Enshrouded Review

Enshrouded is a survival action RPG about exploring a handcrafted world, harvesting materials, and building a home you can reshape block by block. With 87% positive across more than 53,000 Steam reviews, the game lands in Very Positive territory, and the pattern in the reviews is clear: the building system is the draw, the combat is the sore spot. If you come for a fortress you can redesign for the fourteenth time, the game delivers. If you come for a sword-and-board power fantasy, you may spend more time fighting the controls than the monsters.

Build anything, then rebuild it

The build system earns the most praise, and it is not hard to see why. Players describe terraforming the land, raising towns, and populating them with recruited craftspeople and animals. One long-time player calls it some of the best building they have seen in any game; another admits they rebuilt their house repeatedly instead of finishing quests. The loop feeds itself: explore, gather, return to base, hand resources to craftspeople, upgrade workbenches, then push into tougher regions with better gear. That rhythm may be the main reason so many reviews stay positive even when combat complaints pile up.

Exploration is the second pillar, and the world is not procedurally empty. Reviews repeatedly mention a handcrafted map with dungeons full of puzzles and environmental hazards, and one player notes the map is massive with very little dead space. Gliding gets called out as genuinely fun and takes some of the sting out of long walks. The catch is the geography. Multiple players complain that mountains and deep canyons turn a quest marker 300 meters away into a ten-to-twenty-minute detour, and one reviewer argues every region is the same terrain in a different color palette. The world is beautiful; getting across it is the tax.

Melee is the weak link

Combat is where the game loses people, and the complaints are consistent rather than isolated. Players describe melee as underpowered next to ranged and magic, with no poise on heavy attacks while enemies keep swinging through hits. One frustrated reviewer points out that shield-and-sword builds struggle to deal damage while bows and spells clear groups with ease. Another describes staves that demand a charge-up, consume ammunition, and drain mana all at once, so every cast pays three costs before it even lands. A third says the parry flash appears later than the actual window, forcing memorization. These are not polish issues; they shape which builds feel viable.

Inventory and onboarding add friction on top. One player with hundreds of hours says they spend most of their time deciding what to throw away because bag space never grows. Others report walking to a marker and finding no entrance, or circling a cave looking for a mechanism that is never pointed out. Lava-like terrain and dense enemy spawns make death expensive, with corpse runs measured in long distances. Co-op players report desync bugs where players and enemies become mutually invincible, and small patches have caused stuttering. None of this is fatal, but together it explains why the review curve dipped after launch.

Settings that open the door

The game's adjustable difficulty deserves real credit. Older players and those with limited mobility write that custom settings let them finish the whole game without frustration, and one player credits those options with making the game playable at all after a stroke. A 66-year-old reviewer asks for an even gentler mode that still allows leveling, which suggests the floor could go lower, but the flexibility already on offer is rare and worth praising. Co-op is the other multiplier: a single-player save can travel into a friend's world, and multiple reviewers say the game is simply better with one or two companions. Solo play is where the melee problems and long walks bite hardest.

At $39.99, the value question comes down to how much you build. Players with hundreds of hours keep returning after updates, and the developers are repeatedly described as responsive and quick to add content. If you measure a game by hours of construction and exploration, the price looks reasonable. If you want a tight action RPG, the combat may not hold you for the same stretch.