also improved by the fact that each city has price mark ups for each item, meaning your profit will vary from place to place, while also allowing you make a living from simply trading stuff.
You could also just have an actual economy, instead of just NPCs who walk around doing nothing
It would be hard
But it would be cool
You have peasants who grow and gather herbs for alchemists
The alchemist can pay you to gather herbs as well
Potion sellers won’t get more potions until the herbs are gathered and the potions are mixed.
@@photosyntheticzee9915 this is very cool too, but sadly takes lot of work and requires a lot of balance. However there are some games that actually use this system, like X4 and the rest of the X series. There everything is simulated, ships need materials to be built on wharfs, stations need consumer goods for the crew and every good must be produced and carried around, which means it is an very dynamic system, that can be affected by many external factors.
@@olivierrodriguesneto5995 Now I just want to imagine a scenario in which the player carelessly slaughters a bunch of rats to farm their drops and causes the rats to go extinct, which causes predators for the rats to starve but prey for the rats (including plantlife) to thrive and somehow as a result nukes the entire economy of a local fishing town and they're all desolate hobos now.
Here's the problem with that: for most of us, time is already a valuable resource, one that we don't just frivolously waste on games with high ceilings. That's why games like Kenshi never reach widespread appeal: they stay relegated to niche communities of sardonic TH-cam personalities and their parasocial electron clouds.
This makes me want to play bannerlord
One of the few channels in which I’ll watch a full 2 hour review for a game I’ve never played.
I was bitten by Piranha as a child and I am now Piranha-Man. I play everything this 40 german dudes release. This is the most indie studio I know.
Same here lol , we are special breed. I need that jank in my life
nothing grinds my gears like thinking about how the economy works in a game. very entertaining video as usual 👍
Strat your how to videos are some of my favorite on TH-cam. I can't count how many times I have watched the KOTOR and Fallout ones. Thank you
No, thank you. I appreciate it :)
The reason you were struggling with melee is because you probably weren't using the flurry/power attack that you get at tge end of a combo. The best way to get into the combat at the hardest difficulty is to watch the enemies stamina bar(they can't attack when it's empty), when the enemy whiffs an attack and has low stamina, go in for a full combo.
The reason the power attacks are so important is because Elxe's armor is additive/directly subtracted from damage, it's not multiplicative, which means that if an enemy has 5 armor and you do 4 damage, you'll only do 4 damage, while if you do 10 damage, you'll do 5 damage. I believe there's like a minimum of 1ish damage per hit but mostly melee is all about overcoming an enemies armor/DT so you can deal decent damage per hit, which makes the power attacks/combos incredibly important.
I played this game after finding out about if through this video and I really enjoyed melee :on the hardest difficulty :) It took me some time to learn, but by the time I got ranged attacks they totally invalidated the combat; I think I'll do a replay some day with melee only.
Anyways, I hope that helped, and thanks for introducing me to Gothic/Elex/Piranha Bytes
There are two kinds of games in Germany; Gothic, Job Simulator . Also a 3rd one if you live in the 90s.
I want to say that I appreciate the effort you put in analyzing games. particularly ones that are hard to recommend like this one. While I knew I will never play the game you just showed I am grateful for the time and work you put into showing it. I'm especially grateful for those videos that touch on real life subjects and have nothing to do with games. Nice Work!
Elex was tricky until I realized how OP the projectile weapons could be. Still a decent Gothic-like game.
no, it is not. the last decent gothic like game was gothic 3
@@peddazz2365 Wrong. Gothic 3 wasn't just decent, it was and still is the greatest game ever made.
@@winterburden no, it was barly decent
@@peddazz2365 Gothic 3 is actually pretty decent it's a solid 7.5 the game has massive potential...
Gothic in this day an age if it ever releases has to be open world like gothic 3 but needs a bunch of major changes to be successful but it's already VASTLY unique to any open world game out there.
Gothic 3 was absolute garbage except for the soundtrack, elex was decent and gothic, gothic 2 and risen 1 were great
I feel like you would appreciate the economy in MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries. When you first start out, the galaxy is your oyster. You can damage mechs and weapons and as long as you have the money, you can replace them for comparable parts or repairs in the markets. However, later in the game, you have to actively start picking your shots so that you don't accidentally core an enemy mech, lest you lose the salvageable parts, cause you've bought all of those parts on the market...I literally ran the galaxy dry of PPC's in one run, mostly because I suck at the combat and wanted to master every Solaris competitive circuit cause I'm a greedy bastard
Excellent news today! Glad to have a sweet, sweet Strat fix. Thanks for putting in the work, as always.
I am now playing this game, the normal way I normally played open RPG. Once I hit level 10 and joined a faction, the game actually become harder and slower than before, because you won't gain level fast anymore, you can't use the cool weapons that require high stats, and the majority enemies still overpower you easily
40 minutes in and there is Morrowind on screen.
Classic.
Strat-Edgy: Role-playing games are about role playing a character you made.
JRPGs:
jrpgs are not rpgs, or rather, have not been rpgs for decades at this point.
Elex 2's story is probably 10x more convoluted. It gets hilariously weird - like really, REALLY weird. Like WTF weird. I loved it. And I'm absolutely going to play Elex 3 if it ever gets made.
Sadly, the devs got shut down by their publisher Embracer. However, every single game of theirs since Risen first started out as a wiki-like database for every dev to access the entire lore, world building, characterizations, etc. Elex III was listed as WIKI6 in the German Ministry of Economie's list of public funding. I hope the Wiki leaks, so modders can mod it into Elex II.
I been waiting for this one!
I've not watched the full video and normally I'd wait but this is also 2 hours long and I'll probably forget by the end.
The thing about stat requirement bloat and attribute scaling is kind of intentional as far as I can tell. The Albs are supposed to be much stronger than the average person because they consume elex, and if you as a player begin to consume elex potions, they grant you attribute points and learning points, enabling you to become stronger than your level would otherwise allow.
The game basically says "Average humans reach their peak around here but Albs consuming Elex are much stronger." I always imagined it to be a gameplay representation of the difference in power.
Also, consuming elex drains your emotions and if you're too "cold" at the end of the game, the final boss will make a logical statement that you're incapable of disagreeing with because you lack emotional fortitude and you'll be locked into a single ending. I won't call it a bad ending cause his logic is kinda right.
i legit thought he was gonna talk about ELEX II for some reason
hey strat, robot chicken batman here, I'm always excited to see every new video you come ouut with, regardless of the time that has passed between uploads. I love your content man!
While I've never even heard of this one it was still an entertaining video. Good job again man. As for video length- longer ones like this are definitely preferable. TH-cam is FULL of shorthand reviews. They're a dime a dozen, and literally the only ones that are worth a damn or stand out are skit-heavy ones. Long reviews aren't as common, and even then a lot of them aren't quite as in-depth like this as they should be. Plus your comedy works a lot better when you can unload it on people for an hour straight. It's crude, and we REALLY don't get enough of that these days.
Question since I haven't really heard you mention anything about it- do you plan to get back to Fallout and the Skyrim DLC/factions you mentioned wanting to get to a while back? Been waiting for you to finish those franchises off for a while now.
Right now, I'm just trying to survive. Inflation hit me hard and I am barely keeping my head above water so I have to do trending games for a while to get back what I lost doing this video, lol.
@@StratEdgyProductions “trending games” like the hot and popular Elex? You sell out. We trusted you
A Civvie video AND a Strat-Edgy video on the same day? Boy, do I feel spoiled.
AND a new zero punctuation too!
Gothic 3 at least allowed you to loot all weapons (even though you couldn't equip any) and since weapons were cheap and armour so expensive it didn't break econonmy.
Regarding the attributes description, In Gothic, especially Gothic 2 there was some relation between the attributes and the damage if I remember correctly. maybe they intended to use the same engine but changed their mind in the end
I've never found the potion thing suuuuuuper unimmersive honestly because medieval-based societies don't/shouldn't have the idea that anyone can be a valid seller of anything and most townspeople are probably going to look sideways at the wandering outsider who kills monsters for a living selling unlabeled potions. Alchemists especially wouldn't be inclined to actively pay someone to essentially do THEIR craft for them, well, most likely anyways.
Guilds! A lot of medieval towns had guild run monopolies on certain goods and you needed a license from them to operate in the area. If some dickweed came in town to sell his concoctions to people, the alchemists guild would certainly fuck 'em up for disturbing their business. It's usually selling that breaks game economies and they're often just way too easy to metagame. I'd honestly appreciate if devs put even an inchling of thought into their economics. Not being able to sell is preferable to whatever the fuck is happening in most rpg games.
I don't normally listen to the whole "Show your friends and what not" bits at the beginning of videos, but ya know what, I watched this whole thing with my little gray kitty named baby, And she loved it C: Thanks for making my kitty purr for like two hours :3 Shes my best friend and I love watchin stuff with my cat :)
Also It was really nice actually SEEING you do the Nick voice, for some reason that made it funnier to me ;)
absolutely adore these long form vids from this channel, rewatch on the reg while working on projects or housework or gaming New Vegas for the 300th time.
It was a pretty decent game imo. It never came close to g1 and 2 though, but those are games I grew up on and fell in truly in love with. Few games get close to those two for me, they will probably always be my favorites.
"Schrodinger's Game" ive never heard that term applied in a more fitting manner.
I love Elex and am really enjoying Elex 2. I disagree about avoiding melee in the first one. My first play through was a primarily melee build (still used bows) and once you have some higher stamina and can master the rhythmic attack system it is pretty damn effective. Also was fun.
>me wacking everything in elden ring with a greatsword.
"Don't melee dragons? Wat?"
I'm definitely showing my cat this video. He'll most certainly enjoy it
I played this game because it seemed cool. Managed to find my way to the technology christians, and they gave me a quest to go snuff out a traitor. I'm thinking "okay a human is gonna be harder to fight against but I got this". No, I did not got this. It took me like 2 hours of just side stepping and tickling his butthole with my feather of a weapon until he died, and that was if the game didn't crash for some random reason.
0:33:0 is not completely valid because each consecutive attack deals almost double damage of the last one.
If you play on easy where attacks don't drain stamina, you can attack air for 20+ hits before an enemy and then 1 shot it when it charges you.
1:15:0 cannibal
My favorite thing about this game is that one part of the map where lava is flowing into water. It's just...spectacular. Beautiful. I stood there just watching it for quite some time. I've barely engaged in the actual gameplay at all, but I got my money's worth from that experience of just farting around in the open world and finding something amazing.
I love your retrospectives, Strat; you're absolutely hilarious. Your monologues are always super on point, and I love that you cover RPGs and Immersive Sims that the other big channels don't necessarily cover.
Great timing Strat I just picked this up 2 days ago
It’s always “12 years old” when someone tells a story from childhood, swear to god
I tried playing this about a year. Excruciatingly boring and janky. Thanks for making it entertaining with this video 😂
I honestly think it’s really funny when he starts talking about morrowind and he’s having a noticeable amount of extra fun
I'm convinced Jax is just a very deep double agent who has to have emotions like the father from that movie equilibrium.
Would be cool to see an in-depth comparison between Elex 1 & 2 from you. What got better/worse/different. You're pretty good at this stuff. Maybe even almost great.
?
Elex 1 was truly a passionate project when Elex 2 is nothing more but money laundering
Here you go bro, a like AND a comment. Because you asked nice. Don't spend it all at once.
"Can you believe I'm going to be recommending this game?"
No, sir, I cannot say that I would.
Elex isn't a Gothic with guns, if it was i would be right now on my 16427864318 playthrough instead on my 0 one.
The toilet paper bit was pure gold 😂 Btw, in Titan Quest enemies drop the items that they have on them, random stuff is only inside chests.
also in Titan Quest the drop chance for those items the enemy is holding is at best around 0,25% and worst 0,0100%
Its really fucked up how the devs made the drop rates..
@@elitereptilian200 I played the game for a really long time and sometimes you find a lot of uniques. Sometimes like none. It's a weird system. Some characters feel more lucky than others even though I found no proof of that. Overall you can make it work if you know where to farm and you don't mind the process.
@@PandemoniumGameDev you really can't make it work, not really, even if you know where to farm and don't mind the process.. the drop chances are so ridiculouss that there are people who have put thousands of hours in to the game and not have seen certain items drop once..
@@elitereptilian200 in that sense yes, I agree, it doesn't work. The low drop rate makes the unique items more special for me though, but I am biased because I really like the game.
@@PandemoniumGameDev oh I like the game, but the stonebinder's cuffs took over 5 hours and if they wouldn't have dropped with attack speed I would have broken something.. and my conqueror kills all three gorgon gueens in less than 10 seconds so I killed them quite many a time during that over 5 hours.. and the same awaits me at legendary difficulty when I get there..
One point to note here is that Titan Quest actually drops all of the monsters equipment to the ground, but most of those are poor quality item, below normal (white) quality, and are usually just filtered out (maybe even by default).
Elex the "special" Gothic brother :D
After you asked for Patreon support at the beginning I was like "yeah, whatever", but after watching the whole video and realizing you actually had to force yourself to play this stinking pile of crap for two months just to be able to put together this lousy review I just want to say - I salute you, you deserve it, you deserve every single penny.
I think you missed the point. He enjoyed this game.
Highlight of the day, can't wait!
Some say Bethesda never changes, and it's true. But Piranha Bytes... they REALLY never change even more.
Their games have potential. But that's it. Every new game they make has potential, and they never go past this barrier to actually make them good.
Im very happy about this video. I played the Elex last Year & its so hard to talk about this game.
You summarized it so well in the opening it is both more & less than Gothic with guns. it has the charms & flaws of other Piranahbyte's games plus unique problems like the stats not working.
But i did enjoy it, i just wish the betrayal of Jak wasnt so much of the plot & it got polished enough to say have stats do what they're descriptions claim.
Repeating earlier designed choices is about saving money - nothing more, nothing less. Even if you go with all new tech and hire more people - cutting out a lot of design and testing and blah blah saves money, and if you do it all over the place, its millions of dollars saved.
Greetings from Sweden :)
I love your wittines. Keep up the good work!
"Put the Elex in the FUCKING basket!"😂🤣👍
Played this game a couple years ago and enjoyed it. I had no expectations and by the end thought, hey it's about as good as Fallout 4 and made with a way smaller budget.
We had 3 Gothic, we had 3 Risen, where are the other two ELEX?
New Strat video= countless rewatchs
totally agree with you at 54:30 I love the feeling of playing a fallout or an elder scrolls game and whatever I see on that guy, he has it, whether I kill him and strip him, or steal it from him or whatever, and the tough choice of a friendly npc that did nothing wrong to you but hes got a unique weapon or armor or gear and I feel tempted to wrong him for his items, and in fallout 76 when they removed that in favor of random garbage on bodies it was a sad day
I'm commenting so the algorithm helps, job done! Cheers!
Love any excuse to talk about Morrowind for another hour or two
gimme that content Papa Strat
The Ssseth T. influence on the intro shows... tbh I like your style better
Couldn't play the game past the 30-40% mark, after watching the video I'm thankful I didn't continue. Love the video though, you can tell you've been working on it for a long time!
Kallax is literally an IKEA bookshelf
Most of the names are memes but several can only be understood by Germans.
If this game was more popular, the whole Magaland thing would be a meme
I remember buying this game at launch.
Ended up rage quitting... This shit makes Elden Ring combat seem as easy as the Assassin's Creed combat.
It was just so clunky that I couldn't get into it...
Edit: I wrote that not 1 minute into the video.
Glad to see you are on the same page.
Your jokes and perseverance make my memories of this game not hurt quite as much anymore.
Thank you for suffering for us, good sir! Love your content!
Perfect. Just downloaded it on ps premium really like it so far
Really big thanks for your content, man! You have a style which is both distinctive and addictive. I joined the channel from your Elder Scrolls videos and I keep coming back for more. I have never felt disappointed. All the best and thank you for the work you put in!
I know this may not do anything but the bad news of the Queen's passing today rlly crushed me and your "How to's" help me cope
Played on release, very rough around the edges, but I really liked the exploration and finding different ways to do things like you could in Gothic
only stuck around to watch the intro, but isn't the story just like that ps3 game starhawk? the remake.
i remembered playing this game last year, making full mage build no melee , jet pack and spam fire spells so OP
So let’s get this straight. Combat is crappy or at least very clunky, with bad hit boxes, to the point where Melee is unviable.
Stat points don’t do what the game says they do.
And at the end of the day the story is convoluted and stupid, and repeats things for 40 hours that you already knew from the first 2.
Really solid recommendation lol. It’s a harrrrrd pass for me after watching this. Great vid as always!
"If this place is so bad, why don't you move?"
I heard this from americans all the time. They really don't get how can you possibly not have the possibility of moving, cause shit is so expensive you probably endup homeless. That's why Elex is the greatest third world simulator.
I think you might have missed the joke, but also, I am American the only Americans who say this unironically are the asshole kind who also say it to other Americans. I mean, even people who can easily afford to move dont want to - its very stressful - so its even dumber to say that you might first think.
The first minute was some of the best content ive seen on youtube
Fun fact for the gothic 1 bit in the beginning. The whole spacebar and directional keys is because the game wasn't supposed to have mouse support
Thank you for the video, I feel really happy when I see a new one in my subbox.
I've played Elex beforehand on the recommendation of a friend and indeed, it has a lot of problems. I remember how I got through the early game was just stealing everything and selling it to make elex drinks. I absolutely hated, that I found a cool weapon upgrade and wasn't able to use it for another X hours. It sat in my inventory whilst I was getting gangbanged by enemies.
When it came to the main story, I just stopped caring when I met those Separatists at the converter. I just skipped those flashbacks, ran through the dialogue and that ended up me having to kill them all. I also accidentally skipped the end cards and then I just... didn't care enough to reload and went along with my day.
I really wish it was more refined, cause I do like the magic meets sci-fi meets post apocalypse thing it has going for it.
The problem with piranha bites is that they wait too long actually communicate to the player what it is they want them to do.
Like this game doesn't want you to use melee, but for a good stretch of time that's all you have access to, and a huge chunk of the tutorial is dedicated to teaching you melee combat.
You know what would teach players 'use a ranged weapon'? Probably giving them a ranged weapon.
I've never had such a love-like relationship with a game before.
Maybe Skyrim comes close, in a way, but all the mods save it. Elex has plenty of potential, but the strange game design choices like the lying attributes information, the enigmatic combat system (damage type, combat abilites, resistances...) and just the overall fact of the game visibly being barely finished - all leave a really bad taste after the legendary Gothic series, and even after Risen.
And I love Your delivery. Fine comedy talent right here.
Morrowind is the ultimate Todd Howard simulator
Gothic 1 and 2 have one of the best atmospheres i've seen to this day.
just saying.
i actually joined the outlaws cause i like their armor style and general raider/cowboy aesthetic. also they seem to be the only faction that doesnt have a clear dogma and i dont do cults.
the Berserkers are a hippie commune all anti-tech and pro-nature and shit, the Clerics are religious fundamentalists which is just stupid cause its based on sweet FA like Mormons AND they favor laser tech and sharp angular black/red armor which reads as edgy and lame , and finally we have the Alb defector faction which i'll admit has its merits! they seem to understand that Elix is a weapon with a serious drawback that you have to keep in check, its a trade-off and not a way of life so ideology wise i tend to like them BUT... they are REALLY stupid for being so obvious and out in the open so its like a bunch of autists minus the rain-man shit!
>Berserker
>Hippie commune
I might just have to investigate this game because hippie berserkers sounds like a fascinating oxymoron.
@@fearjunkie you would think but its more of a misnomer than an oxymoron.
Berserkers are the only faction, that actually does something to make their world a better place. Pretty much all of the forests and greenery you see in the game is their job. Otherwise everything would be a wasteland
@@TheKarabanera i'd argue that most of the factions think they are making a better world outside of the Outlaws but yea, the Berserkers are the only faction growing trees and shit.
@@Felix.Fictus Albs just eat Elex and kill everyone else, Clerics are praising a failed rocked as a god and do nothing, Outlaws do drugs and do nothing. I mean, it's even canon. Fro mthe first to the second - Berserkers grew as a faction and turned a desert into a grassland and forest. Outlaws died off and their old boss now has a new town, Clerics almost completely died off, because they are useless, don't know much about the albs.
I will never play this game, but I will watch this video multiple times. You're just an entertaining guy
How do you speak with every north American accent simultaneously? Asking for a friend.
ty for the vid strat
hey now, don't dis Titans Quest, one of the games selling points is that enemies actually drop their weapons. Including enchanted or rare ones they were using against you before they died. Great video though, very entertaining to watch, even if it makes me want to avoid Elex like the plague.
Your video's are top tier. Love your voice, your writing, your topics, and so much more. Thanks for all the preem content.
Badets are based, and will increase your pipe giving and/or receiving stats by a large percentage.
Love you sticking with making vids. Power to you!
Great video. I'm looking forward to the inevitable Elex 2 how-to/review video, Strat.
I dislike Elex, but damn this was a enjoyable vid. I just can't dislike any vid with your editing, Strat
Thanks, Vato.
@@StratEdgyProductions now all I need is a vid with your humour and editing going nuclear on Fallout 4's story and worldbuilding ❤️
I'm glad I watched you play that instead of playing it myself.
A new Strat video, legendary.
hey strat i love these long ass videos always look forward to them!