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Elex |OT| Gothic 5: Risen From Jank

I'm actually getting quite hyped for this game! Unfortunately, my ancient PC sucks for PC gaming, and I have a hard time seeing the game being fun to play on the PS4 (Pro) if you like save scumming and brute-forcing through quest bugs etc.

Anyone that can give some console impressions on how the game is holding up?
Check back through the thread, there are plenty of impressions for the Pro version. And even some video.

I'm playing on Pro and it's great. You can have a load of saves on going. It has quicksaves which take about 4 seconds from start to finish. Manual saves and auto saves that kick in every 3 minutes (or longer, you get to choose). So you can save scum to hearts desire.

Game runs very well on console and is miles ahead of old PB conversions like Risen on the 360.

Of course you are not going to get any modding or community patches there. But that was always going to be the case.

All PB games in the past have been completable on console - so will this one.
 

Xater

Member
I wish I could at least see where people see the interesting world. To me it all was varying degrees of uninteresting and bad so far.

Basically everything about the berserkers just makes me roll my eyes.
 

BeeDog

Member
Check back through the thread, there are plenty of impressions for the Pro version. And even some video.

I'm playing on Pro and it's great. You can have a load of saves on going. It has quicksaves which take about 4 seconds from start to finish. Manual saves and auto saves that kick in every 3 minutes (or longer, you get to choose). So you can save scum to hearts desire.

Game runs very well on console and is miles ahead of old PB conversions like Risen on the 360.

Of course you are not going to get any modding or community patches there. But that was always going to be the case.

All PB games in the past have been completable on console - do will this one.

Thanks for the impressions, sounds great. Though not having community patches is a big drawback. Still remember the days when community patches turned the Gothic 3 shit-fest into something passable.
 

Anoxida

Member
I wish I could at least see where people see the interesting world. To me it all was varying degrees of uninteresting and bad so far.

Think it's the best world exploration since TW3. Not sure why you're not feeling it. It's ok not to enjoy something.
 
Thanks for the impressions, sounds great. Though not having community patches is a big drawback. Still remember the days when community patches turned the Gothic 3 shit-fest into something passable.
True, but ELEX doesn't seem like a shit-fest. Gothic 3 was by far their buggiest game. So this is not really comparable.

Risen 1-3 were all playable without severe bugs on X360/PS3/PS4. The real problem was the performance. Even on PS4 Risen 3 ran like shit.
 

Cosmic_Guru

Neo Member
Exploration is really cool in this - I spent most of yesterday's session exploring to the north (for the companion quest), to the Southwest and finally to the East. I'm not sure it was strictly a good use of time for the value of either exp or items found (although I found the starter armour referred to above), but it really helped flesh out the berserker faction, for example seeing what happens to those who are exiled from it. In places it's very reminiscent of a much more scary fallout game (and also, bizarrely, in places on the coast the half life coast drive section) - trapped in a structure I'd jet packed down into with monsters walking about below, whole swathes of the map polluted with poison of some kind......

It's annoying though that the game dictates where you may and may not swim.

No particular issues with the game on XBO other than the occasional camera weird out. I prefer to quick save rather than auto save for control reasons. Thankfully loading is pretty quick.
 

haveheart

Banned
Oh man, I can't wait for the weekend. Your impressions pursuaded me not to wait until the holidays to play this.

Anyone here playing a long range wepaons build? How are the guns handling?
 

YawZah

Neo Member
Are there faction specific and different tiers of armour in the game like in Gothic 1 + 2? Like Light City Guard -> Heavy City Guard -> Paladin -> Heavy Paladin etc.
 

Banzai

Member
All the missed early conversation options make me sad. So many opportunities to finish quests/dialogue differently had I invested in some Charisma skills early. Or Crafting. Or Survival.
 

Gala

Member
Had my issues with the game in the beginning as I wasn't able to go back to the Berserker town because
I found out about Duras being a murderer and called him out on it and he wanted to kill me
. So I spent a couple of hours making my way to the cleric stronghold where all the quests where too high level. So I explored more and found a couple of cool quests and helped the outlaws for a while l. After a good 5 hours I went back to the cleric and was able to do the faction quest to join them and now I'm exploring Edan again with a cool new found companion. I'm 10% exp short of level 15 to reach the next cleric rank.

The world is so believable and I love the quest system and all the impacts your decisions have. It's really impressive what such a small studio has achieved here.
Though I'm still not a fan of the battle system and have some quest bugs that will be hopefully fixed soon.
 
Are there faction specific and different tiers of armour in the game like in Gothic 1 + 2? Like Light City Guard -> Heavy City Guard -> Paladin -> Heavy Paladin etc.

Don't know about tiers yet but there's definitely faction armor.

I know this has varying levels of importance to people but don't let something like this ruin it for you. You'll be covered in armor soon enough anyways and it's a fantastic RPG despite the defined character.
 
I know this has varying levels of importance to people but don't let something like this ruin it for you. You'll be covered in armor soon enough anyways and it's a fantastic RPG despite the defined character.
Thanks. I may check it out when it is on sale.

There's kind of a story reason for that though. The MC is an actual character kind of like Geralt in Witcher.
Is it based on an existing IP, or do you mean that the MC has a backstory? If it's the latter, that doesn't excuse it for me. Nearly every RPG protagonist has some sort of history.

Thanks for sharing?
You are so welcome dude. :D
 

Moff

Member
Are there faction specific and different tiers of armour in the game like in Gothic 1 + 2? Like Light City Guard -> Heavy City Guard -> Paladin -> Heavy Paladin etc.

of course, several tiers for each faction and they look great. as usual, they go along with plenty of quests to get new ranks in the faction you chose.

well I have finally become an unstoppable god again, that comes as a surprise because I expected casting to be weak in elex. well it is, save for one psi spell, black hole, which is a massive AOE stun with tons of damage and no cooldown. so if you don't run out of psi energy you are unstoppable. I guess this will be patched.
 

Anoxida

Member
Thanks. I may check it out when it is on sale.


Is it based on an existing IP, or do you mean that the MC has a backstory? If it's the latter, that doesn't excuse it for me. Nearly every RPG protagonist has some sort of history.


You are so welcome dude. :D

He has a backstory and a reason for being a pale bald dude. As in, he was infused with exelt which stripped away hair, pigmentation and emotions.

Edit: to clarify I would've preferred a char creation too but at least they made a decent lore reason as to why they dont have one.
 
He has a backstory and a reason for being a pale bald dude. As in, he was infused with exelt which stripped away hair, pigmentation and emotions.

Edit: to clarify I would've preferred a char creation too but at least they made a decent lore reason as to why they dont have one.

I guess it's nice that they tried.
 

Ragona

Member
Just found the recipe for +mana permanently so guess they are back, sweet.
South of Golithe at the coastway and the island in the sea to the south is a pretty good spot for some easy exp. Some easy humanoid enemies that give +100 exp (also the random monster that instakills you though)
 

120v

Member
any word what's up with the physical PC version of this game? pre-ordered off amazon to save a few bucks. TBA shipping info but now the store page has 'guaranteed delivery' by nov 2-20. starting to wonder if it even exists
 
any word what's up with the physical PC version of this game? pre-ordered off amazon to save a few bucks. TBA shipping info but now the store page has 'guaranteed delivery' by nov 2-20. starting to wonder if it even exists
What amazon? amazon.de says "in stock" with delivery tomorrow.
 
any word what's up with the physical PC version of this game? pre-ordered off amazon to save a few bucks. TBA shipping info but now the store page has 'guaranteed delivery' by nov 2-20. starting to wonder if it even exists

I've been in contact with US Amazon CS and they have no idea what's going on. My ETA was November 29th for the collector's edition. A pre-order from June should not have to wait a month and a half after the release date to receive the product. Ridiculous.

This happened with Best Buy once but they provided a digital key in the meantime. There aren't digital keys on Amazon so they don't have much to offer other than a gift card as a courtesy (because even the physical standard edition isn't in stock)
 

120v

Member
What amazon? amazon.de says "in stock" with delivery tomorrow.

amazon US

my order page says the copy is directly from amazon, but the store page now has it listed as only available through an import company of some kind. so i'm kind of suspicious there's even a US retail release (on PC) to begin with
 

DPB

Member
any word what's up with the physical PC version of this game? pre-ordered off amazon to save a few bucks. TBA shipping info but now the store page has 'guaranteed delivery' by nov 2-20. starting to wonder if it even exists

It exists in the UK, though frankly I wish I hadn't bothered now. Two of the six discs can't be read properly by either of the DVD drives I tried, so I ended up having to use the key to download it via Steam anyway.
 

Steez

Member
Open the menu and move along to the face tab on the far left - it's at the bottom of there.

Oh Jesus, it's so weirdly hidden and vague. So many menus but not a single one which shows numerical values for experience, HP and so on. Hope they patch that soon. Thanks!
 

Anoxida

Member
Oh Jesus, it's so weirdly hidden and vague. So many menus but not a single one which shows numerical values for experience, HP and so on. Hope they patch that soon. Thanks!

Yep. It would be nice to know how much hp you get from each point in CON. Tbh a character sheet with a bunch of numbers in general is what this game needs. Min maxers must be having a stroke.
 

Metroid

Member
So, if I have a melee weapon equipped it won't show a bow. Has been in since Gothic 1 I guess. Bummer but patchable.
 

Nere

Member
Didn't PB get the gothic rights back from JoWood? Why didn't they attempt to make a gothic game instead of Elex?
 

xrnzaaas

Member
Didn't PB get the gothic rights back from JoWood? Why didn't they attempt to make a gothic game instead of Elex?

I'm actually happy they've tried something different while retaining all the little things that still make this is a PB game. Wouldn't mind a Gothic remaster/remake, but I don't think it'll happen soon because the studio is small and they are already confirmed they're working on Elex 2.
 

Nere

Member
I'm actually happy they've tried something different while retaining all the little things that still make this is a PB game. Wouldn't mind a Gothic remaster/remake, but I don't think it'll happen soon because the studio is small and they are already confirmed they're working on Elex 2.

Yeah a new setting is welcome but I am just curious why they didn't make a gothic game since they have the rights to the franchise now and since they are done with the Risen series, seemed like an obvious choice to me.
 

UltraBosh64

Neo Member
Two days after release and I'm still waiting on Amazon to receive the Collector's Edition...
Anyone heard anything about what happened to them/where they are being held up at?

Watched a few review videos last night, and have to say I'm super excited for this to be my first Pirhana game. I'll be going back to pick up Gothic and Risen after this I'm sure.
 

venomenon

Member
Yeah a new setting is welcome but I am just curious why they didn't make a gothic game since they have the rights to the franchise now and since they are done with the Risen series, seemed like an obvious choice to me.

There was a recent interview with Björn Pankratz in which he talked about this.
Gothic has a very dedicated following, especially in Germany, and thus there are certain strong opinions about what does and does not belong in a Gothic game, what matches the typical atmosphere of Gothic, etc. So basically, they feel constricted and overwhelmed by the vocal fanbase's expectations (IMO understandably so, considering the seemingly universal hatred towards G3 in the Gothic/PB community). He doesn't rule out making another Gothic "when the time is right", though, but for now they just want to create enjoyable games without subjecting themselves to the inevitable harsh criticism for every single deviation from what people perceive as the "Gothic formula".
 
Two days after release and I'm still waiting on Amazon to receive the Collector's Edition...
Anyone heard anything about what happened to them/where they are being held up at?

Watched a few review videos last night, and have to say I'm super excited for this to be my first Pirhana game. I'll be going back to pick up Gothic and Risen after this I'm sure.


GoG - PB Sale

GoG have a sale on their PB games at the moment so if you're on PC it might be worth having a look. I'm sure they go on sale quite often so i'd expect sales at halloween and christmas of some sort too.

@venomenon: Yeah, i can totally see that being an intimidating task especially with the deifying of Gothic by many of the fans. It's like HL3, you're damned from the offset because you'll never match the head-canon and expectations they've built up.
 

Munter

Member
I have a few questions about the game. Apologies if these have been asked/answered previously.

1. How is the crafting in the game? Do you have different professions such as weaponsmith, armoursmith etc.? Is it simple enough or convoluted?

2. How is the exploration? I like to wander round and discover hidden caves with cool stuff. Really enjoyed Guild Wars 2 for that kind of thing with the hidden jump puzzles. Is there anything similar in this game?

3. What is the quest system like? Is there a good variation on the quest types, or does it resort to kill 20 of these, fetch 10 of them? Is there a main quest, with random side quests picked up as you travel?
 

Krakn3Dfx

Member
If anyone is looking for some help with the melee combat, I noticed this guy made a mini-tutorial and posted it on Steam's Discussion group, and talks about building up your attack meter to inflict more damage. Found it pretty helpful, especially since I had no idea before I watched it that this even existed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS2xD9F98Kw
 

Jag

Member
The more time I am spending with this game the less I am enjoying it. The combat is just atrocious. There is no other way to describe it. I am also still waiting for those great quests. All I am seeing with the Berserkers so far is cliches and sub par writing. I really don't know if I want to continue this game.

You just described every Piranha Bytes game ever.

No but seriously where can I find armor...

 

Cosmic_Guru

Neo Member
I have a few questions about the game. Apologies if these have been asked/answered previously.

1. How is the crafting in the game? Do you have different professions such as weaponsmith, armoursmith etc.? Is it simple enough or convoluted?

2. How is the exploration? I like to wander round and discover hidden caves with cool stuff. Really enjoyed Guild Wars 2 for that kind of thing with the hidden jump puzzles. Is there anything similar in this game?

3. What is the quest system like? Is there a good variation on the quest types, or does it resort to kill 20 of these, fetch 10 of them? Is there a main quest, with random side quests picked up as you travel?

1. There are no professions as such - crafting skills can be obtained from a crafting skills trainer for cash, provided your base stats in particular areas (typically intelligence, dexterity) are sufficient. Crafting would seem to me to be a good option to earn cash.

2. Exploration is brilliant. Not sure about puzzles as such in this, but if you want to put a marker in the corner of the map and make your way there nothing much stands in your way, provided you aren't expecting to take on everything you come across combat wise initially. The jet pack works well.

3. Quests are nested. You probably start by being told to locate someone, maybe rob or kill someone but they can develop in different ways thereafter (trying to be vague here). Fetch quests as such don't feature a great deal - sometimes you pick up the objects you need before you find the quest holder. Quest givers don't go around with ! or ? above their heads either. There is a main quest line and sub quests, faction related as you gain credit with one or another, and other non-aligned ones.

Hope that helps!
 

Jag

Member
3. Quests are nested. You probably start by being told to locate someone, maybe rob or kill someone but they can develop in different ways thereafter (trying to be vague here). Fetch quests as such don't feature a great deal - sometimes you pick up the objects you need before you find the quest holder. Quest givers don't go around with ! or ? above their heads either. There is a main quest line and sub quests, faction related as you gain credit with one or another, and other non-aligned ones.

We've also said this before that quests have multiple solutions that affect future gameplay. For example, for one quest, you need to find someone and you find them hiding. You have options to attack, work with him or turn him in. Each option has a different outcome (and affect reputation) so choices do matter.

This isn't the Witcher, but it's janky and fun.
 

Nere

Member
There was a recent interview with Björn Pankratz in which he talked about this.
Gothic has a very dedicated following, especially in Germany, and thus there are certain strong opinions about what does and does not belong in a Gothic game, what matches the typical atmosphere of Gothic, etc. So basically, they feel constricted and overwhelmed by the vocal fanbase's expectations (IMO understandably so, considering the seemingly universal hatred towards G3 in the Gothic/PB community). He doesn't rule out making another Gothic "when the time is right", though, but for now they just want to create enjoyable games without subjecting themselves to the inevitable harsh criticism for every single deviation from what people perceive as the "Gothic formula".

Thanks for the link, wasn't aware of this interview.
 

Munter

Member
1. There are no professions as such - crafting skills can be obtained from a crafting skills trainer for cash, provided your base stats in particular areas (typically intelligence, dexterity) are sufficient. Crafting would seem to me to be a good option to earn cash.

2. Exploration is brilliant. Not sure about puzzles as such in this, but if you want to put a marker in the corner of the map and make your way there nothing much stands in your way, provided you aren't expecting to take on everything you come across combat wise initially. The jet pack works well.

3. Quests are nested. You probably start by being told to locate someone, maybe rob or kill someone but they can develop in different ways thereafter (trying to be vague here). Fetch quests as such don't feature a great deal - sometimes you pick up the objects you need before you find the quest holder. Quest givers don't go around with ! or ? above their heads either. There is a main quest line and sub quests, faction related as you gain credit with one or another, and other non-aligned ones.

Hope that helps!

It does, thanks! Looks like I might be picking this up once I get paid :)
 
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