Encased: A Sci-Fi Post-Apocalyptic RPG

A very fascinating look at an alternate universe set in the mid-1970's at a mysterious location which contains unique properties and strange relics. Well-done retro-futurism, great use of atmosphere. It's a little on the difficult side and there are a lot of different strategies you can use depending on how you generated your character.

Encased is a brilliant isometric game that didn't get enough love when it landed on STEAM. I played over 100 hours on my first play-through as a mentally challenged Silver (the elite, administrator class).
If you want a unique roleplaying experience, on your FIRST play-through be sure to run an intellectually challenged Silver and enjoy the ensuing hijinks. The dialogue with the NPCs is GENIUS as confused questgivers try to figure out how to explain complex situations to your mentally limited character while gently trying to redirect you from eating Christmas lights and stealing erasers from their desks.
If you choose a different background--such as melee-oriented, paroled convict (Orange), weapon-based security guard (Black), proficient mechanic (Blue), or educated scientist (White)--you will get a more complete picture of what is happening in the Encased world, significantly changing your overall experience. ALL THE DIALOGUE with NPCs adjusts to reflect how your character--theoretically at least--can UNDERSTAND what is going on in the Encased world. The game then becomes a fairly decent apocalyptic RPG, similar to Wasteland or the original Fallout.
I can't emphasize enough how impressed I am with the writers who crafted the interactive conversations in this game. I wish this game had a sequel -

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.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Pixel

---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boy
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☑ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leader boards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☑ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second live for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☑ 10

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If you are fan of Fallout series from old times previous Bethesda then this is for you.

Excellent experience that takes may queues from the early Fallout 2D games. Rich story, crazy encounters, and plentiful voice acting. Stealth is a bit obnoxious, but combat, and exploring is where this game shines. They can't alert anyone if they're dead, right? I did kinda feel the game cut short and the ending was a bit "meh," but the ending result slideshow was certainly fun. I would seriously love to help kickstart another 2D game by these folks. Well worth it! I'll probably play it through again as an Serial Killer Orange for giggles... I mean stress relief... and mean.. nevermind.

Alright, so this game was made by ex-Larian devs and that can be seen. The quests, writing, characters, narrative are really well done, on the par with AAA tittles.
I got no complains about that factor, the game just draws you in, it knows how to build up atmosphere and knows how to tell a story.
But it does have big downside, the gameplay.
I am gonna start with the inventory management, that was a pet peeve for me. In the game you can have up to 3 team members, 4 is special occasions. So, the frustration beginnings when you try to compare equipped items with the ones in inventory, for some god damn reason the position of the items keep randomizing every time you switch characters…
Then you got the shops, good luck trying to compare items for companions, because the shop NPCs keep saying they want to talk to the MC and you cannot change characters while shopping, you have to open up the dialogue with a member and hit the Barter button on the NPCs portrait instead of normal dialogue choices.
Yeah so much fun…
Another point is the pathfinding of the AI of the team members, they sometimes run right into the enemies, or even more annoying and common, they trigger mines by running on them. Keep an eye on them when you getting close to enemies or hazards.
That gets into the combat factor. It aint that good. It’s a tactics based combat style, but not to the degree of something like X-Com, your characters cannot take cover properly, you can waste action points to do that, but going behind a wall will not count as cover.
It does offer plenty of different guns each with its own abilities (depending on the weapon’s group), so I do like that. However, companions will have their specific weapons which cannot be changed, you could upgrade them, but if you reach far in the game, those become redundant, especially due to the fact that I could not get enough mats to fully upgrade them.
Let’s get to the stealth system, I dunno what is up with that, without even investing much points into it, I could sneak up and stare the enemies right in the eyes without them reacting for a couple of seconds. Is OP, that is clear, but there aint many talents to optimize a stealth build, so at best I used it to get in the middle of enemies and spam grenades, heck sometimes they do not even react to that.
Regarding the reputation system, without much spoils, at the end you are aided by the faction/s which you helped the most before, well I build up almost max rep with some factions, however at the end they were very hostile, ofc I did not do all the chores they asked me too but still managed to build up rep. close to max even. It should have been made to properly reduce the rep when I do critical choices, but instead the rep hit you get is too insignificant, and can be easily recovered, but you still end up getting utterly hated… but because of this rep system you will have no idea until the end.
It falls after Act 1. By this I mean that Act 1 is the best thing about the game, it is very strong with enough side quests, character growth, the most interesting locations, and builds up the main story in the best way. Afterwards its just falls, the main quest is just the same as Act 1 with extra steps, the others just feel like an expansion to Act 1, more of the map does get uncovered but that is all, it is not very interesting.
Overall, this game does beautiful work with the narrative but and ugly job with the gameplay. I grabbed it for a few bucks and for 60+ hours it sure as hell worth it. Really wished Steam would have a neutral button, I would place this game as a 6.5/10, nice writing but it is being dragged down by mediocre gameplay and other bad design choices.

I could play as a sneaky diplomat from start to finish and it was funny, that's good enough for me.