Elex 2 Review

ign.com:

It's been a while since we checked in with the inventive sci-fi world of Magalan and its standard-issue bald video game protagonist Jax in 2017, and while the landscape has changed, a lot has stayed the same. I wish more had changed, to be honest, because the hold-overs from the original Elex are most of what makes Elex 2 a disappointment. Underwhelming and sometimes confusing character writing undermines an interesting main quest scenario, graphical glitches sabotage an often beautiful post-apocalyptic world, and straight-up terrible combat tears down everything else.

I'll get this out of the way right up front: I can't think of anything positive to say about the combat, and that makes it very hard to recommend Elex 2 in spite of anything else it gets right. It feels clunky, imprecise, and annoying. The hitboxes are ridiculous. Many enemies repeat these glacial, downright silly attack animations where it's almost impossible to tell when it's actually dangerous to be standing near them. Jax, who has already saved the world once at this point, can still be killed in two hits by some random varmint along the side of the road. They do at least provide helpful skull icons on each foe's health bar this time to let you know when you're fighting something that is currently out of your league, so I had fair warning that whatever stray rodent just murdered me is meant to be a certified badass.

Combat in Elex 2 is not bad because it's too challenging – take that from someone who’s currently loving Elden Ring. It's just badly designed. The poorly-balanced stamina system makes it difficult to smoothly transition between attacking, defending, and maneuvering, even after you upgrade your stamina regeneration much later on. This creates