From the beginning, you see a world around you whose old self is slowly dying and warring factions are fighting not only for dominance, but also for bare survival.

The first friendly NPC Diego is replaced by the berserk Duras, who takes the player to the capital of his faction, and on the way the player receives information about where he actually is, what the situation is, and what can be done about it.
A slight loss of memory is an integral part of the story and you will enjoy the flashbacks a lot while playing. At the same time, the main storyline begins to unfold and the hero discovers what kind of personality he actually is. This is surely the strongest aspect of the entire game, as the level of detail put in by the developers is incredible.

The brand new world is elaborated to the last detail. Although at the beginning you will often get lost in the flood of names and concepts, it is very easy to fall for it all and at least fall in love with history and devour every other fragment. The player gradually gets to know the reasons for that special connection between fantasy and science fiction. On the one hand, you parry enemies with a clumsy axe and take cover behind a wooden shield while activating travel portals and running around the ruins of concrete buildings firing shotguns. Right after that you collect energy cores and boom, you're back. You hear about paladins, magic, and laser weapons.

Fans of demanding fights will be cheering, while other players will probably uninstall Elex after a while and rush to one of the more massive titles. Some may be put off by the peculiar combination of fantasy and science fiction elements.
Elex is not a bad game. It just takes time to figure it out. 30%

My wife said if this review gets 50 likes or 5 awards, she will buy a case of beer, guys help me out

I'm so sorry Piranha Bytes. You tried hard (I think) but... rest in peace.
And I'm thankful your studio is dead.
Why, you might ask? That's extremely harsh! Shame on me! Rabid fanboys unite!

This studio has been cranking out the same old tired trash since its cult (only in Germany, mind you) success, Gothic. When you watch vids or read forums regarding Piranha Bytes there's one thing that is praised - narrative. What is actually panned? Combat and mechanics. You know... what make a video GAME a functional GAME? They're not called video narratives.

So many years later, Piranha Bytes have still clung to their formula - distinct factions, interesting world and lore... and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ game mechanics and combat.
Your hard-won level ups don't even really mean much of anything, other than maybe some extra health. Why, you might ask? Because stats only exist to gate skill and gear accessibility. They don't actually increase damage, health, or anything you might expect from the **in-game descriptions of said stats**. The strength stat description states that it increases melee damage, but it really doesn't - it only grants access to higher tiers of weapons and skills that directly boost damage. That is incredibly misleading, which means a player might invest points into an attribute thinking it does one thing when it just only does another.
Melee combat in general is just an absolute mess, where enemies can easily home in on you from a greater distance than you can lock-on or target them. In addition they opted for Souls combat, with clunky and locked animations as well as a silly stamina bar that simply doesn't apply to enemies, period.
Even if you want to dodge melee attacks the system is nonsensical - dodge at the moment the weapon strikes you, not before. Ok, that means I should dodge monster attacks in the same way, right? No, screw you player. Monster attacks don't follow rules and many of them aren't telegraphed at all, so good luck.
If you want a good idea of how combat plays out when someone actually understands it and can deal with it, I recommend Click4Gameplay. Vids clearly shows the guy knows his stuff regarding Elex, and probably PB, combat.
The open world is truly that - an open world, but gated by skull-icon enemies who can destroy you with one to two hits. Hopefully you don't run into skull-icon enemies with ranged attacks, because that generally means they have insanely pinpoint accuracy. Good luck trying to dodge, nerd.
So that just means you have to be smart about engaging enemies, right? Yes, but no! If you try to utilize the environment or your personal capabilities (generally meaning the jetpack the game gives you in the first 10 minutes) you quickly discover that an overwhelming majority of enemies have ranged attacks! They won't use them if you're on level ground, regardless if you've struck them with ranged or melee weapon. But the moment you move to a spot where they can't engage with melee you discover they have some sort of ranged attack - either a weapon or spit attack. For human enemies I can swallow this fact, even if they didn't use them when you were striking them from a distance on ground level. But now hounds and various critters seem to magically use these attacks now that you've tried to 'play smart'? I can envision the conversation now.
"How do we grant the player more exploration access?"
"Give them a jetpack early on!"
"Great idea, Olaf!"
"But wait... doesn't the ability to fly disrupt our 'skull icon' system for gating?"
"Right, Olaf... what do we do?"
"Just give most enemies a ranged attack they only use when the player tries to cheese an encounter!"
"...by cheese you mean use their jetpack to gain height advantage and avoid retalation?"
"Yes, exactly that!"

And so, the narrative and quest structure of the game is utterly ruined by terrible in-game mechanics. Awful level up mechanics that encourage the player to hoard attribute points based on whatever weapons you want to try to use, in addition to PB's tried-and-true awful melee combat leads you to wonder - why the ♥♥♥♥ did this studio fail?
Well, at least fanboys can preen at the idea that the game's narrative was well-crafted. Except... we're not playing a video narrative are we?

Positives: the devs included difficulty options that allow tweaking of player damage output, enemy damage output, stamina usage, and so on.
Graphically the game looks quite attractive, with art assets that all look like they belong in the world. It easily holds up today.
Exploration feels rewarding, with nooks and crannies providing a smattering of junk and consumables.

Unfortunately killing enemies who use manufactured weapons **doesn't allow you to loot said weapon from their corpse**. Did you just manage to kill two Exiles, both of whom had crossbow weapons? Well you can't loot that weapon from their corpse, player, because that would destroy our carefully constructed 'skull icon' difficulty.
What do you mean you were smart and kited an enemy into them to weaken them and draw their attention? Screw you, no XP reward.