Encased: A Sci-Fi Post-Apocalyptic RPG

I want to like this game but there's so many little things holding it back. I hate to say it but it genuinely feels like "We have Fallout at home". For the most part this works well: A lot of the style and game play is reminiscent of the first two Fallout games and if that's your thing that works out great! The problems come in the deeper you get. Some of my main issues: - Combat Chatter: Characters will not shut up. Ever. Every turn almost every individual involved in combat, excepting your own, will say some line of dialogue. Great at first for a bit of flavor, but when combat drags on and you hear the same two or three lines recycled again and again it's severely grating. You can turn the voice over down or off but that doesn't truly [i]fix[/i] the problem. - Suspecting Something: Characters will become suspicious if you do something sneaky, this is a good thing! Until it happens every time to every character when you enter combat. Attacked by a giant roach? It gets suspicious of you after you shoot it the first time. It's clearly tied to whatever system they use for handling crimes and such but it shouldn't be happening [i]when I am the party being aggressed[/i]. - Difficulty Curve: Truly reminiscent of Fallout (Fallout 2 specifically) you can build your character however you want, but if you don't start out good at some form of combat you're in for a terrible time. The prologue requires you either fight several enemies (in groups of 1 v 3 with you being the 1) or you sneak past/avoid them and also neglect some objectives. If you're a good little adventurer and do a lot of talking and exploration you'll have an advantage in levels to help you through the prologue. Then the game starts. The majority of enemies I've encountered after the prologue have been at least 5 or 6 levels above me and even if I'm able to survive these encounters they drag for far too long. They don't even provide equipment or resources to help bridge the gap. It's almost as if the game punishes you for not relying on a melee knockout strategy. I haven't gotten especially far and, as of writing this, I still intend to keep going but I cannot recommend this game. If I hadn't gotten it for free I'd be seriously considering a refund.

It started so interesting and engaging that the non-existing ending is extremely disappointing. I really like the history and outcome of the games i play, that i may replay it to relive the prologue and first chapter, but thats it, just the journey. Its not an exaggeration, this game doesnt have a proper ending. You may still buy it on a good deal if you want to give it a go. I also believe the leveling system and combat is alright.

This game gets better and better as you play. Stealth and solo play was one of the best in crpgs. You can solo stealth kill everyone and steal your way to the end. Also music is so good. I had great time.

Honestly, I thought that this game was great until sometime into Act 2. That's where it completely devolved into Fetch Quest: The Game. Run to this location for 45 seconds, go to the next location for 45 seconds. I spent more time traveling in my vehicle than actually "playing" the game. After about 3-4 hours of back and forth I just could not do it anymore. I hope to finish the game but I am not sure that I will. This has a lot going for it outside of the main story, however. The world is massive and mostly interesting, there is pretty good weapon/combat variety. The questing is really the only thing that killed it for me.

An unfinished game abandoned by its developers, replete with a trailer that straight up lies to you about certain playstyles (it is not possible, as advertised, to complete the game being completely 'unknown'). It picks an aesthetic/style, then never bothers to properly utilize or lean into it: this game could genuinely be set in any age/era and it would be completely irrelevant. There is no flavour to be found here. No flash. No spark. Not even a pan.

This is a little bit of a tough game to review, if Steam had a "meh" option then this would be pretty accurate. Genuinely, the game starts out with a very interesting premise, but unfortunately by the end of the prologue, they don't do much with it. To have a sci-fi RPG with competing factions within a massive multicorp attempt to seize power, that is interesting. To then get rid of most of it and replace it with the most generic post-apocalypse, it is a waste of a good idea. Still, I wanted to give the game a good shot, and I will admit that I had fun with it some of the time. I think the nuance of their leveling system was entertaining and I was having the most fun when I was leveling up. However, the game has a lot of issues. It isn't very good with explaining itself, it lets you figure out a lot on your own or look it up, which is fine as long as the mechanics make sense which I don't believe they do most of the time. The combat is meaty and with very little ways to heal yourself reliably, it bogs down the entire experience. Additionally, the writing is dated for even coming from 2021, if I have to hear, "It came from the outside, like some kind of...outsider" one more time, I will lose my mind. Additionally, like most TRPGs, all of the good content is in the first or second act (in this case, only the first act as 75% of the second act is literally slowly going from one map to the next to do simple fetch quests), and by the third act it is the most barebones experience you can imagine. By the end, I didn't really care about any of the factions and the ending slides are almost all, "well, you made your choice, and things still ended badly eventually" which is just simply disappointing. Credit where credit is due, they made a solid game. All of the foundations are there and that is why I am going to still recommend this game, but ONLY ON A STEEP STEEP DISCOUNT. I got it for like $2 and I can say with certainty that I got my moneys worth. However, do not purchase this game for $30, it is genuinely not worth that. The game could've been better and as the studio has shut down and there will be no more updates or future content, you're paying for an okay game that you wished took a different turn during production. I hope the people who made the game go on to learn from it and make even better stuff in the future, there is a lot of potential here, but that is what it stays at, potential.

Interesting story set in a STALKER like setting. About 70 hours to complete a playthrough. It gets a bit tedious in second half of the game if you want to complete every side mission but i think every RPG game of this type does. Still quite unique and worth a play especially if its on sale.

Pretty great game in my humble opinion. Some complain about tactics, now sure why, may they are comparing to XCom or BG, no idea. Erros translating, well I'm not a main english speaker concerned with proper english, so I didnt really notice any, As it is such an overall nice game, I played for many hours, and as I do with many games I enjoy, even prolonged it on purpose. Stealing unnoticed? Check. Killing because you can? Check. Having Sx in a vent with a stranger? Check. Dying to some weird glob group because I was too lazy to actually evaluate weakness? Check. Only weird parts are those cloudish "anomaly" bits, as they are just weird and boring, luckily they are just a few and far apart.