Enshrouded 1.0 Review – Finally Feels Complete

Enshrouded has been in Early Access for more than two years at this point, and the last time we spoke about the survival crafting game, we noted that it was an interesting entry in the genre that felt a bit derivative of its peers with many of its elements. The game is now hitting 1.0, and we got to spend quite a bit of time with its final build, to assess how Keen Games’ additions have changed the experience since our previous review.

The biggest improvements are in building and combat, where more accessible construction tools and new unlockable attacks expand what players can do.

Before we get into all of these, however, it is also worth noting that the core of Enshrouded hasn’t really changed too much. You’re still going to spend much of your time with the game gathering resources and building up new structures with the aim of hopefully attracting some NPCs to live in your settlement. This acts as one of the core methods of progression, with more NPCs arriving also opening up more crafting options. As part of your typical exploration activities, you’ll also need to venture into the eponymous shroud every now and then to get your hands on some of the rarer materials, and in the process, you might even take on a boss or two, giving you access to better gear. Not much has changed in this regard.

"Even the co-op systems have been bolstered thanks to the addition of Adventure Sharing"

Rather, Keen Games has taken an additive approach to Enshrouded. Sticking to its core vision, the studio has expanded the game in several ways across just about every single one of its gameplay aspects. Fans of the combat could find more dungeons to explore and enemies to fight, while those who liked roaming around would get access to new biomes and sub-biomes, each with their own set of challenges. And for players who prefer the cozy game aspects like gathering and building, updates brought in new pieces that could help you get your home’s design just right.

Even the co-op systems have been bolstered thanks to the addition of Adventure Sharing – essentially an easier way for friends to spend time together by sharing worlds to a community server. Through this system, players can easily find each others’ world, or even team up together to explore an entirely different player’s world that might have been shared just to show off their cool buildings.

Enshrouded has also managed to further build on what made it unique when compared to other open-world survival crafting games. Rather than its world being randomly generated, Enshrouded instead puts you into a beautiful hand-crafted world, complete with NPC settlements where you can get more details on the story, deep dungeons to dive into where you can take on bosses and get loot, and even other niceties like fast travel points to make traveling around a less arduous affair.

The reworked skill tree gives combat more variety, particularly in the melee build I focused on. You now get better-balanced upgrades as you level up which offer a mix of passive stat upgrades and active abilities. Having spent most of my time with the game focused entirely on melee combat, I had plenty of fun once I started unlocking options that allowed me to extend my combos with unique attacks like an upward slash, for example. Similarly, the skill tree also offers options for ranged combat, magic wands, staves, and even heavy 2-handed weapons for those among us who prefer to go the berserker route.

"The layer of strategy gets further expanded thanks to the number of buffs you can stack up from various sources"

The combat is at its best when you’re facing down an epic boss. Enshrouded features several scattered throughout the world, each of which has their own unique movesets and weaknesses. The expanded toolkit handed to players through the skill tree means that you now have plenty of ways to deal with, for example, the Fell Monstrosity’s Shroud Breath ability, letting you quickly do a dodge attack to its side. On the defensive side of things, you’re given the options to block, parry, or dodge, all of which tend to be incredibly useful when the Fell Wispwyvern surrounds you with its Fell Beetles.

All of these options are on full display in moment-to-moment gameplay, with the combat feeling fluid while still maintaining a level of required strategy and tactics since you’ll also have to deal with your stamina when you attack, dodge, or block. The layer of strategy gets further expanded thanks to the number of buffs you can stack up from various sources, be it the design of your home, the food you eat, or the gear you wear.

Despite being a survival crafting game, Enshrouded can often feel like an open-world RPG instead. Sure, you still have to build your own settlements so that you can craft new gear, but once you’ve got a home base set up, you can choose to simply never look back and explore the realm. However, if you actually want to progress through the main story, you’ll still need to occasionally create more buildings to house NPCs, who in turn can give you quests that guide you to your next locations.

The building system might seem relatively simple at first glance – you simply enter build mode and start putting down structures. However, the fact that the system is versatile and free-form enough to allow you to build elaborate structures with the only major constraint being the materials you have on you are what make it fun. You also get plenty of tools to later the landscape itself, shaping the very land around you to better fit your architectural dreams. In a way, Enshrouded essentially builds upon the already-great systems we’ve seen in games like Valheim by giving players greater control over the area around their structures.

"The building system might seem relatively simple at first glance"

Speaking of which, some of the more noteworthy new additions to the game since its initial release were zones like the swamp region – Blackmire. It offered a major change in scenery since much of Enshrouded is otherwise made up of rolling hills and mountains, and it also helped that Blackmire never really overstays its welcome, since you never really have to go back there after wrapping up its story if you don’t want to. Similarly, the Albaneve Summits also offered a refreshing new zone to explore, giving the mountains of Enshrouded some much-needed variety.

Outside of the change in scenery, these new zones also tend to feature their own smaller stories that can result in a variety of things, be it an encounter with a brand-new NPC, or an epic fight against a dragon on the top of a mountain. The Blackmire holds a special place in my heart since that’s where I got the skill point that would let me truly master my one-handed weapons. Just about every zone in the game is littered with quests and points of interest that can result in gear, materials, NPCs, and even skill points.

One aspect where Keen Games has decided to not expand too heavily on is the story of Enshrouded. It’s still there, and there are certainly more quests to take on that will help you fight ferocious beasts like dragons. However, the story still remains fairly light, with the quests acting as ways to encourage you to explore new zones, build new things, and dive into new dungeons. There is, on the other hand, plenty of worldbuilding to hunt down, which gives you a better idea of what the world was like before the mysterious shroud engulfed the lands and made even the simple act of traveling to the town a dangerous affair.

A major complaint I’ve had during my time with Enshrouded revolves around one of its newest features – Sparkworks. Described by Keen Games itself as Enshrouded’s take on Minecraft’s Redstone, the system is designed to allow players the ability to create complex mechanical systems. While Sparkworks shows a tremendous amount of potential in this regard, the system also feels fairly complicated, and as is the case with Redstone in some cases, you’ll need to wrap your head around engineering concepts like AND/NAND gates to get real use out of them. That is, of course, assuming that you want to do more with Sparkworks than simply have a switch that can open a trap door.

"One aspect where Keen Games has decided to not expand too heavily on is the story"

The system essentially works by allowing you to craft new Sparkworks gear that can then be used to create circuits and wires throughout your base. Aside from simple contraptions like a pressure plate that can open a trapdoor, Sparkworks can also be used to create more complex machinery like intricate elevators and traps. Since the system includes support for logic gates, the sky is essentially the limit, and I don’t think we’ll have to wait too long before someone is able to create a full-fledged computer in Enshrouded like we’ve seen previously happen in Minecraft. It is worth noting that, while the complexity of the system isn’t necessarily a flaw in and of itself, the fact that it requires the player to understand things outside of the game – like how circuits work and how they can be broken – that aren’t quite clearly tutorialized in the game itself that form the crux of my criticism here.

When it comes to performance, Enshrouded did quite well, running at more than 100 FPS on a PC with an AMD Ryzen 7800X3D CPU, 32 GB of RAM, and a Radeon RX 7800XT GPU. Playing at a native resolution of 2560×1440, I was able to max out essentially every graphics setting in the game without facing adverse effects on my frame rate. Much of the Early Access period has also gone into improving the title’s general performance, since I also never experienced even minor hitches once the game was done with preloading shader caches.

Enshrouded leaves Early Access with more varied combat and a broader range of zones and dungeons that make exploring Embervale more rewarding. And if you’re worried that all of these changes mean that the survival crafting aspects have been left behind, you have nothing to worry about. Enshrouded has only further refined what was already a phenomenal freeform building system by making it more accessible with, for example, giving the player the ability to fly while building, and tuning the material costs. In what some might call its “finished” state, Enshrouded feels like one of the best survival crafting games in the market right now.

This game was reviewed on PC.