It might just be your next obsession after Palworld | Early Access Review - Enshrouded

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✨Overview Enshrouded drops you into a mix of survival, crafting, and RPG action in a voxel wonderland. As the Flameborn, you're the last flicker of hope in a world desperate for it. You scavenge through fallen kingdoms, build stuff, and battle your way through natural and supernatural critters. All this to gather enough strength to face the horrors hiding in the Shroud, a misty nightmare covering the land and thus making it “Enshrouded”. Finally, after trying out the Enshrouded Demo a few months ago and getting excited for the release, the game has finally come out — at least in Early Access. I’ve tried the Early Access release version, and so far, so good already. 🟩Pros +Impressive high quality visuals +A mix of Survival Crafting, ARPG, Exploration, Platforming, and more +Granular base building system that lets you build up to the smallest details +ARPG style combat — like Dark Souls or Breath of the Wild +RPG progression system with skill trees and class professions +Optimized performance

🟥Cons -Missing some very useful quality-of-life features -The controls is a bit awkward, especially for controllers ⭐️Early Access Release Score: 8/10

📖Story and Premise There’s not much actual storytelling, but Enshrouded establishes a compelling backdrop with its premise of being the Flameborn, the last glimmers of hope in a world on the brink of extinction where the Shroud is covering the land in darkness. Scavenging through remnants of a fallen kingdom and rescuing other NPCs to become valuable allies becomes not just a gameplay mechanic but a narrative element. 🎨Visuals and Art The voxel-based graphics even in this early access version are pretty fine looking, super clean, and has no business looking this good. Enshrouded features immersive lighting effects, stylized character models, and beautifully crafted landscapes from lush forests to desolate, enshrouded regions. The game ran with Auto HDR on my PC and it was just simply gorgeous to look at. Might seem like a minor thing, but my favorite part of the visuals is the foliage — the grass, leaves, and plants — they actually nailed the presentation and it looks even better than most AAA games, with this crazy level of detail and polish that caught me off guard. Coming from playing Ghost of Tsushima which had the best-in-class foliage system, I was wonder why can’t other games pull it off too, well — Enshrouded is one of those games that has managed to pull it off. 🎮Gameplay Think Valheim meets Breath of the Wild – that's Enshrouded's playground. Survive, build, and dive into action RPG goodness. You're not just crafting; you're crafting with style --- and with friends. But it doesn’t stop at those two games only: playing it, you’ll probably find more elements inspired from other games as well, and they might be too many to mention. What matters is, the gameplay does seem to work. It features typical open-world online survival crafting elements, gathering for resources (trees, stones, etc), building your bases, and crafting materials and survival gear. The game opens up very early, but there are different quests that you can follow, especially in the first few parts of the game where you are still trying to grasp what you can do in this game. A huge part of this game is the focus on Exploration, that is — not everything can be gathered nearby, you really have to travel around to get materials that you want, as well as to get the help of NPCs that you want. There is also a Zelda-like dungeon crawling/exploration element with some of the locations, filled with Zelda-style puzzles and hazardous platforming. Grappling Hooks and Gliders? You name it. 🔨Building Building can be a bit confusing at first, kinda like Fortnite controls, heavy on the scroll wheel. But once you get the hang of it, I could see the building getting crazy fast. The building mechanics here let you get super detailed with small cube constructions. It's not like those normal survival games with huge 1x1 blocks – here, the sizes are ¼ smaller, making the equivalent of a regular 1x1 block an impressive 4x4, providing builders with greater flexibility and precision in their constructions. You can still build 4x4 structures right away, and even build 4x4 walls and floors on the spot. The inventory space is super forgiving, and you can build and carry a lot of stuff without intense farming — although I wish this part can be tweaked, especially if you’re the host or playing in singleplayer. ⚔️Combat

Combat is where Enshrouded shines compared to games like Ark:Survival or Rust. Inspired by Valheim, Dark Souls, and Breath of the Wild, it's adopts a more ARPG style of combat with a huge freedom to the movement. Target locking, Timing, dodging, and parrying matters. Melee, ranged, or magic – pick your poison. Switching between them feels smooth, and the game throws in platforming elements and puzzles to keep things interesting. ⏫Progression

Aside from upgrading your home base and finding NPCs, Leveling up and spending skill points is the main source of character progression. Enshrouded really has done it all by including RPG elements, a skill tree, and class system aswell ala-Skyrim. Customize your character with skills like reduced weapon degradation or enhanced endurance in the misty regions; or focus on class-based perks — the usual RPG stuff – wizard, battlemage, ranger, assassin, warrior, barbarian, and more. It really feels like i’m playing a good mash-up of every game I mentioned, with Survival Crafting as a core. 📊Technical Performance

Despite the game being in Early Access, the performance is actually good. It ran very well on my i7-8700k PC with an RTX 3080. Far better than other survival crafting games, while also looking much much better. The game running in on its own engine is definitely a good thing — it even has support for DLSS. No major game-breaking bugs encountered, but I've experienced some freezes or crashes, though they only happen rarely. When they do occur, I was glad my progress is always saved as soon as I reload the game. Controller support is already present although it’s a bit awkward to use at the moment, and thinking about it, the keyboard+mouse controls are a bit awkward to use too. There are lots of quality-of-life features still missing, or still not yet implement that I would have loved to have, such as auto-run, separate buttons for sprinting and crouching, or perhaps the ability to use materials directly from storages as long as you’re in your territory – small changes that could make a big difference. ⚖️Conclusion Palworld may have taken a lot of the spotlight, and this release might have been bad timing for Enshrouded, but the game is really solid Early Access outing overall. It offers a different take on survival crafting than other games do and is much more focused on delivering an Adventure and Action RPG-like experience. I know you're probably busy with Palworld, but I highly recommend giving Enshrouded a try next. It might just be your next obsession.

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