Encased starts out well enough. But ultimately it has too many problems. I'm a completionist, I don't like leaving games unfinished, but I really had to force myself with that one.
One big thing is that you can really feel that the developers ran out of time and/or money and the game is barely finished. The prologue is polished, interesting and decently paced. Act 1 starts showing some cracks but still holds up well enough. By the time act 2 rolls around though, it starts falling apart. You unlock a bunch of settlements and all of them are big yet almost empty. You move slowly, so it takes a good two minutes to traverse these areas to go talk to the local leader, and then two more to go back to the exit so you can go do the boring fetch quest they just gave you. Repeat two to three times per faction.
Everywhere you go, there are a myriad of containers and boxes and lockers and so on that you can check. First, for some reason, sometimes looting a container gives you a progress bar that takes about two seconds to fill before you see what you've found. If anything. Because a lot of containers are empty. Those that aren't, will almost always contain the same worthless junk you've been picking up since the very beginning of the game.
Upon realizing that, you might decide to stop looting stuff, but you shouldn't! Because occasionally there are very good items to be found, and they'll be in the exact same containers as the junk. I've found a skillbook for example (permanent +15 to a specific skill, basically a full level worth of points) in a nondescript box just laying on the ground. Not even particularly out of the way or tucked in a corner. Just a box laying there. Also looting a container gives a bit of experience - not much, but it really adds up in the end.
Combat is interesting at first, but like the rest of the game becomes progressively more annoying as time goes on. The various weapons are not well balanced, with for example submachine guns being terrible and hand to hand being stupidly overpowered (generally melee is much better than ranged, as ammo is scarce and firearms are not nearly powerful enough to compensate). Another annoying thing is that there are combat skills and utility skills, but enemies you face never invest into utility, which means they increase their combat skills much faster than you. Finally, enemy resistances and health generally increase faster than your damage output, so late game fights are boring slogs against bullet sponge enemies.
Companions are one note and boring. They don't really react to things other than the occasional line here or there, they don't have much dialogue when you talk to them, they all have custom weapons they can't unequip that initially are quite good but eventually fall behind pretty hard (you can upgrade weapons, but it's much more efficient to buy or find already upgraded replacements until the later tiers, but companions' personal weapons obviously don't have identical replacements and therefore need to be upgraded from start to finish, which is [i]very[/i] expensive, and of course requires the appropriate skills), and you can't allocate their skillpoints and perks how you wish, so they'll tend to scatter their skill around and progress at a snail pace.
The survival elements are a chore. Getting food and drinks is a non issue, so all those system do is force you to rummage through your stash or go to a merchant every now and then. Fatigue is similar, but worse ; it's also quite manageable once you figure out what to do (namely, raid every coffee machine you see and buy lots of soda), but it's omnipresent, as it's also used in combat and exploration. Basically everything raises your fatigue : using a combat ability, getting hit by some combat abilities, using a skill (fun fact : apparently picking a door's lock is just as tiring as bashing it open), using some items, and also it just plain increases over time, and a lot faster than hunger or thirst too. So you're constantly dealing with it, either by chucking coffee and soda or finding a bed and sleeping.
Random events are bad. About two third of them are either basic fights in basic locations, or merchants. The rest are feeble, half-assed attempts at worldbuilding. Now, I understand that a story doesn't always have to give answers to everything, especially in that kind of genre. But I do take issue with having to figure out the question as well. When I get a random encounter that takes me to a pile of burning robot kids, and there is [i]nothing[/i] to do with that (can't inspect it, can't scan it, can't talk to other NPCs about it, no references to it are made anywhere, no indications or even [i]suggestions[/i] of what might have happened whatsoever - once you leave the map it's gone forever and it might as well not have existed), I don't think "gee, how mysterious! That made me think about the setting and its world!", I think "wow, they didn't try very hard with that one".
Random events can also happen outside of the world map. Notably, it's possible for towns to be attacked, which is a pain because NPCs can and will die when that happens. You can also get events when sleeping. Sometimes, you'll get an event saying you slept badly and regained no fatigue. There are no timed mission outside of the prologue at the very beginning, so nothing is stopping you from just sleeping again. It's just there to waste your time.
There are a bunch of other little annoying things too - the game having crafting means you have to pick up everything in case it's useful, the writing sometimes having the narrator speak in places that don't make sense for voiced dialogue (e.g a character talks, immediately followed by the narrator saying something like "she says angrily" - yeah, I heard her, I could tell she was angry, thank you), sometimes the narration doesn't make sense (such as a character "looking at the ceiling" while outdoors or another "crossing their hands on the desk" while standing up in an encampment with no tables), sometimes companions get in the way and you have to manually switch places with them, sometimes they'll walk into traps or anomalies and get hurt for no reason, the interface is obtuse (a soda will tell you it gives you healing and the soda effect. You need to right click and view details to know what the hell that's supposed to mean), etc, etc.
TL;DR : it starts as a 6/10 game and quickly drops to a 4/10 or even a 3/10. I don't recommend it.
