Piranha Bytes released Elex on PC and consoles this week, and dammit I want to play it. I’ve been playing through Arcania on PS4 lately, and it’s really reminding me how much I miss that clunky Euro-jank RPG goodness.
Arcania is not a bad game, but it’s not a great game either. It’s the gaming equivalent of a straight to VHS fantasy flick. The reason I specify VHS is because that was a time when low budget movies still required a budget, and still had to be kind of good, even if they were good for the wrong reasons. Before the days of Netflix and YouTube Red and any other form of digital distribution, B-movies meant Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell. Now we’re lucky if we get some emo college kid we don’t immediately want to punch.
Anyways, Arcania is a game that’s good, even though it’s laughably bad. It’s entertaining and competent, with a story and conversations that truly make you groan. It’s worth playing for the awkward conversations alone, and the voice mixing is both cringe-worthy and wonderful at the same time. Nothing like a bar wench magically changing her accent from American to British and back to American again within five sentences.
Elex has a bit higher aspirations, but the truth is, Piranha Bytes is still a small developer with a limited budget, and from the footage I’ve seen, is still a middle-tier rpg retaining all of it’s quirky jank that I’ve come to love from the developer.
I hope to get my hands on a copy pretty soon, but in the meantime I’ll be finishing up Arcania and will have a write-up on that in the near future. I feel that Elex is suffering from a bit of fan misunderstanding in the reviews, so I’ll try to spread the word.
