Am I safe to assume we won't have machine gun snouted boars in ELEX, that can still kill you effortlessly even when you're at max level and fully geared?

I have been emotionally scarred by the boars in the Gothic 3 base release.

The boars were fixed with the community patch anyways.

ELEX is about as challenging as any other Gothic game. You still have a hard time against multiple enemies. Your companions are about as competent as usual and it certainly helps to have one with you at all times. They don't die when they're with you and their pathfinding is basically perfect now because they also get a jetpack. So no more looking all over the world for your lost companion.

Overall it hasn't gotten easier though. The world is stacked with monsters and while you can flee from all of them usually fleeing leads you into just more enemies you have to flee from again.

I finally was able to join the Berserkers. They gve me their lowest tier armor and I couldn't equip it because I didn't have the stats for it^^. I am Level 11 now and I have not skilled a lot of combat attributes. I'm still in Faction less clothing and have my first weapon and bow that I found. Without a companion I'm barely able to fight of the lowest mobs, but only when they're alone. I am 15h into the game.

I am basically at the most fun part right now. I've skilled pretty much all non combat skills that I want and all of my future attribute points will go into combat. So it's only gonna get better from now on.

How should I put this...

The community patch took a while to come out for Gothic 3. I was playing it at launch.

Anyways, glad to hear Elex is holding up nicely for the long haul. I'm now really interested in getting it once I come back from this installation trip.

Makes sense

What is ELEX?

Gotcha.  Yeah, I'm pretty sure Gothic 1 and 2 have the same game engine, and other than a slightly different fighting moveset, are pretty much identical from a gameplay perspective.  Controls were modified to grant more mouse control, but that was about it.  The first two games were also smaller.  More like "open world but not really" as opposed to G3's truly open world.  The first Risen game went back to more of an "open world but not really design", which I preferred slightly.  I haven't really gotten too much into Risen 2 and 3 though.  I suppose I should play and complete them.

I consider Gothic 2 to be the definitive Gothic experience.  It was like the first game, but better.  Only thing it had lacking was the cool "we're a bunch of prisoners under a magic dome" premise.

I played the shit out of 2. Too bad that 3 was a buggy mess. I know there are community patches, but the franchise died with this one.

Never heard of ELEX, though.

Loved Gothic 2 and 3 back in the day. This doesn't look like a Gothic game though :/

I haven't started it yet, but glad to hear it's up there with their best. Not a fan of setting though, I would much more prefer actual Gothic, but I'll take anything from Piranha Bytes.

And yeah (and I said this many times around here), Gothic is for me, as well, pinnacle of open-world action RPGs. Not that I think it's flawless, there are a lot, and I mean a lot of improvements that genre would benefit from - but unfortunately, except for smaller devs like PB, genre is heading in completely different direction, becoming action-adventure with some RPG elements sprinkled in, so I'm glad PB is sticking to their roots, despite obvious temptations to go the route of some other developers.

I was put off with the setting at first too. Sure I would've liked a pure fantasy world much more but at its core ELEX is Gothic. And believe me, I am 24h into the game now and 95% of the time I am fighting with bow and arrow against people with axes and swords and crossbows and against scavengers and molerats and boars.