KickStarter Encased - isometric post-apocalyptic RPG under the dome

[Fenix]

How good is this game compared to Atom RPG?

Half of it is on pair or better - other not exist yet.

 

[Alphons]

Finished it without killing anyone (had to restart at one point because the training dummies at Concord count as killing people for some reason).
Finished majority of side quests (Poisoned Well bugged out, tranq darts couldn't penetrate the Junktown Arena champion, skipped the Fops' arena and didn't bother collecting all 18 dog tags).

It feels unfinished (though not the Stygian level). Prologue and first chapter were good- loads of skill checks and side quests.
Then chapter two rolls out and you gain access to the City. I was expecting another Magellan, but it felt more like a prop town built on a nuclear test site.
Around 20 NPCs going in circles around the streets, empty houses, pharmacy without a vendor, two main quest buildings and a sewer corridor with 2 roaches and a corpse.

Fops base, Phalanx and Carmine Heights at least had some vendors, but there is no side content after you turn on the Emulator (aside from some main quest chores if you can't convince someone to help you and small locations like Crossroads).

Near the end you meet leaders of every faction and they unlock extra ending options if you have enough reputation with their faction or pass skill checks. I didn't have enough reputation with anyone, because factions don't have any quests, aside from mentioned before MQ chores.


TL;DR First half good (with great prologue), second half feels like exploring unfinished maps after launching them through console. They'd need pull off a Dead City for it to be servicable.

 

[Spectacle]

Thinking about a scientific PC, is there any reason not to choose Slacker perk with high (10) brains? It seems like a steal-deal. 16 points per level instead of 19 but two perks at the first level. E.g. taking an instant leveling at the 1st level as a perk, one gets 16 more points to redistribute thus overcoming the disadvantage of the Slacker for five levels to come at least!

The XP to reach the next level increases gradually, so if you take a "free" level early every level after that will take longer.

I understand, thanks. Though the PC is going to have the better skills right-away from the start, possibly also gaining more experiences, items etc. for it. It still seems an interesting and a better trade-off, doesn't it?

It could be worthwhile. Like a lot of RPGs Encased is harder at the start, so some extra skill points and more HP from having an extra level could make make the difference, and being a bit behind in the mid and end game might not be a big deal.

 

[agris]

As someone else said, the best way to enjoy combat and be challenged by it is to make a character that is bad at combat. Also don’t use melee / hand to hand for companions or yourself, it’s too good.

And absolutely play in hardest difficulty, which would be called “regular” 15 years ago. All others fudge to-hit rolls.

 

[Jenkem]

would love to see an expansion of the pre-maelstrom time period, along with fixing up the 2nd half locations and combat balancing.

 

[Thac0]

How good is this game compared to Atom RPG? I am wondering if I want to play it.

Atom is a good bit better, not entirely different league but considerably stronger.

 

[DeepOcean]

This game is such a lost opportunity, imagine you are playing a serious version of Paranoia with all the different research wings with different rules and work but serious + the anomalies and artifacts of Stalker + some concepts of Annihilation like the enviroment changing and repurposing people that are inside it for some alien mysterious purpose as it had its own mind. Those ruskies stuck gold but then threw the gold through the window on the end of the Nashville facility by aping Fallout literally then ran out of money after Magellan and just half assed their way to release, that was it.

The post apocalyptic twist was a serious mistake, there was ample opportunity for shit going wrong without pulling the apocalypse. An orange rebellion, the enviroment getting hostile and more hostile with creepy shit happening, a backstabing corporation, spies and and internal sabotage in favor of factions outside the Dome, it would be great. I wanted to play the game that existed until the end of the Nashville dungeon all the way through, it is sad it wont be.

 

[Raghar]

would love to see an expansion of the pre-maelstrom time period, along with fixing up the 2nd half locations and combat balancing.

You can't do that because it's a prelude that sets the story. The rest of the story must be much longer.

 

[Darkwind]

would love to see an expansion of the pre-maelstrom time period, along with fixing up the 2nd half locations and combat balancing.

You can't do that because it's a prelude that sets the story. The rest of the story must be much longer.

ACKSHUALLY... The period right when the thing first appeared or maybe even right after the Spire/Dome were created would be ideal for a prequel. You could easily get a whole game & story just out of those events IMHO.

 

[Quillon]

fuck prequel, just have a 10 year timelapse; fixed elevator etc

 

[Nikanuur]

Nothing much will compare to CS once it releases. It already blows most crpgs out of the water from just a EA title, so theres that.

Underrail: Infusion is another title you should definitely be hyped for.

BG3? eh. Encased does seem to be a fun playthrough. I am still waiting to start. Perhaps a few months down the line for patches.. not decided yet.

CS as in Colony Ship?

 

[Daedalos]

So besides the combat, and somewaht lack of exploration/content, less C&C and skill checks etc. in the 2nd half of the game, is what IS there good?

overall story/writing in 2nd half? Is it good, considering? or does the quality also drop there considerably?

I can stomach weak combat and lesser things to explore in later chapters, if only the story and writing continues to be the strong suit of the game.

 

[Alphons]

overall story/writing in 2nd half? Is it good, considering? or does the quality also drop there considerably?

You have to get all factions to work with you. You can do their chores or skip them with right skills.

Crazy raiders are crazy and you have to fight in an arena, democratic settlement has democratic problems so you fix them democratically, authoritarian guy is authoritarian and wants to take over democratic settlement, evil church is evil.

Plot with Maelstrom/ Dome stays strong until the end, but the faction stuff is eh.

 

[Daedalos]

overall story/writing in 2nd half? Is it good, considering? or does the quality also drop there considerably?

You have to get all factions to work with you. You can do their chores or skip them with right skills.

Crazy raiders are crazy and you have to fight in an arena, democratic settlement has democratic problems so you fix them democratically, authoritarian guy is authoritarian and wants to take over democratic settlement, evil church is evil.

Plot with Maelstrom/ Dome stays strong until the end, but the faction stuff is eh.

Sounds just like fallout then, main story strong, side stories decent/eh.

Or maybe more fallout 2, where the main story good, side stories and all that faction shit, was kind of boring tbh

 

[Marat]

Lionheart had much better atmosphere and music

Ahhh yes, the Much Better Atmosphere(TM) of Lionheart, wherein the first few maps you find DaVince and Shakespear are neighbors, one map away from that old buddy-comedy duo of Cervantes and Machiavelli.

Lionheart is to cRPGs what The Avengers are to cinema; pablum without rhyme or reason, created from business need rather than creative spark.

It pisses me off to see it praised here given this forum's history, because back on the BIS forums everyone and their dog was shitting all over it and the developers for dumbing down the implementation of Fallout's mechanics. That's right, Fallout - a game not known for deep or complex mechanics. Lionheart was proto-decline, along with Brotherhood of Steel and Dark Alliance.

It's a trash-tier grab-bag of historical figures thrown together for the fedora-wearing crowd to feel sophisticated while they splash around in the puddle that they reduced Fallout's mechanics to.

Hold your horses there, pardner. Spamming Barcelona with historical figures, while a valid charge, did not take away from the experience (for a ten year old me) and the strength of the atmosphere people praise the game for lies in it's setting - mass execution of Saracen prisoners at the siege of Jaffa inadvertently completes an ancient ritual and unleashes magic upon the world. Galileeans and desert-dwellers join forces to turn the tide of demonspawn. Few hundred years later, player is thrust into the world where Mongols are goblins, dangerous magical creatures roam the wilderness, Inquisition hunts practitioners of magic and Spain is on the verge of launching a massive invasion of druidic England, intrigues, mysterious factions, unknown magical dimensions - all this lays groundwork for a setting far more unique and interesting than n-th iteration of post-apo bullshit. And I just opened Lionheart's soundtrack and it is objectively better than bland Encased.

 

[agris]

Rabbity_Thing Fair, but unfortunately the synopsis you weave is better than the actual game.

I sat down to re-play it again about 5 years ago, well outside of my childhood, and it was just garbage. Hackneyed, trite shit. I didn't even make it out of the much-lauded Barcelona; I uninstalled it after DaVince's dialogue was forced upon my ocular nerves and into the language center of my brain.

Seeing that tripe heralded as a good game, regardless of comparisons to Encased, I cannot abide - even though the hooks, as you write them, do sound compelling. I'm waiting for my historical fiction tactics-RPG send in WW1-era Egypt and the Levant, after all.

 

[Marat]

Nobody's saying Lionheart is a good game - it isn't. But the setting continues to intrigue me to this day and is infinitely more compelling than an uninspired, derivative mix of Fallout and STALKER. That's precisely where the superiority of Lionheart over Encased lies, because gameplay of neither could be called enjoyable.

 

[Nikanuur]

Nobody's saying Lionheart is a good game - it isn't. But the setting continues to intrigue me to this day and is infinitely more compelling than an uninspired, derivative mix of Fallout and STALKER. That's precisely where the superiority of Lionheart over Encased lies, because gameplay of neither could be called enjoyable.

I am saying Lionheart is a good game. It's ridiculously awsome. Not saying it's on par with the early Fallouts (to which the comparison sways the notion), it's awsome in it's own strange, whacky and naive way.

 

[agris]

This game is possibly the most non-woke RPG I have seen in recent years. In particular, I think that the depiction of this gay is like as a joke. It is surprising to see something like this in the cultural climate of 2021, although it is probably historically accurate for a game set in the '70s. Let's be real, the game has different issues, but wokeness is not one of them.

Here's the ftm companion whose pronouns you must respect.

I don't care (the fact that this thing falls apart into an amateurish empty mess in its final areas is a much bigger issue) but there's no need to be deceptive or selective about what it is.

FYI, it isn't quite like that.

 

[Fenix]

Spamming Barcelona with historical figures, while a valid charge, did not take away from the experience (for a ten year old me) and the strength of the atmosphere people praise the game for lies in it's setting

And they completely fucked this up when put demon that could set up all your stats to any number in game.
Like, it would be so interesting to play it when you hawe 10s in everything.
Yeah, no - at this point I dropped it forever.

 

[DeepOcean]

Is just an impression of mine or stealth is bugged? I mean, on quite a few situations I was inside the white zone on enemies detection range and stayed there forever and they never detected me, the eye icon got fully red and nothing. Also, about wokenesss, there are some weak signs of it on some places but I dunno if I can take that seriously on a game where there is a facility where a female doctor got insane, was thinking a snake was growing on her vagina and did public announcements for all men going to the infirmary to get castrated, very accurate feminist activist behavior.

The same people who got the billboards with libtard slogans in it about equality wrote that thing, so, I dunno what is going on with those ruskies.

 

[The Wall]

For a BILLIONTH time, there is no such thing as pure Slavic culture. Nor pure Japanese, Chinese, African, Iranian etc. Since at least 50s, we are all your cultural bitches. When you (aka USA) experienced cultural blossom, we looked up to you. When you are going through cultural insane death spiral, we again look up to you. Everything about modern URBAN Slavic culture is pure derivative of America's biggest export. Your retarded modern culture. Our music, our TV and reality shows, our movies, our overton window is American in heart, just dubbed into local language and sprinkled with few unique local traits

It's just that most Urban Slavs are lagging behind and are currently culturally on 2008-2011 Reddit settings. Don't worry, we're catching up to America's 2020s insanity standards!!!

 

[The Wall]

P.S. Fuck you,

Sincerely,

Rest of World

 

[0wca]

Do I seriously have to wait for CS to release to play a good RPG? I wait for releases for years and, one after another, they keep turning out to be shit. The itemization is fucking horrid, running from container to container, finding miniscule amounts of worthless junk is incredibly frustrating and detracts from what could otherwise be moderately enjoyable, whoever thought it would be fun to have every insignificant scrub be named because, I dunno, it would make it easier to navigate massive maps and find actually entertaining content should be strung up, combat is easy as shit, intriguing set up for a story fizzles out into menial fetch quests.

If CS doesn't deliver then I'm officially done with RPG:s.

CS is head and shoulders above this or ATOM TG already so don't worry.

Pretty much on the same level as encased and atom. Don't be a tryhard shitlord.

They're simply not. Encased is the embodiment of "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle" while CS is basically the opposite. TG is another case, I'll write my impressions later but it's much closer to Encased in that comparison.

Also you don't seem to care about mechanics and difficulty in RPGs so I guess they're on the same level to you. To me, Encased and TG are so piss easy to the point it's not clear why even bother with all that combat elements. While CS is a proper RPG where you have to pay attention in order to play, to PLAY it, to play with its mechanics.

Sooo fags,what is your argument for fallout being better? Outside of retarded nostalgia.

Let's see...

- lack of retarded survival system no one has asked for
- a charismatic villain and two decent (by local standarts) end-game dungeons vs no boss and tiny pathetic dungeon
- a decent loot system vs Encased's insanity
- consistency, a clear vision behind it

Agreed. This game definitely has some interesting things it does right but it's boring as shit. Played for 10 hours and I almost snoozed through all of it.

• Bland NPCs
• Generic world / stalker anomaly ripoff,
• R.E.T.A.R.D.E.D. stealth system (crouching IN PLAIN SIGHT AND IN BRIGHT LIGHT in front of dude - doesn't give a shit) - why can't these fucking RPGs ever make a good stealth system?
• Stupid voiced narrator (I can read those two lines myself motherfucker, focus on getting more interesting voice actors)
• C&C pretty limited to just some minor things though to be fair there might be more later on

The good stuff:

• Quite a few different conditions (you even get them by washing your hands and using a hand dryer lol)
• Ability to make almost any build you want
• Multiple ways of opening containers (not just lockpicking) and perception (or whatever it's called) reveals secrets and alternate paths

So it definitely did a few things right, but fuck me it's boring.

 

[Fenix]

The same people who got the billboards with libtard slogans in it about equality wrote that thing, so, I dunno what is going on with those ruskies.

I think they just did all woke shit to get some defence.
I noticed how they don't follow the rule "real woman+poc, instead it's real man+poc women, at least in some places.