TL;DR: This is a definite recommend for anyone that loves apocalyptic settings and RPGs. Encased is a well written and immersive game that deserves a place up there with the great classic Isometric RPGs of old. It does have a few things that I felt it could have done better, but it did not hamper my overall enjoyment of the game and for the near 44 hours it took to complete a single playthrough, it was definitely worth buying! I'd even go so far as to call it a great entry-point for someone looking to play an Isometric RPG for the first time.
Encased is the first venture by indie company Dark Crystal Games and is an isometric styled RPG in the same vein as Fallout 1 and 2, and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. This game is an absolute hidden gem. While it does have its small share of flaws, I found it to be very well put together and on a quality bar equal to (and greater than, depending on the companies in question) many AAA games.
Encased offers a variety of ways to earn experience for leveling up: you earn it from combat, completing quests, exploring maps, crafting, and opening loot containers/corpses with items inside of them. I found this to be one of the game's greatest strengths as it encourages the player to play how they want without punishing them for their preferred play style. Speaking of combat, combat is turn based and done through the use of Action Points which determines what specific and how many actions you can take within a round (as with most old school RPGs). The number of Action Points granted to each character is awarded based on their build/stats. I played on easy and didn't find the combat difficult (which was a problem I used to run into on some of the older RPGs).
I'm of the opinion that the character creator did a concise and excellent job explaining stats and how things were calculated, something that often struggles to keep my attention. However, if one is unsure of how builds work or doesn't feel like cobbling one together, there are a wide range of premade characters (I think it was around 20?) with interesting backstories to choose from.
On the note of backstories, you get to choose from a small list of factions - “Wings”- to be a part of at the start of the game which will open up some potential dialogue choices for you on down the line. That said, you are free to pursue your own interests and don't have to act in your factions interests at all. The factions are both one of the strongest and one of the most disappointing aspects of Encased.
The factions all have really great aesthetics, motives, and writing – they just feel right in the world – but I wish more was done with them. Granted, they are involved in the overall story, but it would have been neat if they'd had their own quests instead of just those that intersected with the main story and if you could have joined them. Not being able to join some of the factions is a huge missed opportunity, especially considering that all factions have a reputation bar that you can build up.
This leads me to my biggest gripe about the game; toward the end of the game you meet with each faction (assuming you didn't choose to wipe them out, you can do that to any of your choosing) and their representatives are gathered to ask you to do a certain thing for their specific factions. However, some of them won't actually ask you/tell you their plan unless you have specific stats. The faction I was trying to help had a requirement of 8 Charisma (among one other high one that I forgot) for them to tell me their plan which would have led to unlocking a new potential ending for me. This decision baffles me, because the only time you can set your Charisma is during character creation, and it makes the reputation bar kind of pointless? I had a few of the factions do this, actually. This is something that I strongly feel should have been tied to the reputation bar.
That having been said, I thought the writing was great, and that both the main quests and side quests were engaging and varied. One of the side quests involved going to a family dinner, that was fun. I think that's one of the things that made Encased so endearing to me, that it wasn't always about combat or going somewhere to kill/collect things, but that you got to sit down, talk to people, and have some brief normal moments in a not so normal world.
The companions are great fun. All of them were unique, felt like a part of the world, and had some interesting things to say about themselves. That said, I wish they had more dialogue options and passive dialogue, it felt like I went through all they had to say rather quickly. And yet... I wanted to have all of them in my party, but could only have two at a time so I ended up spending the entire game with the first two I met – so overall I'm of the belief that the companions were done well since I had a hard time choosing who to take with me.
As far as I know, companions aren't romanceable (the two I had certainly weren't). There aren't really romances, but there are rare opportunities for brief encounters here and there with certain NPCs.
There's also a crafting system. It was straightforward enough. I liked being able to make my own ammo, grenades, med-kits, and drugs.
My second and last gripe about the game has to do with the maps. I've seen a lot of people say that they felt the maps are empty, but I don't feel that's the case. I'm in the camp that believes the maps are too big. There's a lot of resources on each map and if the maps had been condensed a bit, then that feeling of emptiness wouldn't be there. It's a minor annoyance but since the combat is turn based and the maps are tiled, it costs AP to close the gap between allies and enemies so you might have enemies aggro'd on your playable character and your companions might be a ways off, so then you have to waste a round or two because you are using your AP to get in attack range; that would have been less of an annoyance if the maps were shorter. While the maps have a few different biomes (desert/swamp), I would have liked to have seen a couple more: snow, forest (of all dead trees), ash, salt, any of those would have been a welcome addition.
Now that I think about it, this could probably count as its own complaint, but the companion AI pathing is a mess, so every once in a while your companions will try to take the most complicated route to get somewhere on the map (when out of combat) when the maps being smaller could have circumvented this.
There is a lot of content. I did every quest and fully explored every map I came across, while dreading that the game was almost over, and it took me nearly 44 hours to complete it. I've no doubt that the game could be finished in half, maybe even a fourth the time if one were so inclined to do so, which makes the prospect of going back through it again appealing for me.
In closing: Yes, Encased does have a few things I feel it could have done better, but I found it a very memorable and enjoyable experience. I realize I went into a lot of detail with my complaints, but that's because I really love Encased, and I hope that Dark Crystal Games sees my review and takes my feedback into consideration because I'm looking forward to seeing them improve and what they might put out next!
Encased is the first venture by indie company Dark Crystal Games and is an isometric styled RPG in the same vein as Fallout 1 and 2, and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. This game is an absolute hidden gem. While it does have its small share of flaws, I found it to be very well put together and on a quality bar equal to (and greater than, depending on the companies in question) many AAA games.
Encased offers a variety of ways to earn experience for leveling up: you earn it from combat, completing quests, exploring maps, crafting, and opening loot containers/corpses with items inside of them. I found this to be one of the game's greatest strengths as it encourages the player to play how they want without punishing them for their preferred play style. Speaking of combat, combat is turn based and done through the use of Action Points which determines what specific and how many actions you can take within a round (as with most old school RPGs). The number of Action Points granted to each character is awarded based on their build/stats. I played on easy and didn't find the combat difficult (which was a problem I used to run into on some of the older RPGs).
I'm of the opinion that the character creator did a concise and excellent job explaining stats and how things were calculated, something that often struggles to keep my attention. However, if one is unsure of how builds work or doesn't feel like cobbling one together, there are a wide range of premade characters (I think it was around 20?) with interesting backstories to choose from.
On the note of backstories, you get to choose from a small list of factions - “Wings”- to be a part of at the start of the game which will open up some potential dialogue choices for you on down the line. That said, you are free to pursue your own interests and don't have to act in your factions interests at all. The factions are both one of the strongest and one of the most disappointing aspects of Encased.
The factions all have really great aesthetics, motives, and writing – they just feel right in the world – but I wish more was done with them. Granted, they are involved in the overall story, but it would have been neat if they'd had their own quests instead of just those that intersected with the main story and if you could have joined them. Not being able to join some of the factions is a huge missed opportunity, especially considering that all factions have a reputation bar that you can build up.
This leads me to my biggest gripe about the game; toward the end of the game you meet with each faction (assuming you didn't choose to wipe them out, you can do that to any of your choosing) and their representatives are gathered to ask you to do a certain thing for their specific factions. However, some of them won't actually ask you/tell you their plan unless you have specific stats. The faction I was trying to help had a requirement of 8 Charisma (among one other high one that I forgot) for them to tell me their plan which would have led to unlocking a new potential ending for me. This decision baffles me, because the only time you can set your Charisma is during character creation, and it makes the reputation bar kind of pointless? I had a few of the factions do this, actually. This is something that I strongly feel should have been tied to the reputation bar.
That having been said, I thought the writing was great, and that both the main quests and side quests were engaging and varied. One of the side quests involved going to a family dinner, that was fun. I think that's one of the things that made Encased so endearing to me, that it wasn't always about combat or going somewhere to kill/collect things, but that you got to sit down, talk to people, and have some brief normal moments in a not so normal world.
The companions are great fun. All of them were unique, felt like a part of the world, and had some interesting things to say about themselves. That said, I wish they had more dialogue options and passive dialogue, it felt like I went through all they had to say rather quickly. And yet... I wanted to have all of them in my party, but could only have two at a time so I ended up spending the entire game with the first two I met – so overall I'm of the belief that the companions were done well since I had a hard time choosing who to take with me.
As far as I know, companions aren't romanceable (the two I had certainly weren't). There aren't really romances, but there are rare opportunities for brief encounters here and there with certain NPCs.
There's also a crafting system. It was straightforward enough. I liked being able to make my own ammo, grenades, med-kits, and drugs.
My second and last gripe about the game has to do with the maps. I've seen a lot of people say that they felt the maps are empty, but I don't feel that's the case. I'm in the camp that believes the maps are too big. There's a lot of resources on each map and if the maps had been condensed a bit, then that feeling of emptiness wouldn't be there. It's a minor annoyance but since the combat is turn based and the maps are tiled, it costs AP to close the gap between allies and enemies so you might have enemies aggro'd on your playable character and your companions might be a ways off, so then you have to waste a round or two because you are using your AP to get in attack range; that would have been less of an annoyance if the maps were shorter. While the maps have a few different biomes (desert/swamp), I would have liked to have seen a couple more: snow, forest (of all dead trees), ash, salt, any of those would have been a welcome addition.
Now that I think about it, this could probably count as its own complaint, but the companion AI pathing is a mess, so every once in a while your companions will try to take the most complicated route to get somewhere on the map (when out of combat) when the maps being smaller could have circumvented this.
There is a lot of content. I did every quest and fully explored every map I came across, while dreading that the game was almost over, and it took me nearly 44 hours to complete it. I've no doubt that the game could be finished in half, maybe even a fourth the time if one were so inclined to do so, which makes the prospect of going back through it again appealing for me.
In closing: Yes, Encased does have a few things I feel it could have done better, but I found it a very memorable and enjoyable experience. I realize I went into a lot of detail with my complaints, but that's because I really love Encased, and I hope that Dark Crystal Games sees my review and takes my feedback into consideration because I'm looking forward to seeing them improve and what they might put out next!
2 Comments
@Detectivefail: Thank you! Honestly, this is a repost of a steam review that I made back in October of 2021. I got the game back when it came out. I think they've added a bit more content since then. So it's possible that they've also fine tuned the game even more since I wrote this review.
Detectivefail
10 months ago