Enshrouded Review – Survival Action RPG with Less Pal, But Much More World in Test

Enshrouded offers an exciting mix of role-playing and classic survival in a voxel world similar to Minecraft

Enshrouded is a game that offers survival in an open world similar to Ark, Valheim, or Conan Exiles. Unlike most of its competitors, however, there is a complex RPG system under the hood, many traps and puzzles make the gameplay more interesting and the open world, building mode, and crafting are really something special. There is also solo play, but up to 16 players can take part in multiplayer. The PC version was released on Steam with Early Access Release Date on 24.01.24, developed by Keen Games from Frankfurt/Germany

This post is available as text and a YouTube Video (German Voice-Over, English Subtitles). So you can choose how you like to enjoy it most.

Enshrouded Review Video

German Voice-Over, many subtitles

Enshrouded Review – Intro

Hello, Zap here. In this Enshrouded review, you’ll get a little insight into the new multiplayer action role-playing game with build mode, survival, and multiplayer in a huge open world. I’ll tell you how it is played, what’s in it, and at the end I’ll give it a rating. But above all, I want to give you all the information so that you can decide for yourself whether you might enjoy the game.

Enshrouded is developed and self-published by Keen Games from Frankfurt. This studio has already produced several successful games, including Portal Knights and Sacred 3. I received a free test key, thanks for that. However, this should not influence my rating, as I always test all games with the thought in the back of my mind of how I would feel if I had paid the full price.

Hintergrund – Enshrouded Early Access Release

Keen Games has released Enshrouded with the addition “Early Access”. This means that development is not yet complete. There will be many more enhancements and patches in the future and the DEVs are already collecting plenty of feedback and ideas to better adapt the future development to the players and their wishes.

Early access games can be very unpredictable. There are complete construction sites abandoned by the developers after a short time, as well as games that are completely playable and in good shape, where the developers have a lot of plans.

I can tell skeptics in advance that Enshrouded definitely belongs in the second group. It runs stably, all the core features are already included, and the game offers more than 50 hours of playtime. So there’s no need to worry that you’re investing in an unfinished construction site that will never be finished.

Game Type – Open World Action-RPG with Construction Mode and Light Survival

Roughly speaking, Enshrouded can be compared to Ark, Conan Exiles, or Valheim. However, it has some special features and characteristics that set it apart from these games, making it feel very independent and not like a mere copy of its role models.

An essential pillar on which the fun of Enshrouded is based is the huge open world. The map in the game seems gigantic at first. However, only about 40-50% of the displayed area is actually available in the game so far.

But even for this area, you need at least 40-50 hours to roughly explore everything. If you investigate details and look for secrets in the last corner, it’s more like 1-200 hours of playtime.

Even though the map is not yet fully integrated, it offers a well-rounded gaming experience in the regions that have been unlocked so far. And yet it would still take around half an hour to run through the world from south to north or from west to east. But this is not possible without further ado, as the dangers and monsters as well as rugged mountain slopes will stop you in your tracks so that it won’t work.

The map of Enshrouded is particularly striking due to its three-dimensional design. In addition to huge buildings and deep valleys, there are also extremely high mountains and almost always an extensive tunnel system running right through them. As a welcome support, you are given a grappling hook for shimmying upwards and a paraglider quite early on, with which you can throw yourself down from the high mountains to move faster through the landscape. These can also be upgraded several times during the course of the game.

The world consists entirely of a so-called voxel system. This means you can get out your pickaxe anytime and anywhere and destroy everything, tear down walls, and dig tunnels, completely unrestricted. You often discover secret rooms, hidden treasures, useful shortcuts, and other secrets.

Technically, this is realized in such a way that the entire world consists of small blocks, similar to Minecraft. However, the worlds in Minecraft consist of 1-meter blocks, whereas here 10cm cubes and a smoothing system are used. This creates much, much more detailed structures.

This gives you a lot of options, both when building bases and when discovering secrets. Very often you can avoid trapdoors or blocked doors by simply creating your path away from the obvious. And when mining resources, you can find and mine mines and seams at great depths.

Gameplay – Construction Mode and Base Building

The construction of buildings starts relatively beginner-friendly with simple building structures, such as floor slabs, walls, door frames, sloping surfaces for roofs, and so on. In the beginning, the game only offers a small selection of building materials. Over time, however, you can unlock more than 20 different building styles, from clay walls to several wooden styles to half-timbering, from bone walls to several types of city walls to oriental-style sandstone.

In addition to constructing buildings and decorating them with furniture, crates, beds, and crafting stations, you can also create farm fields to collect numerous plants from the world and cultivate them at home. This is relatively uncomplicated and ensures a plentiful supply of food and potions.

In addition to the extensive selection of prefabricated components that can be freely combined, there is also the option to build directly based on voxels. This allows you to redesign existing components by removing, adding, or replacing individual blocks. But completely free construction is also possible with the small cubes. There are virtually no limits for creative builders to create real works of art.

Wait, but there are limits. Because at the beginning, you only have 2 building sites with a maximum size of 40x40x40 meters at your disposal. Only as the game progresses can the size of the building sites and the quantity be increased enormously. However, a lot of material is required to obtain the largest building sites. And if you want to have a particularly large number of locations and teleporters, you also have to manage to defeat certain main bosses.

Here I see potential for the real builders to create true wonders and beauties.

Survival – How to Survive in Enshrouded

The survival system in Enshrouded is currently still quite simple. There is no hunger, no thirst, you don’t necessarily have to sleep, and you don’t have to worry about diseases or wounds.

There is no automatic healing at the beginning, and just sleeping or eating something is not enough. You need special berries and later more complex food that you have to cook first. You can also earn buffs for stamina mana regeneration and other benefits at the campfire or later at the cooking area or stove. But there are also bandages.

All in all, this area is quite nice, but nothing that carries much weight. Healing is a little more complex at the beginning, but at the latest when you have a real healer in your party or have learned to heal yourself from the tank, for example, it is almost completely reduced to pure buff eating.

Enshrouded Image Gallery (Part I) – Gameplay Screenshots

Klicke oder Tippe auf eines der Bilder für eine größere Ansicht.
In der vergrößerten Ansicht kannst Du links und rechts am Rand umblättern

Gameplay – Characters and Role Play

It’s not complete survival, but there is a complex RPG system. You get experience for everything you do, with mining actions and monster kills increasing your character level, there are no direct levels for harvesting skills.

For every level up, you get one skill point, which you can then invest in a moderately complex skill tree. There are no exact character classes, but the skills are roughly sorted into such classes, whereby you can skill freely in different ways. There are 12 directions on offer, 4 warrior, 4 rogue-like, and 4 mage classes. For example, tank and healer are included here, as well as 10 different damage dealer classes.

The skill selection includes smaller passive skills that simply increase a basic value such as strength or intelligence. But there are also finer things that improve critical damage or even come with their own complete active skills that can be used to ambush enemies, jump on them, or bring down stunned enemies with extra powerful special attacks. Not to forget, some skills ensure faster dismantling abilities.

Combat and Exploration

As already mentioned, you can use your skill points to gain a few additional combat features. A warrior can stun enemies, a tank can hold aggro and protect teammates, and a ranger can shoot multiple arrows and have better aim. Battle mages gain the ability to always inflict fire damage on all enemies in the area and healers automatically heal all friends in the area. And that was just a small selection of the most striking skills.

There is also a dodge and block system that reacts quite well. All active skills as well as defenses and sprints consume stamina, the regeneration of which is best accelerated with food and potions. Overall, fighting feels good, for my taste. It is quite intuitive and fun to use. You can get started without any major hurdles and over time there are more complex combat variants, which is very well done.

In addition to skills and skill levels, a good role-playing game also needs dark locations, threatening scenarios, and good battles. Enshrouded has a lot to offer in this area.

When exploring the world of Enshrouded, there are numerous abandoned villages and beautiful landscapes, which are often full of varied monster types. But there are also secrets, treasures, and lots of old temples to discover. You can almost always get special items for quests or good equipment there, as well as teleport points or tools for the crafter NPCs.

However, this often involves mastering more or less complex switch puzzles, traps, and jump passages. To solve these, you often have to find half-hidden climbing markers for our grappling hook and then also swing and climb skillfully. We often did a lot of puzzling and researching as a team before we were able to tick the respective locations off as “completed”.

Crafting and Gathering

There are lots of different materials and recipes to discover in Enshrouded. The raw materials are usually found while exploring, which then unlocks a few recipes. Later, through quests, you also awaken NPCs who act as a kind of teacher and quest giver. Each person represents a crafting sub-area. There is a carpenter, an alchemist, a female farmer, a huntress, and a blacksmith, and they all have numerous other building instructions on offer.

Special recipes can sometimes be obtained from books or discoveries in chests and hidden locations. In addition, these NPCs keep giving you new missions to get them more tools, which then increase the selection of crafting options.

The best way to do this is to set up a permanent base, as these NPCs can be used as a kind of workbench and can only be set up once in the world. You can build numerous bases over time, but due to this limitation with the craft NPCs, it somehow boils down to a main base and a few side stations. At least that’s how it worked out for us. And I think there’s no way around it, at least now. Unless you want to carry everything from A to B all the time.

Gameplay – Story and Quests

In addition to exploring and farming, Enshrouded also has a bit of history. The previous world was completely destroyed by hostile creatures and a threat called Miasma. This is a fog that has flooded the world, at least in the valleys, and you can only stay in it for a few minutes at a time before you die.

However, the game only has 5 quest NPCs, which you have to find and awaken first. These 5 NPCs tell a few smaller stories, which almost always revolve around crafting tools, which you then have to obtain for them. However, this requires more extensive journeys into unknown, dangerous areas. There are also a huge number of notes and books to be found, which always tell short text stories that you can read if you want to.

You have to read the texts, there is no voice output or video sequences like in other RPGs such as Baldur’s Gate 3. But I don’t think that would be appropriate or necessary. But it is not absolutely necessary, because if something is described in the texts that belong to a quest or where you can find something, you get a quest marker on the map, or the corresponding location is displayed directly. And so you can get through the game almost without reading. You just have to look at the map a lot and search through it, then you can do it without reading orgies.

Enshrouded offers a built-in library where you can later, if you want, read all the texts, all the region descriptions, and even more details about almost all the monsters and items. So you can quickly click on when the group is waiting and, if you are interested, browse through everything again in a less exciting minute.

Multiplayer, Game-Sessions, Hosting and Server

Enshrouded offers the option of starting a single-player game or playing a locally hosted co-op game. The performance is quite good in both cases. The world is saved at the host, but each player has a savegame of their character, which can also be used on different worlds, including inventory content. Up to 16 players can explore, fight and build together in one world.

Conveniently, you can join your Steam friends directly, making it easier to search for game sessions and servers. You can secure your game with a password, which I would also strongly recommend. Of course, these locally hosted game sessions have the disadvantage that the group can only play when the host is present and online.

However, as is usual with this type of game, there are also so-called dedicated servers for Enshrouded. This means that you can install software on your own server that offers the world permanently and where you can log in at any time. There are plenty of instructions for this on the Internet, and I will be happy to link to a few below.

Alternatively, you can also rent a ready-made server from the usual game server hosting companies. Here, however, you often pay a considerable amount for a tiny server slot on a large server. Unfortunately, the performance and maintenance is often not so good and lags are to be expected. So if you have specialist knowledge or are good at PC technology, I would recommend installing a server yourself.

Technology, Graphics, Sound, Engine and Translation

Keen Games has built its own engine for Enshrouded. And it really packs a punch. This technical foundation not only conjures up beautiful lighting effects and harmonious landscapes. On top of that, the voxel system also enables much more complex gameplay, both in terms of construction and in terms of level design and exploration options. As I said, Enshrouded is essentially a kind of Minecraft, only with much finer blocks.

Keen Games then places all kinds of stylish models for furniture, decorations, garbage and loot in this voxel world to fill the world with life. The textures and 3D models of the finished components are consistently stylish and practical. The design is high quality and results in a coherent world.

The soundtrack for combat and the environment is upper middle class, most things make passable noises and I never had the impression that it was too quiet or that I heard something inappropriate. The music consists of orchestral pieces and spherical sounds, nothing outstanding, but I never found it distracting.

There is no voice acting at all, apart from a few welcome samples from the NPCs. The texts in the German version are of consistently high quality, I hardly noticed any spelling mistakes or strange formulations. In addition to German, there is language support for 14 other languages, but I can’t say anything about their quality at the moment.

In addition to the mouse and keyboard controls, the game also offers full compatibility for Xbox and Playstation controllers. The options menu for the graphics is extensive and easy to configure, so that Enshrouded will run well even on older and weaker PCs.

How well does Enshrouded run on the Steamdeck?

Enshrouded is easy to control on the deck. With low details, you can play largely smoothly at 30 FPS. As is usually the case, the texts are only moderately legible, but otherwise you can enjoy it on Steam’s small handheld without any restrictions.

Enshrouded Image Gallery (Part II) – Gameplay Screenshots

Klicke oder Tippe auf eines der Bilder für eine größere Ansicht.
In der vergrößerten Ansicht kannst Du links und rechts am Rand umblättern

Enshrouded Test – Opinion and Conclusion

Let’s start with the criticism and problems. Sometimes monsters get stuck in the floor, this happens rarely, but when it happens it’s annoying. You can dig them out with a pickaxe during the fight and once they’re exposed, it’s possible to kill them. But it does have a somewhat immersion-destroying effect.

What bothered me a bit is that quest revelations sometimes apply server-wide, which makes the interaction more difficult and sometimes more annoying. In any case, under these conditions, I only want to play Enshrouded with good friends with whom I can coordinate well. And even then there were some minor frictions.

5 NPCs is a rather small number

The NPCs and their tools that you unlock are also always completely server-wide. And you can only position these 5 people in a single base. I found that a bit disappointing, but unfortunately I can’t think of a better solution. Overall, however, I think that 5 NPCs are a bit too few and it would be nice if there were ways to use the features of these NPCs in different locations.

The sorting dilemma

Crafting becomes enormously extensive over time. Well over 100 raw materials, intermediate materials, and suchlike have to be collected and sorted. This creates a great need for crates and requires a lot of goods management in order to maintain a reasonably usable collection of materials with the group. A few times I wished there was some kind of automatic sorting system to make tidying up the inventory a little easier.

The game already offers a first level of relief here with the magic crates, so that you don’t have to constantly carry everything to the crafting devices and NPCs. But sorting everything is often a bit time-consuming and the magic boxes only come later in the game and are expensive to produce. Unfortunately, there are no signs to label crates to make sorting and searching at least a little easier.

And it can easily become annoying, especially if you can’t find exact sorting rules for your group and not everyone in the group actually sticks to them. If you fall into disorder here, total chaos is sure to ensue very quickly, which will certainly make crafting rather unpleasant.

Again, I wouldn’t want to play this with anyone other than my closest friends. Because this requires so much coordination and organization you would either get into trouble with each other in no time in more casual or even random groups, or it simply wouldn’t work to craft like this properly.

And I’ve already heard of the first people who specifically visit open servers, loot bases, and then run off with the materials. A good password and precise selection of players are therefore urgently needed. Private chests and access rules for crates and/or the building site would also be helpful here. Demolishing a settlement is also too quick and too easy; there should also be password protection and expiry times of more than 30 seconds.

One of the most beautiful worlds of all fantasy open world games

The game offers an extremely varied world. One of the strongest points in favor of Enshrouded is the enormously varied, detailed, and, above all, three-dimensional world design. There are several sections of the world, each with a completely different design and different biomes.

From green meadows and rolling mountains to sandy savannah with steep ravines, to swamps filled with water and mud, there are several different landscapes, all with their own building styles and different enemies.

Add to this the fact that the world is shrouded by a miasma threat in the lower levels with miasma fog turning everything into a dark and twisted mushroom equivalent of the world above the fog, which actually doubles the number of styles.

This tremendously good and hand-designed map is a real treat on the first playthrough. I will say that the Enshrouded map is one of the most beautiful fantasy open worlds I’ve ever seen, and there have been quite a few. It offers adventure and role-playing for both group and solo players over a few hundred hours for sure.

But I’m afraid that the replay value won’t be that great. Because once you know everything, a lot of that joy of exploration is gone when you start the game again, and there are, at least so far, neither other maps nor a map generator or major random elements in the world that could offer variation. There are also no options for difficulty level, monster density, etc. so far. Keen Games could still improve a lot in this area.

The darkness is really dark

It’s a bit of a shame that the time display is missing. Exploring in the dark can be quite stressful because dark means really dark here. And even if there are torches that can conjure up a great ambiance when it comes to combat at the latest, you have to pick up a weapon instead of a torch and then night excursions are rather difficult.

The next best thing is to take a night trip into a foggy area. That’s very creepy and atmospheric. But fighting there without a light source can be dangerous, especially if the enemy ranged fighters cover you with bombs and arrows from somewhere in the dark. I hope that the game will offer some portable light sources later on so that you don’t have to put down your weapon or have a party member run along as a torchbearer and arm candlestick.

Unfortunately, there is no clock in the UI or on the map. A time display would make it easier to decide whether it is about to get dark. As it is, you have to rely on interpreting the position of the sun, which is sometimes difficult, especially if you are in a ravine or inside the shadow of a mountain. At least you can speed up the night, the more players lie down in a bed at night, the faster the night passes.

Enshrouded is a great game, highly recommended

All in all, our group of 6 people had more than 50 hours, some even over 100 hours of fun in Enshrouded. The exploration is great, the building is extensive, and the battles are between relaxed and challenging. The multiplayer features are well thought out and work well.

Apart from the fact that the map is not yet complete, I think Enshrouded could easily have been released without the Early Access add-on. The game quality, performance, stability, and all-around feel of the game are already at a very high level. The price of just under 30 euros or dollars is more than reasonable and I think it’s also very fair for the scope on offer and the already good quality.

I am very excited to see where the journey with Enshrouded will take us over the next few months. Keen Games has a good reputation for continuing to develop its games after release, enhancing them with new content and supporting them. So I’m hoping for some good updates in the future.

In summary, Enshrouded is a great action RPG for both solo and multiplayer players and I can only recommend taking a look at it. Even if I suspect that this look will take a few dozen hours.

Enshrouded Image Gallery (Part III) – Gameplay Screenshots

Klicke oder Tippe auf eines der Bilder für eine größere Ansicht.
In der vergrößerten Ansicht kannst Du links und rechts am Rand umblättern

Enshrouded Review – Rating

If I summarize all these points and let the many exciting hours in Enshrouded pass before my mind’s eye, the game offers an enormous amount for explorers and fans of multiplayer role-playing games, as well as for open world fans and master builders.

For the fair price of just under 30 euros or dollars, Enshrouded offers a complete gaming experience and content for dozens of hours of fun right from the Early Access launch. Therefore I would like to award a base rating of 95%.

There is still room for improvement though. I would like to deduct two percent for minor problems here and there, the somewhat rudimentary camp options, and what I consider a lack of NPCs. But without random elements and a map generator, I see problems with the replay value, which I rate with another 3% deduction. This brings me to a still wonderful final score for Enshrouded of 90%

I am very sure that Keen Games will add a lot more content, features, and more of everything to the game in the coming months, as well as some fine-tuning. This will probably improve the score even more, I see the potential for up to 95% if the DEVs make a real effort.

Enshrouded

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Enshrouded offers an exciting mix of role-playing and classic survival in a voxel world similar to Minecraft

Enshrouded is a game that offers survival in an open world similar to Ark, Valheim, or Conan Exiles. Unlike most of its competitors, however, there is a complex RPG system under the hood, many traps and puzzles make the gameplay more interesting and the open world, building mode, and crafting are really something special. There is also solo play, but up to 16 players can take part in multiplayer. The PC version was released on Steam with Early Access Release Date on 24.01.24, developed by Keen Games from Frankfurt/Germany

Graphics

Survival

World Design

Combat

Roleplay

Construction Mode

State of the Game (Early Access Start)

Scope of the Game

Fun per Price ratio

Rating

If I summarize all these points and let the many exciting hours in Enshrouded pass before my mind’s eye, the game offers an enormous amount for explorers and fans of multiplayer role-playing games, as well as for open world fans and master builders.

For the fair price of just under 30 euros or dollars, Enshrouded offers a complete gaming experience and content for dozens of hours of fun right from the Early Access launch. Therefore I would like to award a base rating of 95%.

There is still room for improvement though. I would like to deduct two percent for minor problems here and there, the somewhat rudimentary camp options, and what I consider a lack of NPCs. But without random elements and a map generator, I see problems with the replay value, which I rate with another 3% deduction. This brings me to a still wonderful final score for Enshrouded of 90%

I am very sure that Keen Games will add a lot more content, features, and more of everything to the game in the coming months, as well as some fine-tuning. This will probably improve the score even more, I see the potential for up to 95% if the DEVs make a real effort.

4.5

Outro

Do you like beating up monsters with friends and exploring a beautiful world? Or are sorting hundreds of item types and a missing map generator a no-go for you? Let me know your opinion in the comments or in the ZZ Community Discord.

You can find more gaming news, game reviews, and guides on the ZZ YouTube channel or here at https://zapzockt.de – click your thumbs, subscribe, and share with friends, and then I wish you a great day, ciao ciao, your Zap

Links and Sources

Dev Website

Enshrouded Steam Page