The verdict up front
ELEX is the kind of game that splits a room. Made by Piranha Bytes — the German studio behind Gothic and Risen — and published by THQ Nordic, it is an open-world action RPG set on Magalan, a planet half-destroyed by a meteor that brought a power-granting substance called Elex. You play Jax, a former commander of the Albs who survives an assassination attempt, loses his powers, and has to claw his way back through a world that wants him dead. It launched in October 2017 to a "Mostly Positive" reception on Steam (around 74% of roughly 19,500 reviews), and that mixed-leaning-warm rating is exactly right: this is a flawed game that a certain kind of player will adore.
So is it worth buying? If you came up on old-school open-world RPGs — Gothic, Morrowind, the early Risen games — then yes, almost certainly. ELEX gives you something most modern RPGs have sanded away: a world that does not care about you, that you are free to explore in any direction from the first hour, and that punishes you for arrogance. But if you expect responsive combat, modern presentation, and a game that explains itself, you should go in with eyes open. The jank is real. The reward is realer.
ELEX blends science fiction, fantasy and post-apocalyptic settings in a single seamless world. Plasma rifles sit next to medieval swords; jetpacks coexist with mana-fuelled magic. It is one of the few RPGs that genuinely commits to "all of the above," and the tonal mash-up is a big part of its identity.
A world that opens up immediately
The single most important thing to understand about ELEX is its openness. Within the first hour you are handed a jetpack, and from that moment the entire map is reachable. There are no invisible walls, no "come back at level 20" zones, no soft gating. A deadly creature might be standing twenty metres from the starting area, and the game will happily let you walk into it and die. This is by design, and it is the source of both the game's biggest thrill and its steepest barrier.
That freedom changes how you play. Exploration is not a checklist; it is a risk calculation. You learn the world by surviving it — noting which ridges hide loot, which roads are patrolled by things you cannot yet kill, which cave you should not have entered. The jetpack makes this vertical too: you can fly up cliffs, glide across ravines and reach rooftops, so the map is a true three-dimensional playground rather than a flat surface with mountains painted on. Very few open worlds trust the player this much, and when it clicks, it is intoxicating.
For your first ten hours, treat almost every enemy as a threat to flee from. ELEX expects you to avoid fights you cannot win, gather easy quests near a faction town, and build up before picking battles. Our ELEX beginner guide walks through the exact early steps that turn the brutal opening into a manageable one.
Factions are the heart of it
ELEX is built around its three joinable factions, and choosing one is the defining decision of your playthrough. The Berserkers reject technology, convert Elex into mana, and fight with swords and nature magic from their forest stronghold. The Clerics are a high-tech religious order who worship the god Calaan, wield energy weapons and PSI powers, and consume Elex to fuel them. The Outlaws are pragmatic survivors in the desert who care about results, not ideology, using firearms, chemicals and stims. Looming over all of them are the Albs, the cold military faction Jax defected from.
What makes this work is reactivity. Your faction shapes which weapons and abilities you can train, which armour you wear, which companions warm to you, and how large swathes of the story play out. The questing is dense and surprisingly grey — there are few clean "good" choices, and NPCs remember what you did. This is where ELEX earns its reputation. The combat may be stiff, but the decision-making is alive in a way that big-budget RPGs rarely match.
| Faction | Playstyle | Tech level | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berserkers | Melee and mana magic | Low (anti-tech) | Players who want a classic fantasy warrior or battle-mage |
| Clerics | Energy weapons and PSI | High | Players who want sci-fi gunplay and psychic abilities |
| Outlaws | Firearms, chems and stims | Mid (scavenged) | Players who want pragmatic, flexible, gun-focused builds |
The Cold system: roleplay with teeth
Most RPGs bolt morality on as a meter that changes a shopkeeper's price. ELEX wires it into the fiction. As Jax, you can consume Elex to grow more powerful, but doing so raises your "Cold," pushing you toward emotionless rationality and unlocking ruthless dialogue and certain abilities. Staying low on Cold keeps you human, empathetic, and aligned with the more idealistic paths. Crucially, your Cold level and your choices govern companion approval and recruitment, and they steer the ending.
It is not a perfect system — the writing sometimes flattens "Cold" into "rude" — but the ambition is admirable and frequently lands. Deciding whether to chase power at the cost of your humanity is a real, mechanical tension rather than a cosmetic one, and it is one of the things that lingers after the credits.
Pros
- +Open world is reachable from hour one, with a jetpack that makes exploration vertical and free.
- +Faction choice deeply reshapes build, gear, companions and story, with consequential questing.
- +The Cold-versus-emotion mechanic ties morality to systems and roleplay convincingly.
- +Dense handcrafted world, generous loot and strong buy-to-play value with no microtransactions.
Cons
- −Combat is stiff and unsatisfying, especially with melee, and the early difficulty is brutal.
- −Presentation — graphics, animation, faces — was behind the curve even in 2017.
- −English voice acting and parts of the writing are uneven.
- −Onboarding is obtuse; the game expects you to learn its systems the hard way.
The honest weaknesses
Now the part a store page will not stress. ELEX's combat is its weakest pillar. Melee in particular feels stiff and floaty, with awkward stamina management and hit feedback that never feels truly crunchy. Ranged combat fares better once you invest, but the first several hours — when you are weak, poor and under-equipped against a world full of monsters — can be genuinely demoralising. This is the wall that filters most players, and it is fair to call it a design flaw as much as a feature.
The presentation is the other honest issue. Even at release in 2017, ELEX looked a generation behind its peers: stiff facial animation, dated character models and a visual sheen closer to a 2013 game. The English voice acting is uneven, swinging from decent to flat, and some dialogue translates awkwardly from its German roots. None of this stops the world from being compelling, but if visual polish and cinematic presentation are high on your list, ELEX will disappoint. Finally, the game is bad at teaching itself — attributes, ability requirements and faction mechanics are barely explained, so expect to consult a guide or learn through painful trial and error.
Buy ELEX for its world and its freedom, not for its combat or its looks. If you bounce off stiff melee or need a polished, guided experience, this is not the RPG for you. If you can push through a rough opening, the payoff is a reactive open world few games match.
Who should buy it
If you love open-world RPGs that respect your intelligence and punish your mistakes — Gothic, Risen, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Outward — ELEX belongs on your list. It is harder and jankier than The Witcher 3 or The Outer Worlds, but it is also freer and more reactive than either, and at full price it is a generous, monetization-free package that rewards patience with dozens of memorable hours. Players who enjoy planning a build around a faction will find a lot to chew on; our ELEX builds guide and factions guide go deep on both.
Who should pass? Anyone who needs responsive, satisfying action combat, anyone put off by dated visuals, and anyone who wants a game that holds their hand. For everyone else — especially lapsed Gothic fans — ELEX is a flawed, fascinating, deeply rewarding RPG that earns its cult status, with the honest asterisk that you have to meet it halfway.
