Enshrouded
Last updated: 2025-12-08
- Exceptional gameplay depth and polish
- Best-in-class building and crafting mechanics
- Highly customizable difficulty and playstyles
- Severe performance and optimization issues
- Frustrating progression and grind mechanics
- Repetitive and uninspired world design
Emotions
Players experience excitement primarily due to the game's engaging exploration, rewarding progression loops, and vast, beautifully designed world. The variety of activities, such as building, combat, and discovery, along with innovative mechanics like the Shroud and water physics, contribute to a dynamic and immersive experience. The anticipation of future updates and the ability to play with friends further amplify this emotion, making the gameplay feel fresh and full of possibilities.
Frustration stems from a combination of technical issues, poorly balanced mechanics, and repetitive or unclear gameplay systems. Players frequently mention performance problems like crashes, stuttering, and optimization issues, which disrupt immersion. Combat mechanics, particularly for casters and ranged classes, are often criticized for being unbalanced or poorly implemented. Additionally, tedious resource gathering, confusing progression systems, and lack of meaningful content in certain areas contribute to a sense of wasted effort and dissatisfaction.
Joy is derived from the game's creative freedom, engaging co-op experiences, and the satisfaction of exploration and discovery. Players appreciate the depth of the building system, which allows for unique and personalized structures, as well as the variety of gameplay activities like farming, crafting, and combat. The immersive world design, beautiful visuals, and the ability to share experiences with friends or family create a sense of happiness and long-term engagement.
Satisfaction arises from the game's well-paced progression, customizable difficulty settings, and the depth of its mechanics. Players appreciate the balance between combat, building, and exploration, as well as the frequent updates and developer responsiveness. The game's ability to cater to different playstyles, such as solo or co-op, and its polished feel despite being in Early Access contribute to a rewarding and fulfilling experience.
Disappointment is caused by unmet expectations, particularly in areas like combat depth, storytelling, and technical polish. Players feel let down by repetitive or shallow gameplay mechanics, underdeveloped NPCs, and a lack of meaningful progression. Technical issues, such as poor optimization and persistent bugs, further detract from the experience, making the game feel unfinished or overpriced for its current state.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 84% · Negative 16%. Score: 16 / 100
Positives:
- The game is praised for its well-crafted gameplay mechanics, including combat, progression, and exploration. Players highlight the depth of combat (e.g., parrying, dodging, varied weapon types), flexible skill trees, and responsive controls. The gameplay is described as polished, engaging, and comparable to AAA titles, even in early access.
- The building system is frequently highlighted as the best in the survival genre, offering unparalleled creative freedom, intuitive mechanics, and a vast array of materials and decorations. Players appreciate the voxel-based construction, lack of structural integrity constraints, and the ability to terraform and decorate bases. Crafting is deep and rewarding, with meaningful progression tied to exploration.
- The game caters to a wide range of players through adjustable difficulty settings, customizable world parameters, and flexible playstyles (e.g., solo, co-op, casual, or hardcore). Players can tailor the experience to their preferences, such as adjusting enemy strength, resource yields, or survival mechanics like hunger and thirst.
- The game’s visuals are consistently described as breathtaking, with detailed environments, dynamic lighting, and a cohesive art style. The atmosphere is enhanced by immersive sound design, music, and weather effects, creating a world that feels alive and emotionally resonant. The handcrafted world design avoids procedural generation, adding to its charm and depth.
- The game excels in co-op and multiplayer, supporting up to 16 players with seamless progression, shared loot, and role specialization. Players highlight the fun of exploring, building, and fighting together, with mechanics that encourage teamwork without forcing it. The multiplayer is stable, well-optimized, and enhances replayability.
Negatives:
- The game suffers from widespread performance problems, including frequent FPS drops, crashes, stuttering, and excessive hardware demands. These issues persist even on high-end systems and have not improved significantly since launch. Poor optimization affects gameplay, particularly in multiplayer, where desync, lag, and server instability are common. Shader compilation and asset loading times are also frustratingly long, disrupting immersion.
- Progression feels artificially gated by excessive grinding for materials, repetitive fetch quests, and poorly balanced loot systems. Many players report that the game becomes tedious due to slow leveling, unclear quest paths, and server-based progression in co-op, which leaves new players behind. High-end resources spawn prematurely, disrupting balance, while crafting and resource collection often feel like chores rather than engaging gameplay.
- The game world, while large, feels empty and repetitive, with limited enemy variety, copy-pasted dungeons, and uninspired biome design. Exploration is often unrewarding, as loot and encounters lack uniqueness. The Shroud (fog) mechanic, intended to add tension, is criticized for poor visibility, punishing timers, and frustrating respawn mechanics. Many players report that the world lacks a sense of progression or lasting impact from player actions.
- Combat lacks depth, weight, and variety, with repetitive enemy attacks, poor AI, and limited build diversity. Melee combat is particularly criticized for its floaty animations, lack of impact, and unresponsive mechanics. Ranged and magic builds are often underpowered or impractical, and the parry/blocking systems are inconsistent. Many players find combat boring or frustrating, especially when facing groups of enemies or flying mobs.
- NPCs lack depth, intelligence, and meaningful interactions, often feeling like static quest dispensers or moving crafting benches. Quest design is repetitive, with unclear objectives, excessive backtracking, and vague map markers. Co-op quest progression is particularly problematic, as it can desync or fail to register for all players. The world feels lifeless due to the absence of dynamic events or engaging storytelling.
Gameplay:
- The game blends multiple gameplay elements such as survival, crafting, base-building, exploration, and RPG progression. Players can engage in activities like farming, combat, mining, and terraforming, offering a rich and varied experience. The inclusion of voxel-based building and NPC interactions further enhances the depth of gameplay.
- The game features a robust class and skill system, allowing players to customize their characters with hybrid builds (e.g., mage/rogue or tank/healer). The skill tree is expansive, offering flexibility in combat styles and progression, which caters to diverse playstyles and encourages experimentation.
- The Shroud is a central gameplay mechanic that introduces risk and urgency to exploration. It limits visibility, imposes time constraints, and contains dangerous enemies, requiring players to strategize and prepare before venturing into affected areas. This mechanic enhances the game's tension and replayability.
- Players can rescue and recruit NPCs, who provide crafting services, quests, and additional gameplay options. Housing NPCs unlocks new recipes, gear upgrades, and progression paths, making base-building and NPC management a key part of the experience.
- Combat is straightforward, featuring melee, ranged, and magic options with parrying, blocking, and dodging mechanics. While it is serviceable and supports co-op play, some players find it lacking depth or polish compared to other aspects of the game.
Performance:
- The game demands high-end hardware for stable performance, often exceeding the listed system requirements. Players with mid-range or older systems report struggles to maintain 60 FPS, even with settings adjustments. DLSS/FSR is frequently required for playable performance.
- Players report texture pop-in, missing meshes, and visual glitches (e.g., muddy textures, excessive fog). These issues often require restarts or fast-travel to resolve and detract from immersion, though they are less critical than performance problems.
- Multiplayer sessions suffer from netcode issues, including desyncs, lag, and server overload when players split into different areas. Performance degrades significantly with more than 3-4 players, and private servers are recommended to mitigate these issues.
- While the game is in Early Access and expected to improve, updates have already addressed some performance issues (e.g., shader loading, crashes). However, optimization remains a work in progress, with room for further refinement.
- Performance issues appear more pronounced on AMD hardware (both CPUs and GPUs), with reports of crashes, lag, and higher resource usage compared to Nvidia counterparts. Some issues were resolved in updates, but concerns remain.
Recommendations:
- The vast majority of players highly recommend the game, praising its variety, replayability, and long-term enjoyment. Many describe it as a must-play or must-buy, especially for fans of survival, exploration, and building genres. The feedback emphasizes its strong potential and current quality, even in Early Access.
- The game is particularly well-received by players who enjoy survival, crafting, and building mechanics. Many reviews highlight its depth in these areas, comparing it favorably to titles like Valheim and Minecraft. Players appreciate the freedom and creativity the game offers, especially in co-op settings.
- While many players feel the game is worth its price, others express concerns about its value, especially in Early Access. Some suggest waiting for a sale or improvements before purchasing, as they believe the game is overpriced in its current state. A few players even recommend alternatives if budget is a concern.
- The game shines in co-op and multiplayer modes, with many players recommending it specifically for group play. Solo players often note that the experience is better with friends, as tasks like resource gathering and building are more enjoyable when shared. However, some players feel the game is less suited for solo play due to its design.
- While the game is highly recommended for co-op and multiplayer, solo players often find it less enjoyable. Some reviews note that the game feels designed for groups, with solo play requiring more time and effort for tasks like farming and organizing. This limits its appeal for players who prefer single-player experiences.
Miscellaneous:
- Players consistently report extensive playtimes (50–900+ hours) and express excitement for future content, indicating the game offers deep exploration, building, and progression systems. Many note they have only scratched the surface despite significant time investment.
- The game is praised for its frequent updates, developer responsiveness, and potential, but players also express frustration with bugs, performance issues, and unfulfilled promises. Many acknowledge Early Access expectations but highlight uneven execution.
- Players emphasize that the game is best enjoyed with friends, citing improved engagement, shared exploration, and alleviated frustrations (e.g., inventory management). Solo play is viable but often described as less immersive or enjoyable.
- The game is frequently compared to titles like Valheim, Minecraft, and Terraria, with players noting its unique blend of exploration, building, and RPG elements. Some praise its innovations, while others critique it for not matching the depth or polish of established games.
- Players enjoy the building and crafting systems, with many sharing ambitious projects (e.g., dwarven fortresses). However, they also request quality-of-life improvements (e.g., blueprints, transmog) and more late-game options to sustain engagement.
