Enshrouded

Enshrouded’s mix of Valheim-style survival and Breath of the Wild-style exploration make a wonderful pairing, but it still has slew of Early Access kinks to work out.

The fog of war clears around Embervale, revealing a survival crafting masterpiece.

Best-in-class building and a lovely atmosphere war against technical difficulties and an uninspiring premise for this early access survival crafting game.

An expansive world, well-written lore, and decent base-building provide an enjoyable survival game alternative.

Enshrouded is a survival action-RPG set in a wide-open world of combat, building, crafting and exploration, each feeding into the other.

Enshrouded is certainly one of the largest, most expansive survival crafting games released in quite some time. But among the countless recipes and entertaining fantasy is the opportunity to lose oneself in an accessible, enjoyable building system.

Enshrouded feels great on a controller and couch, mixing total building freedom with handcrafted action RPG progression. Between the 1.0 endgame additions, flexible difficulty sliders, and clever DualSense support, it easily overcomes its clunky menus and lack of cross-play.

With the launch of version 1.0, Enshrouded establishes itself as a premier title within the open-world survival and action-RPG genre. Keen Games has shown admirable respect for its community by utilizing the early access period as a testing ground for continuous improvement. New map content, the introduction of the Sparkworks system, and a compelling conclusion to the story deliver an experience that is rich, immersive, and memorable. Although there are minor shortcomings in melee combat and a lack of crossplay at launch, the game’s strengths far outweigh these flaws. The creative freedom offered by the voxel-based system, combined with an excellent exploration mechanic—featuring a glider and grappling hook—sets a new industry standard. Whether you are an ambitious builder or a fearless explorer, a journey through Embervale is practically essential.

While some elements of Enshrouded are genuinely impressive – like its hand-crafted world – the way progression is structured, favoring rushing to the hardest biome you can get to and grinding its respawning chests rather than gradually climbing in power as you reach a new biome, ends up doing the game more harm than good.

Enshrouded has been a fantastic experience despite crossplay not being active yet. My time with it has been strictly solo, but unlike Valheim or Dragonwilds, I've rather enjoyed the single-player nature of what I currently have going. Enshrouded takes a genre and builds it around an already solid RPG adventure, one with just enough intrigue to make me care about its world, and the tools needed to explore it to its fullest.