So gentlemen, how much is elex similar gothic 1 and 2. Starting with combat, atmosphere and npcs... Is it still old school 2000-ish game?

Still feels like a PB game, that's for sure. Combat is clunky, but more in-depth than usual.
Atmosphere is strong but not quite at Gothic 1 or 2 levels for me. But I'm only a few hours
in so far. The game still does that thing were nobody treats you like you're something special
and you have to work for respect. Also you can play without a minimap/radar and still find
all your quest objectives, just like in Gothic/Risen. No blindly following a marker necessary!

The jet pack is easily the best addition so far, great fun to explore the world vertically. Very nice
for flying over walls when the guards won't let you through the gate. :D

It is like Gothic 3 without bugs with new setting and graphics. And also with jetpack.

Well, let's put it this way
I ran into someone who told me about the world, and offered to guide me to their camp (Gothic 1, 2, 3)
The camp has Cultivators that grow stuff (Gothic 1, 2 Risen 1)
When they're off work, they usually sit around and smoke (Gothic 1, 2, Risen 1)
There are different camps I can go to, and I can choose to join one of the camps (Gothic 1, 2, 3, Risen 1, 2)

I've played for 3 hours, 26 minutes, and I have a strong feeling of Deja Vu

ah yes your right now im thinking about gothic 1 about thoe peeps smoking weed.... and then like those hearth growers whatever... ye its somewhat exactly the same :).. but must admit this game is difficelt... well with melee combat anyways that is what i like but when the mobs go do ranged attacks its like they have homing missles and aimbot :(

Yup, I'm having a MUCH harder time in Elex than I did with Gothic and Risen thanks to that damned Stamina meter.
My Stamina bar is usually gone in two swings, so now I try and do everything with a bow, but even then I die, especially with those poison spitting spine hounds

and the most annoiying of them all is when you do swings it remembers how many times you quickly touched the mouse so you do 456 swings even out of stanima and you are so getting beat down... but it gives ya time to relax ya trigger finger into relax clicking with more tactic clicking.. but i even clickted 4 times and it did 5 attacks or like it dodges when you dont wanna so ye there are still faulty stuff in the game they could fix :P

THAT must be why I couldn't switch from Bow to Axe.
I had bow set to 2 and Axe set to 1

The Critter got to close, and I hit 1 trying to switch to axe, then I hit the mouse button, thinking I had switched to axe, and I shot another arrow.
I had to hit 1 about seven times in order to switch, like you said, as if all my bow shots were queued and I had to wait.

During the initial part of the game where you can choose to go check out the place where the Clerics got killed with Duras, I was fighting a couple of those mutated Rats, and all of a sudden I switched to very slow motion, for absolutely no reason whenever I took a swing, so far luckily it hasn't happened again

ow well it doesnt save my ranged shots... only the melee sucks :)

Similar alot and loving it, only thing pisses me off that gog.com havent added a day 1 patch for the game. How pathetic can that be... Id assume it would auto patch the game since its not pirated version... But nope, they dont even have the patch to begin with. Im only several hours into game before i was like wheres day 1 patch, im not regening energy upon sleeping....

An update just downloaded about 2 minutes ago.
I'm assuming it address everything in the Steam Patch Notes.

IMHO, it's as authenthic as the Gothic I:
- shitty fighting system, ranged weapon and magic uses your soul and nerves as ammo as well;
- very deep and interesting world;
- atmosphere of lonelyness and fear, but yet with a distant hope;
- with the question in the air: "what the fuck is going on here?"

Viva la hardcore gaming!

ow btw get atop the those hearts the beserkers plant those big ones there is sometimes or mostly a plant there so if you learn to make potions and find the recipe for it you can make potions that will perm +20 stamina :)