#ELEX 2 PS4 SERIES#

All factions offer different ideals and playstyles, and the game makes it worth your while to experiment with each of their offerings before making a decision. There are five major factions in the game to join and each provides access to unique quests, weapons, armour, abilities and role-playing opportunities that dynamically affect how you interact with the world, and this time around there’s even an option to remain independent. This leads to one of Elex’s biggest draw-cards – its faction system – and Elex II expands upon it significantly. Developer Piranha Bytes have achieved wonders in catering to player freedom with a world that feels lived in settlements bustle with activity, NPCs follow daily routines, and people react to your actions positively or negatively, and often violently – careful not to steal mindlessly like you would do in other games! You can even resolve quests in seemingly obscure ways if you choose to experiment one seemingly impossible NPC fight resulted in a unique reward after I pushed through to see if it won. Dangerous wasteland monsters show no mercy and many can kill you in one or two hits, but it’s possible to make a beeline for the place or city you want to start with – exactly what I did after I rushed toward Crater City to join my favourite group of selfish losers, the Outcasts, where my curiosity is rewarded with better tools and dozens of questlines. You’re let loose into the open-world with nothing but a lead pipe, and you can pursue the main quest, or go in any direction you want to explore while ignoring the alien invasion story entirely. None of this limits the amount of choice you have in Elex II by the slightest, and there’s as much, if not more role-playing choice and opportunities than ever. However, while the first game offered players a lot of choice over who they allied with and how the main story played out, the sequel establishes a concrete canon by referencing Jax’s choice with the Hybrid (he saved them) and reveals he had a son with companion Caja, who acts as a moral compass for Jax.

#ELEX 2 PS4 SERIES#

There’s a lot of well thought out reasons as to why Jax still isn’t cozy with his old faction, such as the Outcasts now being led by series boogeyman Bloody Baxter, or the Clerics suffering from their losses in the last war. Playing the first game also better contextualises your goal in the sequel, which is to unite all the factions again under a new banner, called the 6th Power, in your own settlement called the Bastion, your way with the allies you pick. The game’s story is a definitive continuation of the first, however, and it’s great to see fan-favourite characters like Rat, Chloe, Hector and Nasty, how they fared over the years, and how Jax’s actions impacted them.

When past events from the first game are brought up, you’re provided with dialogue options to ask more questions, or answer as a version of Jax that remembers, providing both newbies and returning fans a satisfying way to role-play.

Characters and loading screens regularly reference past events, but I found it was handled in an organic way that gradually establishes key story beats without overwhelming exposition dumps. A new threat, the Skylands, invades the planet amidst the chaos, providing a convenient set up to once again have Jax start from the bottom, and re-integrate him into quarreling world affairs as a hero, or a hard-ass – based on your preference.Īs a sequel, Elex II does a great job of introducing new players to the rich world of Magalan and Jax’s plight without requiring you to play the first game. Despite being hailed a hero for uniting Magalan against a threat from before the bombs fell, Jax’s efforts were undone as in-fighting resumed between Magalan’s factions. Set in an overwhelmingly detailed post-nuclear apocalypse world of Magalan, you play as Jax, a former military commander feared for his past as a ruthless member of the Albs, a race of unfeeling soldiers. Elex II is a third-person, action RPG built around a huge open-world map, with people and places that dynamically react and change according to dialogue choices and how you resolve quests.

Elex 2 ps4