Impressions from playing Encased. How Good Is The “Russian Fallout”? -apkrig

Jand noon. The sun radiates and the endless rusty sand of the desert beneath the Dome swirls its steps. Four men in black uniforms and sturdy shoes quickly cut meters across a zone where anything can lurk.
Foreheads glistening with sweat. Long shadow pulse rifle swinging on his back. An inconspicuous murmur. Raised arms and sudden silence.
The first of the men, without a word, glances around and pulls out a gun.
The second runs his eyes and the main between the low bushes and a pile of stones.
The third kneels and knocks strangely bluish grains of dust from the soles.
Heat. Attention tense like a string. Fuse click. Flash. And silence.

It’s shortly after noon. The sun is shining and three men are walking nervously under the Dome. The eyes flutter to the sides, the fingers on the triggers. The sand is standing and glowing, nothing is happening, nothing has happened.
There have never been more…

Encased is a likable RPG that refers to a number of classics. Although this is the first film of the Dark Crystal Games studio, funded by the Kickstarter campaign and collecting feedback and awards at indie festivals, some developers have worked randomly on Divinity: Original Sin or Dragon Age 2 and 3. High expectations are raised not only by CV, but also by setting system. An undisguised reference to the classic Fallout and Wasteland series, cut by sci-fi and Stalker’s uncertainty in the 1970s, will gain someone by entering the mysterious Dome. Cronus undertakes research and scientific work in a special bubble that has covered part of the earth’s surface. Living beings penetrate inside, but they cannot get out – about the employees in various roles, but due to the promise of wealth, scientific discoveries and adventures, Cronus has no shortage.

Adventure in the wilderness

The introductory lessons of training, orientation between the colorful factions of the Dome, and the first mission at Nashville Base serve as a great introduction to a world that is exactly rich, varied and open enough to entice players to explore, but not so complicated as to lost in a number of characters, factions and tasks. And when does the initial interest turn into undisguised joy? After the first visit to the Roadside Picnic petrol station, an almost deserted, sunken place in the desert after a radioactive storm, where one small, quiet picnic on the road actually takes place…

The choice of the main character and his statistics will fascinate you. Encased offers a large number of characters with a variety of personal stories, motivation to enter the Dome and, of course, entry abilities and skills. Of course, the classic RPG attributes – strength, perception, intelligence, charisma and the like – determine the playing style. Furthermore, the player invests in various skills in combat (melee, hi-tech weapons, heavy / light weapons…) and non-combat activities (control of technology, survival in the wilderness…). In addition, the characters have various complementary perks. What is nice, however, in a large part of the conversations, the role in which the player enters the Dome plays a role. So, does it belong to the White Wing of Scientists? It makes it easier to access laboratories and information about experiments and projects. The black wing consists of soldiers and police officers of the Cronus Corporation. Silver is the “ruling” class. The Blues are the businessmen of the world under a bubble, and there is also the “dirty” class of the Orange, who perform low tasks and clean-up jobs. They are mostly recruited from convicted criminals.

Good reputation precedes

As you play, each character will increase or decrease their reputation with each faction through the decisions they make, the tasks they complete, and in conversations with important heroes. And the promise is the opportunity to go up and down the ranks on one or more sides, but also to become a lone wolf, geraltic neutral, or simply indifferent to the ambitions and fates of those who build settlements and social systems in an uncertain zone.

The reputation system is quite straightforward – plus or minus points awarded for actions. Will Roadside Picnic be attacked by radioactive cockroaches? Help in the fight deserves to make people living around the gas station perceive the hero better. Did the hero of the Magellan colony’s leadership crack down on secret rat races in the nuclear reactor chamber? Bettors will not be thrilled with the punishment… In any case, it’s great how much content, similar to small and large stories, the decisions that the player will make, the creators managed to cram into individual locations. It will take many hours to explore several floors of the aforementioned Magellan, diversified here and there by dealing with drugs in freshly laundered laundry, crawling through ventilation and repairing jammed doors, searching for stolen jewelry, and many, many other tasks.

On the way to the Dome

The player thus spends more time reading well-written dialogues, searching for partial quests and discovering, than counting how many times he has to repeat exploration, crafing or how many to defeat rats to level the hero. Although the numbers are overflowing when the character’s card is opened, modified by perks, skills, objects and even the state (radioactivity, hunger, thirst, etc.), the story, the world, the player’s immersion over mathematics playfully wins.

Encased manages to create a feeling of constant danger and surprise players even when just traveling between locations. On the map of the Dome, he moves only slowly between key points, trying to avoid the destructive and unnatural maelstrom, and at the same time he may come across a sunken vehicle surrounded by three corpses. An arms dealer and his caravan. Aggressive robo-children with literally “explosive” inclinations. Mirror valley, where glistening anomalies confuse the pilgrim’s footsteps… and maybe not only that. Radioactive cemetery seducing to immoral enrichment with a protective suit and shovel. And these are just generated locations, smaller stops on the way to fulfill story quests and exploring more elaborate and larger places – colonies with a larger population, their rulers, rules and… inu… also criminals and crimes…

Although you can travel like a lone stalker, most players like to thank companions they need to help (for example, freeing a robot from captivity by bandits, rescuing an eternally drunk actor from a hyena raid, etc.), but subsequently become invaluable for more cargo, to lead different ways of fighting and to combine abilities and to revive the journey through some great dialogue.

Sneaking and shots

The core of the game takes place in real time, when the player examines locations, collects items, digs in inventory and so on. Some actions don’t take place right away – for example, exploring a pile of junk in a warehouse means waiting a few seconds for the game to evaluate, based on the hero’s perception and various abilities, what he might find inside. The same applies, for example, to hacking terminals or unlocking locks with jewelers. At the same time, time is still running and the hero, for example, can be detected or given a dose of radiation. When moving locations, you can also switch to stealth mode, where, following the Commandos pattern, the player can orient himself where the enemies can see, and also try to use hit and run tactics. However, the moment the enemies clearly notice its presence and activity, Encased switches to turn-based mode and battles are already taking place in it.

Even here, more experienced players do not have a major surprise. The actions of the characters depend on the number of available action points, the order in the round according to the initiative. Shot from a weapon, its reloading, movement, use of the object and special abilities – all cost a certain number of APs. It’s a good idea to keep some of the points for use in the next round, typically to let the enemy I’m not shooting at run a little closer to each other and then salt not two, but four doses. Various fighting styles will be successfully applied – more at a distance with firearms, close with a shotgun or full contact combat with surface hits, stunning and other elements of martial arts. You can also use mental abilities – personally they came to me a little weaker than I expected, but in any case they are available and they also have their own development. It is also worth mentioning the number of effects that will be applied to the character – assigned to the combat situation (the hero can burn, be poisoned, marked as dead, totally tired), but also using various drugs, stimulators and more or less legal means, how to increase performance once – but at the cost of possible addiction and withdrawal symptoms.

Overview and order

Taking into account the early access state of the game, Encased already offers great fun and is a very promising title. Of course, it also has its weaknesses, which developers can still largely correct in the months remaining until the release (autumn of this year). Initially, the biggest difficulty was overcrowding some locations with objects that the player could explore. This is not completely bad in principle, but unfortunately it leads to terribly annoying minutes, when the gameplay blows to click on one box after another, after which the player has to wait a few seconds, pick up some “useful” item such as two soaps and a broom, and again try your luck a little further. The game then loses pace and, in truth, can’t handle much capacity with inventory capacity and sorting things by level, usability and significance. The relics that need to be examined will fit between the armor and accessories, it is difficult to find your way in the number of items for crafting and, as a result, to find out if you have the right ammunition for the weapon.

Improving clarity would also benefit the control of character development. For individual bonuses or penalties, it is easier to get information about what adds a given plus or minus (the player often just guesses what caused his growing hunger, what is related to radiation, why a certain ability did not open up to him, etc.). And even in the more action-packed combat phase of the game, there are sometimes annoying minutes when the game does not evaluate very well from how far they should engage in the character’s combat. So, for example, you protect the junktown from bandit attack, and before you get to the turn, there must first be a turn of eight other NPCs that you don’t even see because they are at the other end of the map.

Of course, players also report a number of bugs and dead ends in discussion forums, into which an open and story game can easily get. However, it must be said that most of them are being actively addressed by the creators, and the main storyline has been completed without a single problem. The storyline stops at a rather interesting moment, when the game really starts – you can only guess how much content we still get in the story with the final version (perhaps: how much money will there be), so that the conclusion is not unnecessarily hurried. The locations that early access offers to explore are also less sophisticated and full of content than the ones the player grinds at the beginning.

The hours spent with Encased are joyful anyway, thanks to the interesting setting, which immediately engulfs and does not let you get out of watching the fate of the entire Cathedral and its cities, settlements, inhabitants and places. In the fall, we believe, we can look forward to a well-written adventure that will not leave fans of the Fallout or Wasteland series cold.