There is a vastness to the freedom you're given here, not just in picking a direction and seeing what you'll find, but in the way you can customize Jax and his abilities. Now, granted, there are some technical and narrative caveats there as well as some other design limits I'd placed on those comparisons, but I still stand by it. If I was to describe Elex II to someone who has never seen or played the original, I would likely go as far to say it's if Fallout played and resembled something more akin to The Witcher III.

And, thankfully, Elex II more than lives up to what I wanted from it, making this one of the best Euro-jank games out there. Elex is a franchise that fits perfectly into that same conversation, creating a world that is engaging to explore and play around in so long as you have set the proper expectations on what you're about to take part in. Technomancer, Greedfall, Bound by Flame, all of which developed by Spiders, are games that alongside Piranha Bytes' own Risen and Gothic series, are enjoyable games fueled more so by passion than cutting edge visuals or provided a considerable budget. The Euro-jank genre, which Piranha Bytes is no stranger to, is a classification of games I adore. Elex II is a continuation of what the original gave us back in 2017, albeit far more polished and technically more impressive than ever, even if it does still have its issues.

It's not perfect, but it's also the type of game we don't seem to get much anymore unless some big AAA publisher is behind it, likely injecting microtransactions or filler to pad its length. And yet, it all works, creating a world that is just as diverse in its quests, environments, and narrative. The original Elex felt like a mixed container of action figures dumped onto the floor as a child would pick them up and smash them together, creating lore that somehow saw technologically advanced cyber-soldiers at war with a faction that looks like they were ripped out of Mad Max, or Lord of the Rings.

ELEX II instaling