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Having played ELEX, if someone put a gun to my head and told me to describe the game in one single sentence, it'd probably be something along the lines of: awful, but amazing. There really isn't any other way of putting ELEX in perspective, and this is arguably due to the fact that it is a member of the 'eurojank' "genre" of games. Those who've come across this term before will know what it describes: a huge and sprawling, yet glitchy RPG/RPG-lite made on a shoestring in some European or Eastern-European country. Examples include Kingdom Come: Deliverance, STALKER games, Cryostasis, and the developer Piranha Bytes' legendary Gothic series.
Though Piranha Bytes have made various other games as well - all eurojank to boot - none have managed to retain the glory of Gothic. Gothic 3, in particular, which is still celebrated as one of the few games that could parry Oblivion and go toe-to-toe with its gargantuan game world. Does ELEX replicate this, then? In a way, it does, but it also succeeds at something that no other contemporary RPG has even attempted at doing, and that is to combine fantasy and sci-fi under a single umbrella.
To call ELEX sprawling would be as much of an understatement as it would be to call it glitchy, because the game truly is immense. Broken, too, but mostly immense. In typical Piranha Bytes fashion, though, there's no level-scaling here, so chances are that for a while after starting a new game, you won't be nearly powerful and capable enough to fight your way through much of anything. Having said that, this is very much part of the appeal. ELEX may be modern and contemporary, but it is also a true subscriber to the old line of RPG thought, where no encounter was generated randomly, and each enemy that outranked you by 10-15 levels was very much a deliberate showstopper.
It is important to understand that ELEX could never be a perfectly-polished release. With a team of about two or three dozen people, Piranha Bytes still refuse to budge when it comes to ambition, and it shows. While it very well may be impossible for them to fix every bug in ELEX, making the game incredibly dense and wondrous was their primary goal. This is apparent in the quality of sidequests and the way sci-fi organically meshes with fantasy in the game's world. It is also apparent in the importance of verticality for exploration and the general openness of combat (though it is still extremely punishing). Interestingly, ELEX also has some really good voice-work, which was not something anyone expected.
The catch is, of course, that ELEX is entirely unforgiving and, oftentimes, too obtuse for its own good. For example, while you can spec a competent character in any of the game's three major disciplines of combat (melee, firearms, magic), there are a few skills present in the skill trees that are just about useless. Not entirely useless, mind, but just about. ELEX presupposes its players for people who want a mechanically classic, yet up-to-date version of the old RPG games from, say, 10-12 years ago. There is value in that, though it just isn't most people's cup of tea.
ELEX is not a game you get to go through the motions of playing yet another RPG. For all its faults - and there are a fair few - ELEX challenges you and pulls you out of your comfort zone much like, say, STALKER games do. It is difficult and unforgiving, yet very deliberate and satisfying. Surviving an encounter while you're still at a low player level is quite something in this game, and though there are ways of cheesing things in certain situations, it rarely feels like you don't deserve the win you just got. That aside, it really cannot be stressed enough just how interesting of a game world ELEX places you in. This unique combo of apocalyptic sci-fi with pure fictional fantasy is unlike anything else available, and should definitely be a consideration if you're into playing unique games.
Will ELEX put you through a ringer every once in a while? Absolutely. Is it worth the trouble? Absolutely.
Get in the Game ! 
