The new game, Enshrouded, came out last week, on January 25th. I got lucky and was able to obtain it that day, and of course, I had to get on and see what it was about. Steam describes Enshrouded on their store page, “You are Flameborn, last ember of hope of a dying race. Awaken, survive the terror of a corrupting fog, and reclaim the lost beauty of your kingdom. Venture into a vast world, vanquish punishing bosses, build grand halls, and forge your path in this co-op survival action RPG for up to 16 players.” Now, on to my experiences and thoughts about the game.
When you get into the game, you, of course, have to set up your character. The character customization is pretty basic. You don’t get many options for anything, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Lots of options, though fun, are time-consuming, and you could be playing. My friend Rick, however, says they look like hobbits. I disagree. The feet are wrong, though the toons do appear short. I named my toon Magickandie, but when my hubby sees me in the game, the name over my head is wife, which matches his name for me on Steam. I notice a similar thing with him and our friend Rick, their in game names match the ones on Steam. You only make one character, and it goes into any game you play, much like Valheim.
You don’t pick your class at the beginning; you get to pick it in the gameplay, but I am happy to say there is magick in the game, and you can also be a healer. The choices for classes are barbarian, warrior, tank, battlemage, healer, wizard, athlete, survivor, beastmaster, ranger, assassin, and trickster. You can be in more than one class. I will probably blend my healer into the wizard next to me. I like being a magic user and a healer, so blending healer and wizard seems like a natural choice. I will let you know how it goes. I haven’t tried to jump across from me, though. To “buy” a skill with points, you must have enough. I have seen them cost 1, 2, 3, and 4 points, and that must be the next connected one. I haven’t tried jumping across the circle where you start, though.
The game takes a whole lot of jumping and gliding. It makes for frustrating gameplay for me. I suck at jumping, and gliding is hard. I figured out that a, s, w, and d are what steer you while gliding. I had to go ask my friend Sig about getting out of gliding, which is the right mouse button. Or you can do it like me and just fly into the ground. Don’t hit the right mouse button too early, though; you’ll die. Take it from me: I did it. Jumping is just a challenge. You have to jump on walls to climb and sometimes jump walls while you are climbing. Yeah, I spent a half hour trying to do that in one spot only to die at the next jump fifteen steps later. I quit.
Also, there are areas with fog, and they are shrouded areas, hence the name Enshrouded. You can only survive for five minutes in the shroud, which goes quicker if you don’t have a torch. If you are still in the shroud when time is up, you simply die, and rezzing isn’t a thing in those areas. There are enemies to be found all over those areas, too, and some are harder to kill.
You have to be careful of the areas you go to, especially at a low level, because when they are at a higher level, they really are harder to kill. Levels take longer than other games I have played. Also, like Diablo, the more people in the game, the harder it is. This is easy enough to deal with. I stick close to home or take an escort. I am usually a squishy kind of player. Ok, ok. I suck at playing games. I have fun, though.
The crafting is much different than I am used to. Mostly, you can only craft one thing at a time. So, if you want to make fifty strings, you must click the crafting button fifty times. In the grinder, you can put the bones in there, and it crafts a bunch while you leave it alone. For crafting, you must also have the master of it do the crafting for you. You can do some crafting with and without a bench, but for cooking, you need the farmer, and for magick, you need the alchemist, and so on. There is terraforming in the game, which makes for a happy hubby. We have a base carved out of the mountain. Even the base building material look good. Some of the resources are hard to come by, such as resin. You get it from cutting down trees, but it doesn’t drop often.
I am not sure if I like the game. I am leaning towards no. For me, because as I said, because I suck at jumping and gliding a lot, so I spend too much dying or just in the same spot trying to accomplish the jump that the game stops being fun for me. I understand that some games are a challenge, and that is part of the fun, but when it takes me three hours to do a quest that should only take twenty minutes, I just want to quit. Like I said, I suck. If you have a problem with jumping or gliding, you might want to pass this up.
Have you played the game yet? What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, have fun storming the castle!
