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Is Enshrouded more than a Valheim clone?

11K View2024-01-25

Enshrouded

9.8

SandboxAction RPGSurvivalActionCraftingRPGOnline Co-OpPvE

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SHOULD I PLAY ENSHROUDED?

Definitely play Enshrouded if you’re a survival sandbox fan who’s gotten a little bored with procedurally generated worlds. Enshrouded’s handcrafted landscapes are dramatic and mysterious, full of secrets to discover, and blanketed in an ominous “shroud” of foggy fungus spores that create pockets of danger and unique rewards. While there are some annoying missing features and clunky design elements as it heads into early access, Enshrouded is a fun and fantastical alternative to games like Valheim and Sons of the Forest, with enough new ideas to stand on its own.

TIME PLAYED

I’ve played five hours of Enshrouded, and that’s on top of the four hours I put into the Steam Next Fest demo in the fall. I spent more time building this time around, and I ended up about where I did with the demo: I had leveled my first fire altar up once, found the blacksmith, gained a few new character traits, and cleared the first ancient spire and Elixir Well, the first real dungeon in the game. There’s loads more to do: The first spire I finished added nine more locations to my map, and from the top I could see the world stretching out in all directions.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT ENSHROUDED?

• A sense of adventure. The hand-built world of Enshrouded is the same every time you load a game, but I found that fact gave it a character and sense of mystery that I usually don’t find in games with procedurally generated worlds. There’s a story baked into the hills of Enshrouded, locations that have meaning, and trails to follow that actually lead to interesting places. That sense was even more intense whenever my travels took me down into a valley or dungeon covered by the shroud: a toxic cloud of evil spores that I could only survive in for five minutes at a time.

• The versatile building system. As I said, I spent more time constructing my base this time around, and it’s been enjoyable. The system is comparable to Valheim’s, but I could break down wood and stone and other materials into stacks of a hundred “building units” that would then automatically fill any shape I chose to use in building mode. So after mining stone or gathering logs, I’d take those to my workbench and break them all down into construction “blocks” and set straight to work putting up walls, doorframes, stairways, and foundations.

• Lots of character build options. Enshrouded doesn’t explain its character system very well, but there’s a dense character development tree, and I could see nodes fanning out from the center that would let me work toward goals like “tank,” “ranger,” and more. There were weapons available for various play styles, whether I wanted to be a tough axe-wielding bruiser, a magic-using DPS, or a healing support. Plenty of nodes on the skill tree focus instead on building and gathering, so combat wasn’t the only thing on my mind when I was choosing my upgrade path.

WHAT NEEDS IMPROVEMENT IN ENSHROUDED?

• Inventory management. I was consistently frustrated by my tiny inventory size during the opening hours of Enshrouded, a complaint I made after the demo as well. There were too many different materials and other item types for the couple dozen slots I started the game with, although the menu indicated that a backpack expansion eventually would become available. This was compounded by another problem: I couldn’t simply drop items on the ground. Instead, I had to unlock storage containers that I could build at the workbench—and in the meantime, I stashed all my extra stuff in the charcoal kiln. Not ideal!

• Disorganized skill tree. It was cool that I had a bunch of different directions for speccing out my character, but Enshrouded’s skill tree is badly in need of better labeling and organization. A bunch of nodes had no labels at all and I had to hover over each one individually to see what they did. It made planning my next moves way more cumbersome than it had to be.

• Combat still feels basic. Fights in Enshrouded always went basically the same way for my melee-focused build: I would dart in, land a two- or three-hit combo, then dodge-roll out of the way to avoid the enemy’s counterattack. My other go-to move was to bait out an attack string while circling around, and slash a couple times when I’d gotten around to their back as their attack animation played. Enemies only had a couple attack patterns to learn, and were all extremely predictable, so even dealing with groups of three at a time was pretty trivial. I’d love to see some combat variety added in over the course of early access.