Enshrouded – Co-Op Survival ARPG
Jan. 24, 2024Enshrouded – Co-Op Survival ARPG
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Enshroudedis a Co-Op Survival ARPG for up to 16 players which endeavors to blend a form of Soulslike combat with a Survival genre, offering gameplay that allows players creativity in building and surviving, while providing intense combat in fighting against monsters and wildlife. Enshrouded is being developed and published by Keen Games GmbH, who have kindly sponsored this article.
Enshrouded takes place in the realm of Embervale, a ruined kingdom that has fallen into chaos as a result of the fools of the old world who ruthlessly mined the earth for a magical elixir, and unleashed a great pestilence; a ruinous fog, the Shroud, and corrupted creatures from the depths.
Before the kingdom completely fell into ruin and humanity went extinct, the few remaining warriors from the old era were placed in an eternal confinement chamber until such time that they could fight anew against the threat of the Shroud. You play as one of these warriors, awakened as a Flameborn far into the future, who seeks to wake up other warriors and uncover the mysteries behind the world of Embervale.
The core gameplay systems of Enshrouded will be very familiar to the average ARPG player, while also introducing many entertaining survival aspects, in a third person format. Your health and mana bars are located in the top left, a stamina bar which you can see next to your character, not unlike Genshin Impact, and an item selection on the bottom of the screen where you can choose your weapons, tools, food and other items.
As you explore the world, you can set up bases throughout, and if you end up in an Enshrouded Area with enemies, you can also activate Return Beacons which act as checkpoints that you respawn at if you die. Throughout the world you can find places covered by the Shroud, which contain powerful bosses and enemies as well as unique items and resources.
The goal is to fully explore the world and everything it has to offer, but you can also find a lot of entertainment within Enshrouded’s survival building systems for creating bases and straight up castles, as well as the RPG mechanics within the game. To start, let’s go over the combat and skills.
Combat in Enshrouded has the mechanics you would come to expect from an RPG rather than a Co-Op Survival. You can lock onto enemies, and attack them with your currently equipped weapon or dodge/roll away from them to avoid their attacks. Alternate methods of defence include blocking with your weapon or a shield, and parrying enemy attacks to stagger them and create an opening to get a few hits in.
Most defensive actions tend to cost a lot of stamina, and stamina recovers quite slowly if you are in the middle of combat, sometimes forcing you to tank a few hits. However, if you can successfully parry enemies with a well timed block, it will cost no stamina, it will interrupt the enemy’s attack and begin filling a stun bar which when full will make the enemy become stunned temporarily.
On top of the melee combat system, there are also ranged and magical options available to the player. You can equip a bow and shoot enemies in the face, or throw grenades that detonate on impact, or wield staffs and wands to cast elemental spells. On a side note, there are also stealth and sneak attacks within the game for those who enjoy a bit of sneaking around.
Your character will get stronger as the game progresses through Enshrouded’s skill tree. Within the skill tree, you can find different passive and active skills for 12 different classes, 4 for a melee playstyle, 4 for ranged and survival and 4 for mages. You can choose to get skills from any of these 12 classes, so there is a lot of build variety in how you choose to fill out your skill tree. You could be a beast tamer with healing abilities, a Tank Warrior with a double jump, or a Trickster mage with a 2 handed hammer specialization.
There are also a lot of stats that you get from the skill tree which can increase your health, mana, and stamina as well as increase damage with melee, ranged or magic. The combat and skill system delivers a solid basis for build potential, which is kind uncommon for a Survival game and definitely something I enjoy as an Elden Ring Build maniac.
The survival aspect of Enshrouded is much like Rust without PvP in that you can do alot of building and crafting within an open world environment, but without the need to constantly supply your character with basic needs like water or food.
You can find resources for crafting throughout the map as you explore such as wood, soil and stone, all of which are pretty easy to find. There are resources that are more hidden within the world, such as a veins of flintstone hidden under stone or spores from the shroud in enshrouded areas. Using these resources, you can craft building blocks, furniture, tools, storage, swords, shields, magic weapons, fur armor, grappling hooks, gliders and many other items.
When you start the game, you punch some trees and stones to craft a Flame Altar, which acts as the core of a base. Once you place it, the base boundaries will be set and you can begin building once you craft a Hammer. Resting near the Flame Altar will give you a “rested” status which lasts for up to 10 minutes and gives your character increased maximum Stamina and regeneration, which is very helpful for mining or any form of resource gathering.
Adding a shelter around the Flame Altar will increase the comfort level of the base, improving the max duration of the Rested status by a couple of minutes. As you progress further and start making a proper base by upgrading your flame altar, adding furniture, illumination and making your tiny cabin into a grand castle, the comfort level will only get higher and higher, increasing the period you are rested for more and more.
Within these bases you can also create rooms and spaces for various NPCs, as you can find Survivors in the world that can be summoned into your base who offer new crafting recipes and items. The possibilities of what you can build are expansive, since you can build practically anything using the small block option on the build screen. I was only able to make a tiny humble cabin, but I imagine players with more creativity can probably make some amazing structures.
Of course, to make all the building and survival possible, players will need to do some exploration. The fallen kingdom of Embervale has a lot to offer, from the mystical desert of the Kindlewastes to the dark canopies of The Revelwood.
Of the notable locations you will visit, there will be many ruins enshrouded by the Shroud, the ruinous fog that miners unleashed in search of The Elixir. One of these locations are Elixir Wells, which contain a corrupted monster boss with its own unique design and combo pattern. Once its defeat, the player is rewarded with a Skillpoint.
There are also various locked chests and doors within enshrouded ruins containing resources as well as powerful weapons or armor. If you really look into the ruins, you can even find some secret passages underneath the built up Mycelium leading to hidden areas of the game.
Other Ancient ruins can be found outside of the shroud as well, such as the grand Ancient Spires and the mysterious Ancient Obelisks. Ancient Spires will unveil various locations on the map, like Elixir Wells and Flame Sanctums, which is a spiritual location containing a Spark which can be used to strengthen the Flame of your Altar. Ancient Obelisks will contain lore about the world, detailing the events of the kingdom that used to be and how it fell into ruins as a result of human greed.
As mentioned before, you can also find various Survivors in the world who can provide you with more diverse and advanced items. They can be found within Ancient Vaults throughout the world, similar to how the player spawned in himself. Once found, they can be summoned at the base and given shelter to unlock their crafting recipes and new advanced items.
For example, pretty early into the game I found the Blackmsith Oswald Anders, who gave me the recipe to create a Charcoal Kiln. Using the Kiln, I was able to create Charcoal that could be used to create a Forge, then using metal sheets created from the forge I crafted better armor. He could also enhance my equipment using Runes that could be found randomly throughout the world.
To find these NPCs and explore the vast land with everything it has to offer, players will get 2 tools pretty early on into the game for traversal; a Grappling Hook to get over short distances or climb some sections of the Ancient Spires, and a Glider to glide over short distances quickly, and fashionably like a flying squirrel. You can also fast travel to any bases that you have made, as well as any Ancient Spires you have unlocked throughout the massive map.
Exploration and the other gameplay aspects like bosses and building only get better once you boot up Co-Op, with up to 16 other players in your lobby. I only played single player, so I couldn’t build anything grand and ended up with a humble cabin. I can’t imagine how much more I could have gotten done if I had a full squad of 16 people; maybe we would have been able to create a full on castle in the middle of the forest! After all, that’s what Survival game are all about…
Visually, Enshrouded is clear with high definition allowing you to see all the details of the environment. The environment of Embervale can be best described as lush, with overgrown forests and foliage, as well as dishevelled ruins of mankind standing beside grand monuments that have managed to stand the test of time. With how you can destroy pretty much anything in the game, the environment feels really immersive and captivating, as if you were an explorer discovering 1000 year old ancient structures.
Performance wise, I ran into some frame drops throughout the game here and there, but no crashes or bugs. With my setup, I managed 100 FPS in game with max settings while using a GeForce RTX 3090 GPU, Ryzen 9 5950X CPU and 16GB of RAM. Keep in mind that the game is only in Early Access, so any issues with frame drops will likely improve later on, but regardless the game seems to perform relatively well.
The soundtrack while exploring and building your base is very relaxing, and put me in a zen state quite a few times. SFX wise, there’s not anything too crazy, but there are good sound effects in general for weapons, enemies and bosses.
Enshrouded aims to offer a unique blend of Co-Op Survival and ARPG elements, providing a world filled with challenging combat, creative building, and exploration. The most addicting part in my single player experience with the game was finding resources to craft building blocks, and creating my cabin at my starting base. Its just really satisfying to see your building come together as you construct a proper shelter from the hard-earned materials you found in the world, and is obviously one of the best parts about Survival games in general.
The combat of Enshrouded was not terrible, but didn’t exactly offer anything amazing. However, I imagine as you progress, and gain more abilities and powers, the combat will likely become more interesting.
All in all, Enshrouded is definitely going to be a worthwhile experience if you have friends to play with, and you enjoy co-operative Survival games. And Enshrouded provides this in a third person perspective, with a focus on combat, which not as many Survival games do these days.
Tyr
て んじよ うてんげ ゆいが とくそん
