Enshrouded

The exploration is genuinely rewarding, the building system is one of the best I've used in a survival game, and the progression always gives you something to work toward without feeling like a grind. Every time I logged in to "just organize my storage," I somehow ended up remodeling my entire base instead. If you're into survival games, RPG progression, or just have an unhealthy relationship with saying "one more thing," this game is absolutely worth it.

Don't play this survival RPG first. It does so many survival mechanics so well that other survival games can end up feeling clunky and unpolished by comparison. The world is massive, and you can spend countless hours simply exploring it. The combat and gameplay mechanics are engaging, and gliders make traversing the enormous map both practical and fun. The world is carefully crafted, packed with fine details, and avoids the copy-and-paste dungeon design that plagues so many games in the genre. What deserves special mention, however, isn't the stunning graphics—it's the building system. It feels like it was designed by people who actually play survival games. Building pieces snap together intuitively, and the placement tools give you a huge amount of freedom and precision. As someone who spends a lot of time "SimCity-ing" in survival games, this is easily the best building system I've ever used. The snapping just works, and you can create anything from a cozy hobbit hole to a towering castle. Optimization is probably the game's biggest weakness. Certain areas, especially the main castle, can suffer from performance issues because there's so much happening at once. The water effects can also bring even a powerful system to its knees. That said, the developers have been actively improving performance, and it has already gotten noticeably better. I'm confident most of these issues will be addressed by the 1.0 release, but even in its current state, the game remains very playable.

I recommend this game

its fun, snd building is enjoyable

This is a tough decision, but since this is a 'mixed' review I can't recommend it. This game hits a lot of high notes. The Enshrouded mechanic is neat. It has some basic itemization like you'd find in an ARPG. You finish quests and get xps and level up. The penalty for death isn't even as harsh as in other building games where you lose all your stuff. The world is pretty neat. The drawbacks are too many, though. There are really only a few builds available. The play control is terrible. There's a peculiar lag in the control scheme that means I'm still stuck doing an action I queued, even though I pressed a different key before I started the current action. This happens most frustratingly in combat, but also while mining or harvesting. This is what killed it for me, since so much of what you'll be doing is fighting. I spent almost as much time fighting the camera as the enemies since it's far too often that I find something in the way of my dude and the camera. Zoom in and out is frustratingly unreliable. The prevalence of grass means I can barely ever snipe stuff while crouched unless it's way close since I can barely see it through the grass. It's just all too much. Maybe things will get better for the 1.0 release. Here's to hoping.

bad game ♥♥♥