I have to say Freaking love this game. my favorite game of the year, are the other PB games as good as this one?

This game is on par with their earlier games (Gothic 1 and 2) which can be found on GOG. Elex is probably some of their best work so far though. 30 hours in and I feel the same way. The game is an amazing return to form for Piranha Bytes.

no other are not good, except gothic 1 and 2,

Elex is good for 1 simple reason, devs had time and freedom to express any wishes they had and ideas when created this game, it took them 6 years to make it.

Elex is the only game that made me feel so good since witcher 3, im glad this game exists I got tired of witched 3....

My personal favorite is Gothic 1.

Gothic 2 is everyone else's favorite. Night of the Raven (the only version of G2 that GOG allows for download normally, for no reason I'm aware of) is significantly harder than vanilla Gothic 2.

Gothic 3 is another huge open-world game, somewhat similar to how this one is. It's good but it's biggest problem is that it doesn't run well, even on modern computers. It can get frame-rate drop and it can have long load times.

Risen 1 plays out somewhat similarly to Gothic 1. I quite like it, but not as much as G1.

Risen 2 is the only PB game I haven't beaten. I get frustrated with the wonky combat and stop playing. I'm sure it gets okay once you get far enough though. (Also, they ditched the setting of Risen 1 and suddenly added this random industrial era Pirate theme out of nowhere)

Risen 3 is pretty good, but IMO once you figure out how things work it's too easy. It's the only PB game I'd describe as being too easy.

I'm a big PB fan myself, if that wasn't obvious.

Gothic 3 is my favorite because of its huge area and challenges. However, the final community patch is really necessary to play the game (I believe the final version of the CPT patch was 1.75.14). It seems like several things from Gothic 3 made their way into Elex. For example, in Elex you can see some NPCs such as berserkers carrying a large box from one place to another. In G3, you could see slaves in the desert doing it exactly the same way. It's like deja vu for me. In either game, walk into a room of sleeping NPCs and hear "oh, why did you wake me" or "you don't belong here." And as in Elex, choices matter, NPCs remember things you did or said.

Try Gothic 1 (maybe with graphics mod today but I don't know I played it back in the day).
Introduced me to a lot of things in life like medieval festivals and music groups.

I've kinda pinned it down what's stellar about Elex.. the loot. From the meaningfulness (nothing is wasted), to the placement (somebody had to put it there!), to the in-game mechanics for it (not mentioned because of spoiler).
That and a never before seen verticality make this an Adventure you should not miss out on.
In e.g. Witcher 3 I felt like 1/3 rolling around and 1/3 looking at the ground using blurry-vision wasted 2/3 of the game time.

yes and no.
Gothic 1&2 were milestones (well bugs here and there but it was playable)
Gothic 3 was a mess (because of the gamebreaking bugs it never got a fifth chance from me ... not again :( )
Risen was a great restart. I even didn't find any really challinging bugs
Risen 2 ... well never completed it, because at some point it was not interessting enough
Risen 3 ... well I just give it a second try but ... I totally miss the Gothic feeling

Elex ... well it is really great (so far) but I can no longer play it because of crashes. I hope I really learn my lesson with the next PB game und just buy it when there are enough patches out. Right now I'm really frustrated because of this game, because it is so good but some bugs just lead to instant crashes and I can't progress in the story or even play the game longer than 2 seconds :(

I might have hit the jackpot or i'm just lucky but in 30+ hours I had maybe one crash. If you are having frequent crashes it may be your system because so far the game is very stable. Maybe a system or hardware compatibility issue? Not sure if some hardware is less stable with Elex.

Gothic 1,2 and 3, in the state in which PB officially abandoned them, are completely unplayable today--pretty much as they were when PB abandoned them.

However, today Gothic 1,2 and 3 are some of the best RPGs going after a decade and more of community patching, mods and texture upgrades!

If you plan to play these games--which I can heartily advise *now*--you'll probably want to start here for resources that lead to the community, patches and textures that really make these games playable today!

http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/threads/1485121-D3D11-Renderer-f%C3%BCr-Gothic-2-%28alpha%29-20

http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/threads/1340357-Release-Gothic-%C2%BD-%C2%97-SystemPack-%28ENG-DEU%29

--I had thought *everyone* knew that by now, as well-publicized as it has been over the last *decade*...;) But I guess not, eh? New folks coming in all the time. I have nothing against PB--at least the outlines for the games were good, but leaving them as they did--buggy messes, all three-- was as unprofessional as it gets, imo. The credit for these great games today unfortunately cannot be given to PB.

Will they leave ELEX in a similar mess when they decide to move on? Time will tell.

I completely agree that Gothic 3 needs work to make it playable- but I do not agree that Gothic 1 & 2 are unplayable messes (not to argue that unofficial patches and add-ons are at all a bad thing!).

I agree with you on this. G1 and G2 are very playable in their original state. A few config file tweaks and they are good to go on most modern machines

Well - Let's not forget that Gothic 3 was pushed out by the publisher before PB was ready with the game. Since that event they have broken with that publisher and gone to THQ Nordic. As you can see the games after Gothic 3 where a lot more bug free. Risen 1 was a good restart, and while people are not exactly happy with Risen2 and 3, I found those games very playable.

Elex is is one of the best games PB made so far. I really looking forward to Elex 2, although I suspect it will take a fair while before that game will be ready.

The "Community Patch Team" made a large patch for Gothic 3 (last version I think was 1.75.14) which makes it quite playable. There are still some minor bugs but nothing game-breaking.

Quite true! I don't blame PB too harshly for G3.

Eh, the community patch is very helpful but the worst issues like the load times and frame rate drops are not fixed by it.

Pretty sure the 1.08k patches for G1 and the 2.6/7 patches for G2 are *third party patches*. I think GOG includes both patches in its versions of the games, although I can't recall exactly atm. On my Win10x64 system I can't get either game to run without those patches, and, very importantly, the System Pack patches, as well. Yes, G3 at ver 1.6 was an abandoned and unplayable, buggy mess, imo. I bought all three games when new. I owned the Steam version of G2 (long after I lost my original G2 Cds somehow) before I bought the GOG version--and I could not even get it to run without the 2.7/6 community patch. 2.6 is recommended for the latest patches and mods.

There is nothing like playing G1 and G2 at 2560x1440 in Win10x64--with texture-patch enhancements, and so on. Perhaps where we are disagreeing in is your definition of "playable"...;) The games now play better and are more configurable and much better looking than they ever were when PB abandoned them--but I have to give the credit to mods, especially the D3d11 mod for G2 and G1, the patches and system packs. I would not advise anyone to even consider playing G1 and G2 without using these patches--the D3d11 mod is especially beautiful on my Rx-480 8GB gpu.

Properly patched with texture mods--and I can highly recommend the d3d11 mod for D3d--I would not play these games ever again without them--G1 and G2 are really a lot of fun even today. I highly recommend both. The Community patched G3 game (1.75.14) is the *only* way to play this game as well.