The post Encased early access impressions – Finally, a worthy cRPG first appeared on Killa Penguin.
I usually choose to ignore early access titles because their nebulous 1.0 release dates tend to throw a wrench into my careful scheduling, but there were a couple of titles releasing this week that were too intriguing to pass up. Encased: A Sci-Fi Post-Apocalyptic RPG is a game that claims to be inspired by the first two games in the Fallout series, Divinity: Original Sin, Baldur’s Gate, and other games in that vein. The Fallout comparison is the only one that shines through (though there are also choose-your-own-adventure sequences not unlike those found in Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera), but that’s hardly a negative thing; the original Fallout is one of my favorite games ever, and I’m happy to report that Encased is a much more worthy successor than Wasteland 2 and other hollow pretenders. Some technical issues like periodic crashing and amusing animation bugs aside, Encased hits the same retrofuturistic notes while doing just enough to distinguish itself from its inspirations.
Despite how little time I’ve had lately (and only having access to a computer that can barely run the game on its lowest settings), I’ve already clocked in almost 6 hours with Encased, so there’s no denying that it captures the addictive quality of quality cRPGs. Everything you’d expect in a game like this is present: quests can be completed in multiple ways, your skills determine which options are available in difficult circumstances, and success in combat requires preparedness and strategy rather than rewarding soulless grinding.
Your first few hours with Encased will be almost entirely devoid of combat as it instead showcases its dialogue system. You play as a recent transplant to The Dome, a mysterious structure discovered in a desert that living beings can enter but never exit. The CRONUS corporation tasked with investigating it from the inside is broken up into numerous castes, from the technically adept Blue Wings to the Orange Wings that are made up of former criminals, and the often insular nature of these castes leads to immediate friction. Encased has a reputation system, however, so how well you get along with the members of other groups often boils down to how you treat them. For example, I used my medicine skills to heal a critically injured Black Wing (who are military/security forces, basically) early in the game, and this act caused all Black Wings to view my character more positively. It’s hard to tell how deep this system will end up being, but I’ve noticed multiple conversations where quests could seemingly be advanced by leveraging my reputation with specific groups.
Much like Fallout, Encased uses a classless system—you select “tag” skills at the beginning that can be raised faster than others, but each level up gives you points to spend in whatever you want. Spending points not only increases your competence with the skill in question, but also slowly earns points that can be spent on that skill’s pool of abilities. These abilities allow you to perform actions such as pickpocketing, hacking, crafting, and also unlock new attacks when using weapons of a certain type. It’s an interesting system that I’m really coming to appreciate, though many of the more advanced abilities haven’t been implemented yet in the current early access version. Speaking of Encased being an early access game, there are also some technical issues to contend with. Crashing, mainly, though I’ve also encountered situations where it’s impossible to aim at enemies after they move onto a square containing a dead enemy. On the bright side, Encased saves at every area transition. These autosaves are overwritten as you play to avoid too much clutter, but it cycles through a large number of autosaves as a buffer in case something goes wrong, which is the best way of implementing autosaves. Once you factor in manual saves and quicksaves, it becomes easy to work around the bugs.
I could ramble on quite a bit more, but suffice it to say that I’m loving Encased right now and look forward to seeing the finished product. It’s rare for me to recommend an early access game, but if you’re remotely interested in this kind of game, you absolutely need to pick this one up.
