Best Sci-Fantasy RPG, made with love. Handcrafted open-world and a worthy successor to the Gothic Trilogy. Where is ELEX III ?

This game is not worth buying at full price , i would not recommend buying it until its at a 90% discount,
It is basically a Elex 1 + mods and patches (which actually makes many things worse) , it does not deserve its elex 2 title.

The story for all intents and purposes does not go beyond the original or even recognize your past achievments or alignments , everyone you meet treats you like a stranger or a traitor off the bat despite having ended the previous game on a relatively good if ambigous point. And some random characters may be really chummy for no obvious reason that is disclosed. Apparently there is one cannon ending to elex 1.

Characters are re used with convoluted reasons of why they are now in a completely new faction.

The controls and gameplay are full of jank ,
The progression and balance is all over the place , you can get thrown into near impossible fights for your level as part of the mission followed by a fight against enemies that are significantly weak in the next mission.
Feels like you were supposed to have multiple starting points to choose from but someone got impatient and forgot to actually give that choice to players.
Difficulty can really ramp up at times and unless you play like an exploiter (taking advantage of stat potions and knowing where the ideal gear for your level is) it can get very punishing ,

The world is large (its slightly bigger than elex 1 , and takes place in the same region) but is rather empty ,
more than 50 hours of content if you want to do "side activities" , which fortunately dont have progression stopping bugs (atleast i didnt see any)

The best part of the game for me ws when i completed the main questline , cause now i could uninstall it after nearly 50 hours of insanity.

TLDR: Not worth it. Pretend elex 1 had a bit more exposition in the end and you will not miss anything.