ELEX II
In this sequel to the vintage Open World RPG ELEX, Jax must once again unite the free people of the Science-Fantasy world of Magalan against a new threat - the Skyands, who want to change the face of the planet forever.
ELEX II is a open world, singleplayer and rpg game
developed by Piranha Bytes
and published by THQ Nordic.
Released on March 01st 2022 is available only on Windows
in 9 languages: English, German, French, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Italian, Spanish - Spain and Japanese.
It has received 6,192 reviews of which 4,572 were positive and 1,620 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.2 out of 10. đ
The game is currently priced at 49.99⏠on Steam.
The Steam community has classified ELEX II into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at ELEX II through various videos and screenshots.
Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10, 64 Bit
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 / Intel Core i5-7400
- Memory: 12 GB RAM
- Graphics: Radeon RX 5600 XT / Geforce GTX 1060
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 90 GB available space
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
JANKTASTIC! If youâve never played a Piranha Bytes (PB) game before, playing Elex 2 will be akin to filling your eye-sockets with vinegar and razor blades, then setting your head on fire. No matter which of their games you played (and theyâve been making variations of the same game since 1997), PB were Teutonic sadists who seemed to take very real pleasure in punishing their players mercilessly. Your character had all the survivability of a blind man in a minefield. Animations were janky, awkward and frequently hilarious. Dialogue was stilted, wooden, nonsensical, and occasionally seemed to bear no relation to what was actually happening on-screen. Characters looked like the horrifying aftermath of either genetic experimentation or severe chemical burns. Their melee combat system, which they insisted on using in every game they ever made, was the most counter-intuitive, infuriating, dysfunctional mess Iâve ever had the displeasure of suffering through. I died so often the experience seemed less like a game and more like some perverse psychological obstacle course designed to both break my spirit and massively expand my vocabulary of offensive words. And yet⊠I grew to love them, particularly Elex, which had a fantastic world to explore, loads of great loot to find, and an initial difficulty curve that was almost vertical. And thatâs the thing with Elex 2 â if you can push through the first ten to fifteen levels of unrelenting death, your competence ramps up fairly quickly and youâll soon find yourself tearing holes in even the toughest opponents. Elex 2 forces you to earn your power. Nothing is simply handed to you without you first enduring some measure of suffering beforehand. It IS easier than the first game (it even has a âstoryâ difficulty setting), but it will still bludgeon you into a pulpy smear and have you howling with incandescent rage if youâre not accustomed to the PB brand of gratuitous masochism. If you like your games to be pleasantly challenging rather than sphincter-clenchingly brutal, then PB games are not for you. And thatâs totally fine. I donât play Dark Souls or Elden Ring because they compel me to hurl profanities at the screen and damage expensive peripherals. If you have played the first game, youâll be able to pick up the narrative threads fairly quickly. If you havenât, things can seem a bit disjointed because Elex 2 doesnât give you much in the way of backstory other than the initial introductory slideshow. Youâll find notes and audio logs thatâll fill in the blanks to an extent, but many NPC conversations tend to assume you know all about whatâs gone before. If you donât, youâll spend a lot of time muttering, âUh⊠what was that all about?â What IS it all about? Youâre Jax. Formerly âCommander Jaxâ of the Albs, a high-tech army of elex-addicted albino soldiers in thrall to âThe Hybridâ (mentally unstable scientist, Charles Dawkins, hard-wired into a giant mechanical exoskeleton), the Albs were Elexâs dominant faction and Jax was their preeminent enforcer. Once nick-named âThe Beast of Xacorâ, Jax was a merciless scourge upon the world of Magalan, ruthlessly executing the Hybridâs orders to harvest other denizens of the planet for their elex. Elex is a glowing blue mineral that appeared on Magalan after a comet impacted the surface and wiped out the previous civilization. When ingested, it endows the Albs with various supernatural abilities, but it divests them of their emotions, leaving them cold, logical and calculating. After being betrayed by one of his own and left for dead, Jax was forced to start from scratch, forming alliances with various factions in exchange for information, equipment and allies. This culminated in a confrontation with the Hybrid, during which Jax defeated Dawkins, uniting the Free People, throwing off the shackles of Alb oppression, and bringing peace to the world of Magalan once more. However, as Ron Perlman is so fond of saying, âWar never changes.â And peace never lasts. Before his demise, Dawkins was able to send a signal into space. Jax, being an inherently pessimistic sort, rightly harbours a sense of ominous foreboding. When Elex 2 opens, Jax is a recluse, living alone in a shack in the woods. His efforts to warn the Free People of Dawkinsâ signal and the very real possibility of an extraterrestrial invasion have fallen on deaf ears, and the factions have once again resorted to bickering amongst themselves. In due course, Jax is proven right, the invasion commences, and Magalan is soon awash in aggressive purple mutants with an annoying habit of corrupting the local environs with âdark elexâ and mutating the local fauna. Your task is to once more forge the Free People into some semblance of a united front, and drive the Skyands (the purple mutants) from Magalan. Elex 2 looks a bit nicer than the first game, at least in the environmental and creature art departments. The characters still look like weird, clay-faced genetic anomalies dredged from the darkest depths of the uncanny valley. Even Jax seems to have regressed, which is disconcerting given heâs the gameâs protagonist. Also, the game runs like a bicycle with square wheels and no handlebars, even on some high-end rigs. Frame rates are all over the place, but theyâre especially bad in any of the gameâs major settlements. Running the game in DX11 gives you a more stable experience, but dire performance. Switching to DX12 will give you additional frames, but weird graphical artifacts, occasional crashes, and a persistent glitch whereby itâs just as bright at night as it is during the day. The worst aspect of all this is that even if you crank the graphical options to their lowest settings (dropping the resolution to 720P and the scaling to 50%), Elex 2 still runs like a man with a broken pelvis⊠but now the game looks like an explosion in a Lego factory. Frame rates would fluctuate wildly between 25 and 45 whenever I ventured inside the Berzerkerâs Fort, and the visuals were so pixelated it resembled Minecraft. The optimisation is embarrassingly bad, and Piranha Bytes arenât likely to fix it given theyâre now defunct thanks to the grubby antics of the debt-riddled Embracer Group. If you can get past the woeful performance, youâll have some fun, but this will be a deal-breaker for many gamers who have come to expect decent frame-rates, especially from games that donât look that great in the first place. The gameâs also unnaturally quiet. Scampering about the lush wilderness of Tavar, I was struck by the lack of environmental sound. I could hear the odd insect or animal cry, but I didnât hear the wind in the trees, or the sound of a waterfall despite standing in close proximity. The music is repetitive and low-key, only really being noticeable when combat is imminent or during narrative cut-scenes. Voice acting could best be described by the phrase âthey did the best they could with what they had to work withâ. Most of it is passable, but some of it is bizarre and borderline incoherent (because both Elex and its sequel were written by people who were either drunk, or abusing psychotropic drugs), particularly the spontaneous remarks Jax and NPC companions make, seemingly out of nowhere and completely lacking any sort of context. Weirdness abounds. If you can forgive all of this, and itâs a big IF, youâll find a game that is engaging and addictive almost despite itself. Much of this is down to the hand-crafted world and the way the game makes you work for every attribute point and skill increase. Also, the jetpack which, once upgraded, is ridiculously fun to use and makes exploration a joy. If youâve played and enjoyed other PB titles, youâll probably enjoy this. If youâre not prepared to endure a little pain while you get to grips with the world of Magalan, or you canât stomach anything that doesnât run at a solid 60 frames a second, give this a hard pass.
Read more
After playing Elex1 I found the start of Elex2 Strange and a bit clumsy. After playing thru the whole game I found that the game is technically a "classic" Skyrim and Fallout4 are my all time favourites. However playing them takes a long time. The 2 Elex games are much shorter... and offer a wonderful challenge as well as thought provoking story line. I will be 80 in 6 months so do not have the dexterity to play them at high difficulty levels. But it forces you to devise battle strategies if you want to win the big battles. To make my favourite list a game must have a very complex and compelling story line intermixed with the battles. I rate Elex 1 and 2 at 98% satisfaction and enjoyment. So many of the games are very hollow and focus totally on the battles..... not my type of games.
Read more
RIP Piranha Bytes. Love your games, finished every single one. Really hope that at least some of the devs from this legendary company will continue to make great RPGs. Thank you for years of entertainment.
Read more
This is my first review. Mostly because I am disappointed in this games rating. I played Elex 1, and it was rough around the edges but it had a lot of charm. It rewarded exploration. The loot, skill progession, and combat were very satisfying. Elex 2 is no different. And it surpasses in every aspect. It shines in its open world exploration, character dialog, crafting, and skill leveling. I love this damn game. If you've played the witcher series, dark souls, fallout, and the elder scrolls, You'll definitely have room to appreciate this game. It was made with love, and it shows.
Read more
Classic Piranha Bytes experience - if you have never played the gothic or risen games, start with those. Gameplay is janky, animations and voice acting are often laughably bad, but there's just something there that gets you hooked once you start exploring and get immersed in the world. If you liked the first Elex you'll probably like this one too.
Read more
Similar games
View all
Mars: War Logs
An Intense Cyberpunk Rpg On the Red Planet! Mars War Logs takes you to Mars, nearly a century after the cataclysm that threw the planet and its colonists into chaos. Water has become the most precious resource on the arid red planet, with a few companies fighting a perpetual war for its control.
Tchia
A Tropical Open-World adventure. Climb, glide, swim, and sail your boat around a beautiful archipelago in this physics-driven sandbox. Take control of any animal or object you can find, and Jam on your fully playable Ukulele.
Risen 3 - Titan Lords
The world has been abandoned by its gods and is scarred from the rampage of the Titans. Humanity is struggling to regain strength. You, however, have more pressing concerns: your own life has been shattered and you must set off to reclaim what is lost amidst the darkness spreading throughout the world.
Risen
Delve into a gritty, raw and atmospheric fantasy world in which every action has a consequence. In the epic world of Risen, filled with mysterious earthquakes, fearsome monsters and unimaginable treasures, forge your path with the sword, learn the art of staff fighting or become a powerful mage.
GothicÂź 3
A nameless hero becomes a legend! Myrtana, a world in upheaval: overrun by orcs from the dark lands in the north, King Rhobar is defending Vengard, the former stronghold of the humans, with his last troop of followers.
Risen 2: Dark Waters
Set several years after the end of Risen, raging titans have devastated the world and pushed humanity to the brink of existence. Subsequently, monstrous creatures have risen from the watery depths of the sea and their attacks have brought all seafaring to a grinding halt.
Scarlet Tower
Hunt during the day, be hunted during the NIGHT! Scarlet Tower is a gothic horror casual game with roguelike and RPG elements, like talent trees, classes, familiars and more!
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
Set in a huge open world, Dragonâs Dogma: Dark Arisen presents a rewarding action combat experience.
Fable - The Lost Chapters
Each person you aid, each flower you crush, and each creature you slay will change this world forever. Fable: Who will you be?
The Elder Scrolls IV: OblivionÂź Game of the Year Edition
The Elder Scrolls IV: OblivionÂź Game of the Year Edition presents one of the best RPGs of all time like never before. Step inside the most richly detailed and vibrant game-world ever created. With a powerful combination of freeform gameplay and unprecedented graphics, you can unravel the main quest at your own pace or explore the vast...
Two Worlds II HD
Check out the new Velvet Edition bundle including both Two Worlds II and Pirates of the Flying Fortress DLC.
Two Worlds Epic Edition
... 300 years after Aziraal has been banished, a brother and sister are drawn into the conflict which has flared up between the Orcs and the free world. Kyra, the hero's younger sister, suddenly disappears in mysterious circumstances.«...If my family really belongs to the chosen ones, why then have we always been as poor as church mice?
Data sources
The information presented on this page is sourced from reliable APIs to ensure accuracy and relevance. We utilize the Steam API to gather data on game details, including titles, descriptions, prices, and user reviews. This allows us to provide you with the most up-to-date information directly from the Steam platform.
Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates
| Steam data | 16 November 2024 05:13 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 19 January 2025 16:27 |
| Steam price | 22 January 2025 20:19 |
| Steam reviews | 21 January 2025 13:55 |
Online players
84
Developer
Piranha Bytes
Publisher
THQ Nordic
Release
01 Mar 2022
Platforms
By clicking on any of the links on this page and making a purchase,
you may help us earn a commission that supports the maintenance of our services.