ELEX II on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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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.
It has received 6,366 reviews of which 4,684 were positive and 1,682 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.2 out of 10. đ
The game is currently priced at 49.99⏠on Steam, but you can find it for 5.63⏠on Instant Gaming.
The Steam community has classified ELEX II into these genres:
System 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
User reviews & Ratings
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Let's admit, I expect people playing ELEX II to be long acquainted with Piranha Bytes, and expecting this to be just another Gothic. If you haven't played Gothic 1 or 2 and ELEX, you better start with one of those, they are cheaper and arguably better made đ
I do recommend this game but take it with a grain of salt, as I like it largely because of the familiarity. Let's start with problems, there are quite a few: * the depiction of faces seems to have landed right into the uncanny valley, mimic is sort of okay, but heads look eerie and teeth are not a small part of it * the inhabitants of Magalan suffer from drafts, even in the room when you talk to someone with a hanging clothes pieces, they'll be flapping as if in a storm * the graphics tend to break here and there, textures become invisible, lightning flaps undecided if something is lighted or not, things like that mostly only break the immersion but not the game itself * there seem to be a certain amount of broken/possibly broken quests, those were not addressed in patches and likely will not anymore as patches seem to have stopped coming * some cutscenes are recorded yet they are made on the game engine, they stick out way too much * but in-game cutscenes also happen abruptly and sometimes change time of day or other things that don't seem necessary * dialogues seem to break here and there if you don't act as expected or don't do things in an expected orded * there's some (maybe more, I am yet to see) grind for ingredients, money, and equipment * some of the tropes are reused way too many times đ
* of the five factions you encounter in game, there are again just three real factions. The rest will provide you with quests and such but will not play as big of a role, it seems. Yet there are some things that are made rather well, especially when those are novelties I didn't expect: * you can totally get into places you're not supposed to be in and you will only be removed if a guard encounters you, no invisible walls or magical removing of the trespasser * I think there was no weapon reforging before, and that seems like a good addition * there are some companions that only join you because they have orders. This is a fresh take, for one, to build a relationship with them * for once you're not an unnamed and unknown to anyone hero. Many inhabitants know who you are or at least heard of you deeds, and it also feels refreshing Both good and bad thing is that they didn't just made a new map by adding to an old one. Instead, some of the places you visited became unreachable and some previously unreachable are now part of the game. Also controversial is the amount of old acquaintances, you do expect there to be some familiar faces, but it feels like there's too many of them. When you encounter references to ELEX, you will get reminders, this helps to introduce events to the new players and refresh memory of returning ones, but it feels like it's done somewhat messy. The short flashback cutscenes stick out and don't really improve the impression. I am yet to finish the game and say if anything is breakingly bad in it, but I would recommend to get it on sale if you've liked previous game(s). If you haven't played any, I recommend giving them a try first, maybe you wouldn't want to get this one ÂŻ\_(ă)_/ÂŻ Update: there are also quite some issues with pacing and lack of choices in certain quests. I thought that I will be able to choose between different candidates for a war leader in Bastion , but it appears that Tialg is the only one, and he's also the one I met in the first minutes of playing so I was suspicious that it should not be the only choice . After about 70 hours in and completing pretty much everything there was, I joined a faction and started chapter â
Ą, then there's not much to do, and all of the companions come to pester me at the same moment. Sometimes there are things that were supposed to happen long time apart or in the different order, so dialogues or journal entries make no sense. Sometimes Jax knows more than I do, because something is scripted that way and written in the journal but I have no clue where does it come from (this is usually not the case, so I assume this rare occurrence is in fact buggy) Aside from somewhat lacking coherence in the story, that can be justified with the amount of content, there's targeting with a ranged weapon. Ranged weapons are way superior to the melee, and enemies try to make up for it if the player chooses to go close and personal, but sometimes they forget to change to melee and totally destroy you. But that's not half as bad as the fact that at a later stages there will be more and more flying enemies that become priority targets and trying to target someone specific, especially on the ground becomes nigh impossible. Targeting jumps and keeps rotating the player, battle is chaos, you're targeting someone far away while being eaten by creatures right in front of you, it's quite enraging. Luckily, by that time you're well geared and can stand some biting. Elex grinding is so very real, you're going to need it for more learning and attribute points, but I advice you to just edit your save or cheat more elex/points other way, to save some running around and/or bying few pieces a day and resting till next day. I mean, it is possible to get, just not too fun. Also karma grinding if you suddenly find out you're too creative or too destructive to do something story-related. And money grinding, but to a lesser extent and only in the first half. Experience comes more or less steadily as you progress, so I haven't felt the need to grind EXP. The story, albeit a bit contradictive, seems interesting and mostly all right. It's not war and peace, but there are parts to enjoy in between running around blazing guns or swords. Sound of preparing to shoot is my pet peeve here, it is the same for all weapons, be it shotgun, laser, or arbalet. This is ridiculous, although it's not big of a deal but it breaks immersion so hard. Also, the icon for being a proficient archer shows rifle bullets. Like, really? Sometimes NPCs are bugged, like one I was supposed to give stones to, that would never end the dialogue. Or the one I was supposed to lose a set fight to, but all he did is sheath and unsheath his weapon without ever hitting me, it was a fight that's hard to lose indeed. I've experienced a few crashes, more than three, but definitely not too many. That's not too bad, considering there's an autosave, but All-in-all, I still like it, and maybe even a bit more than in the beginning, but I am still not quite sure if this part is better than the first part.
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ELEX II is currently priced at 49.99⏠on Steam.
ELEX II is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 49.99⏠on Steam.
ELEX II received 4,684 positive votes out of a total of 6,366 achieving a rating of 7.19.
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ELEX II was developed by Piranha Bytes and published by THQ Nordic.
ELEX II is playable and fully supported on Windows.
ELEX II is not playable on MacOS.
ELEX II is not playable on Linux.
ELEX II is a single-player game.
There is a DLC available for ELEX II. Explore additional content available for ELEX II on Steam.
ELEX II does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
ELEX II does not support Steam Remote Play.
ELEX II is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for ELEX II.
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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 | 09 May 2025 00:21 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 05 May 2025 05:10 |
| Steam price | 09 May 2025 04:20 |
| Steam reviews | 08 May 2025 03:59 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about ELEX II, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about ELEX II
- SteamCharts - Analysis of ELEX II concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck ELEX II compatibility
Game modes
Features
Online players
51
Developer
Piranha Bytes
Publisher
THQ Nordic
Release
01 Mar 2022
Platforms
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