Encased: A Sci-Fi Post-Apocalyptic RPG

[h1]Игра неплоха.[/h1] Но есть момент, который буквально превращает ее в ГОВНО. Давайте по порядку: 1. Логика прокачки - Чтобы кинуть гранату, нужен перк. Чтобы нажать кнопку на голо-5 и кинуть его, нужен перк. Представьте, что чтобы нажать кнопку, на подключенном в сеть чайнике, вам нужно пройти 2х месячные курсы, чтобы получить навык "Нажимания кнопки". Абсурд? Нет, Вполне Адекватно! :D 2. Поведение НПС - Ну НПС тут очень вумные, у меня тапки и то умнее. Начинается нападение толпы тараканов и первый ход, чел начинает отбегать к своим. Ну вроде логично, да? Нет, Он просто юзает свой навык "Позвать подмогу", после чего со всех ног влетает в толпу этих тараканов и заканчивая свой ход, моментально умирает. Оболдено! 3. Вариативность и выбор плей стайла - Да, тебя действительно не ограничивают в выборе игрового стиля. Хочешь - милишка, хочешь - дальний бой, хочешь - хай тек, хочешь - механика, хочешь - стелс, хочешь - бегай в одиночку, хочешь - бегай с напарниками, хочешь - в сервоброне (аналог силовой брони), хочешь - бегай без нее. Любой вариант геймплея будет адаптивен и более чем играбилен. И в целом, игра даже позволяет создать относительно универсальный билд. 4. Сервоброня - она действительно ощущается как нечто, что делает из человека, мини танк. Да, лишая его мобильности, но добавляя солидно живучести. Что вполне логично, сервоброня для этого и нужна, разве нет? 5. Логика мира - вполне внятная и ясная, тебе сразу дают понять как работает та или иная механика и как с ней взаимодействовать. 6. Визуал, ЛОР и в целом сама подача - отличные. К этому вопросов вообще нет. 7. Выдержанная цензура. Жаль конечно, что игра не использует мат по полной, как это делает Ведьмак или Киберпанк. Хотя даже перк есть (тюремная ругань). Оранжевые выражаются слишком лаконично и сдержанно, для того, чтобы казаться действительно маргинальными элементами. 8. Игра очень неплохо охватывает все аспекты современного мира, вплоть до явления Эксгибиционизма. Да и Наративный дизайнер кушает свой хлеб более чем заслужено. [b]Однако! (Начинается самое интересное)[/b] Все это меркнет и бледнеет при одном [b]Сраном Факте![/b]. А факт прост. Правила мира, которые нам объясняют в первом акте, могут игрой слаться на XYZ. И вот, я с подобным столкнулась. Персонаж у меня был заточен под стелс. (Стелс тут работает по радиусу обзора, который у всех персонажей статичен, но есть красная зона, которая увеличивается в 2 раза, если персонаж на чеку или в бою. За пределами зоны обзора, можно прятаться даже в бою). И вот, локация Крематорий, Персонаж Одиночка, стелсер, кайтер. Мы открываем вентиль ИИИИИИИИ..... Нас запирают в коробку, где вся эта коробка закрывается красной зоной (Зона обнаружения), да так, что она в 4 раза больше стандартной зоны обнаружения любого НПС или Врага встреченного до этого. Коробка запирается паром, через который нельзя пройти и из печи лезут Некройды. Много Некройдов... У меня полностью забирают возможность спрятаться ибо зона полностью красная. У меня забирают возможность уйти в кайт, У меня забирают любую возможность отступить. И Буквально навязывают моего персонажу бой Лоб в Лоб с превосходящими силами противника.... И я вот задалась вопросом: KAKOGO XYZA Это происходит? Это аномальная зона? Нет. Это как-то обусловлено? Нет. Ярко горят печи, что пиZDец как светло? Так я могла и раньше за пределами зоны обзора прятаться чуть-ли не под светом прожектора. Стандартный радиус обзора всю коробку покрыть ПРОСТО НЕ МОЖЕТ. И это не сложность, это Фрустрация. Меня "тюахарт" за выбор стиля игры. Не дают никакой компенсации в виде обходных путей и буквально навязывают бой. Вынуждают выбрать определенный стиль геймплея и использовать напарников. И нет никакого объяснения этому явлению. Просто одному "укадум" так захотелось. Дак мало того, пси-некроиды, еще и сплешом покрывают половину этой коробки с без откатной абилки... Ты, кто это придумал, если ты вообще умеешь читать и читаешь это. И способен понимать смысловую нагрузку слов. Я, человек далекий от разработки, объясню: [b]В гейм‑дизайне есть фундаментальное правило: правила мира ДОЛЖНЫ БЫТЬ СТАБИЛЬНЫ! Понимаешь слово "Стабильность"? Нельзя просто так взять, и изменить их на ходу не обосновывая это АБСОЛЮТНО НИ ЧЕМ и НИ КАК.[/b] [i]Представь если у тебя сегодня одна гравитация. Завтра внезапно и резко, по чьей-то хотелке она другая, ты идешь на работу, а тебя поднимает и уносит в стратосферу. А потом, через час, решают вернуть все назад и тебя, майонезным шлепком, втыкает, твоей "УМНЕЙШЕЙ" головой в асфальт. Тебе понравится? Вот и я думаю, что не особо.[/i] Мало того, ни кто из вас не любит, когда даже на рабочем месте меняются правила поведения, к которым вы привыкли. Так какого лешего, ты тут лепишь?! [u]И именно этот фактор, буквально уничтожает все плюсы этой игры, буквально возводя в абсолют, исключительно ее минусы. И Игра буквально превращается в кусок помойки из-за гейм-дизайнерского решения одного гения, которому в пору только туалеты мыть.[/u] Главное что самолеты, машины и поддержку геймпада сделали. А на шероховатости механик, баги и недоработки, можно и хер положить... Схавают! Спасибо за внимание! Нет, идите тоже лесом...

A really interesting mix of ideas from Fallout, STALKER, and Gothic. As many mention, the game starts really strong. The prologue and first act encase you in a retro-futuristic 70s atmosphere with an intriguing story. Unfortunately, the other half of the game is unfinished and rushed. Pacing dives down like under a gravity anomaly. I'm not sure if the developer company is even alive de facto. Their site and all social media accounts are long dead by now. Still, the first half of the game is really great and worth it, especially since Encased is often on sale with a 90% discount, so I'd recommend you try it. In the second half of the game, you'll open several big empty maps. There are no more side quests, only the main one. The quest log is abysmal, it looks more like notes of a madman. So you'll be going back and forth multiple times to continue the story. The animations are slow, and there is no fast travel once you're inside a location between zones. The main quest at this point is just a glorified fetch quest with extra steps and annoyances. Your companions are as interesting as a bunch of rocks. Some of them have what you could call a personal quest, but it's nothing really. They are your mules, basically. The story and dialogues are great at first, but you will often get walls of text that do nothing, it's just for flair, and after the first couple of times, you'll skip them. Funny enough, one NPC in the library complained about the graphomania of some authors. Well, you can say the same about this game. Some NPCs are voiced, and there is some voiced narration. The narrator did a great job, but the voice/sound director did not. The narrator often uses theatrical pauses. I'm not a native English speaker, but I’ve already read the text back and forth while the narrator is stuck being dramatic. There are some gamey elements to the lore. Your character is one of the lucky few selected from hundreds of thousands of applicants to work in the Dome. But there’s also a prison colony used for cheap labor. It’s like if CERN hired murderers and rapists to mop floors. There is no resolution to the main mystery - what is the Dome, what are those anomalies? And it's fine to keep secrets, like the disappearance of the Dwemers, but in this game there is no speculation either. The mystery is just there. Encased is a budget title made in the Unity engine. The game loads fast, and there aren't any bugs. But after I reached max level for one gun, I couldn't upgrade any other weapons. They cheaped out on some UI elements, but overall the game looks beautiful. Before they ran out of money, they made a fantastic half of the game. All builds are viable. You will be invested in leveling up your character, the combat is solid, the story will hook you up, but prepare for a rushed and unfinished second half and final act.

Unfortunately, it ceased development thanks to the war, if I understand correctly.

When you fill a game with a ton of "gotchu" moments, attempts to f-ck over the player and literal tests, something's seriously wrong with you. Perhaps get tested for sociopathy or something of that kind? Aside from that, the game is just terribly uninteresting. It's very clearly based off of the Roadside Picnic, but it fails to capture the appeal of it - and the post-apo parts of the Encased fail in comparison with a more famous derivative - the STALKER series. The prologue part of it was pretty appealing and I thought they may go somewhere with it - with different tasks depending on your "job" relating to the research and experiments that are going on in the "Zone" of this world, but it devolves into just another "save the world" run of the mill story filled with a bunch of cliches, cookie cutter characters and a bunch of typos in the tons of uninteresting, uninspired text the game vomits at you. For a retro styled narrative driven RPG, the narrative part sure as sh-t doesn't hold up. So how about the gameplay part? Meh. Weird level scaling with multiple level jumps between quests coupled with even 3 level difference being basically crippling make the combat a sh-tshow, a lot of the abilities are pretty much useless, the AI is all over the place - sometimes it'll roll all over you, other times it acts as if you weren't even there and just lets you shoot it to death without any response. The GUI is so bad it had to have been done on purpose to make the game "feel" more retro because everything older automatically equals gooder - the game basically forces you to use keyboard binds because playing with the mouse is terribly clunky. The RPG elements are perhaps the only saving grace with tons of things to interact with, conversations with a bunch of options, lot of them restricted by stats, etc. which is all great - but, as mentioned at the beginning, it's also often disrupted by stupid azz attempts of the writers to be "clever" and f-ck with the player. Of course, they can often be dealt with by savescumming and such, but that's still sh-t game design. Anyways, not worth it. It does hit a spot in regards to actually roleplaying, but the gameplay is tedious, the story and characters uninspired and boring.

Just finished the game last week. And to THIS DAY, I am still baffled on why TF is the ending so bad. The story building up at start was good and I was enjoying every bit of the game. I was also very intrigued on how the story goes, but that ending still hits me to this day. You can have multiple endings, save on the final room and just go through the thing again. But DAMN, after the first ending I got, and the New Vegas ending thingy, I am disappointed on how everything ended that I just stopped playing the game overall and didn't even bother to play the other endings. Also, if you got a high stealth *criminal* skill, you can skip every enemy in the final map. I know it's optional, but what a joke that option is. Building up all your characters, just to skip them. It's like they rushed that ending just to publish the game fast.

Bought the game for $2.99 and regret it. I have played for over 9 hours and it has all been very boring and tedious :(

A game that starts off strong, but the more you play it, the weaker it becomes. Encased puts you in a strange world. You are still on Earth, but inside some kind of alien bubble. Humanity has only recently discovered it, somehow, and only recently been able to get inside. Think Roadside Picnic, where sometimes the laws of physics no longer work the way they should, where technology so advanced it could be seen as magic, and what is alive and what is dead is a blurred line. It is a fantastic premise, and the game starts of extremely strong. The starting area shows off tons of different class/skill specific challenges and dialogue options. It builds a highly detailed area for you to explore and get used to, before dumping you outside; where little by little, the game slowly.. erodes away. Some areas of the game world are highly developed, mostly the areas where you start the game, and some areas in the mid game. As you go along you stop finding places like this, where there are tons of ways to proceed in the game, tons of skill and dialogue checks, and you can see where they had to cut stuff out and slim stuff down in order to finish the game. On the whole, I enjoyed the game. There were some things that really annoyed me, like inventory management (there is just so much useless trash and crafting materials), how crafting worked, and how upgrading weapons worked. The last part there is the biggest thing for me. I did not realise that there was no stronger progression of guns as you work your way through the game. Instead you craft your gun to have a higher level, thus doing more damage on top of other things. I got extremely unlucky in what merchants I encountered, and what they had in stock, and was unable to purchase weapons in my skill class at a higher level, and had to rely on crafting. I didn't mind making my character more of a crafter to compensate for this, as at the start of them game it opened up other avenues despite making my character weaker overall, but in the end it wasn't worth it. I found the story and characters to be interesting, but also slightly confusing. The area you play in eventually splits up into different factions that oppose each other, but it isn't like Earth has been destroyed, or that contact will never be remade. So a lot of the things people do, don't really make a lot of sense when you keep in mind that the rest of the planet will eventually remake contact. The sheer randomness of some encounters, the merchants you run into, what merchants have in stock, can make it so that you waste a lot of time on the world map, or having your character sleep. There is apparently something that happens at some point in the game if you wait too long, but I never encountered it. Combat is interesting, but it doesn't feel like there are a lot of viable abilities or skills for it. You mostly just use your base attack or one or two skills that are actually alright based on the action points they cost. You encounter and fight a good amount of different kinds of enemies, and your choices do matter in terms of who you want to help, and who you don't. Though, at one point they kind of force you to help out everyone, including people you may really not like; unless you are good at stealth and stealing. Otherwise you will just have to kill them all and then suffer through constant attacks from that faction from that point on. Overall, I enjoyed my time playing the game. It is not a perfect game, it is really a just finished game, and you can feel it. But you can also feel that a ton of effort was put into this. I would recommend it, if you don't have anything like Wasteland 3 or Baldurs Gate to play; and only on sale. You can easily get it on sale going up to 90% at times. Get it then.