Encased: A Sci-Fi Post-Apocalyptic RPG

A very good RPG in the spirit of Fallout (1, 2)

Excellent game with good story, balanced combat and RPG system. Excellent first game chapter, but second chapter is incomplete. I will wait Encased 2 from this studio, because it is more Fallout then F3 and F4.

I really enjoy playing Encased. I dont get why any CRPG fan would rate this lower than 3 really. The main story is quite good. Many enjoyable side quests also, many of which has a nice sense of humor. Combat is what you would expect from a CRPG - but still enjoyable.

The game has seemingly deep gameplay layers around developing the player character. There's a ton of skills, states, features tied witch each other, the amount of which hammers original Fallouts' to the ground. But they are "introduced" without a sense of pacing or player guidance, which results in an extremely poor, dull and boring prologue sequence, where the game tries to conduct a by the books tutorial, instructing the player about non-essentials, and piling up a ton of noise in various quest logs and notes. You also get a free choice of combat itemization from minute one, which leads only to confusion and rather irritiating interaction with the game. It's also behind a wall of hot garbage, 4th wall breaking text that only takes away the player from the game completely. Compare that to the hidden tutorial sequence of Fallout: a dialogue, a corpse, a gun, an interactable panel, and the first, non faked combat. The content is paced from there on, introducting new things as the player, well, plays the game. Encased barely accomplishes in a couple of hours something what Fallout did in 5 minutes. There are features and systems that are busy work and/or don't benefit the player's experience at all. Their sole purpose is to waste time and resources. The overall gameplay collapses somewhere in act 2 and devolves into mindless progression through "content". Quest progression is flawed. Filler fetch quests consist the most of the main story which is pretentious, sure, but ultimately pointless, boring and told in a way that quickly zones out your brain cells. There's no player's agenda at all. The game has nothing interesting to tell nor show. It's just neutered "content". Encased mimics all of the Fallout systems and its coatpaint, but is clueless of what their purpose is and how they should be interconnected with each other. There's some quality material in the game, but it's all for naught, since the game lacks a competent direction throughout.

Wish I had found sooner, reminds me a bit of Citizen Sleeper , Forgotten 23 and Tharsis. It even has optional narration like Disco Elysium, and lots of npcs have voices also, I'm just pleasantly surprised.