Enclave Review | A beautiful mess
During the sixth generation of video games, the most popular genre at the time was the linear action adventure game, almost every title that was released belonged to this genre.
Despite not reaching the popularity of others, Enclave is part of this category.
Aesthetics
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Despite the age, it's possible to admire charming visuals |
The pure graphics are child of the sixth generation, with a graphical style influenced by the most typical fantasy, this isn't bad since it gives the game enjoyable scenes despite the texture being a bit low resolution. A small note, rise the brightness a lot, sometimes it becomes so dark to strain the eyes.
The particle effects are ok, they are not the most pronounced but not invisible either.
The animations are janky, they aren't pretty to see and can negatively impact the fights, it happened more than once to miss a hit because of a badly done animation.
The voice acting is fine.
The soundtrack is generic, but functional, it doesn't remain impressed in the mind without being annoying to the ear either.
Lastly, the various sound are functional and proper.
Summarizing, decent looks, weak audio.
Game Mechanics
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Choose carefully what to buy, it will make the difference between life and death |
The title is a linear action adventure game with mission selection.
The combat system consists of hand-to-hand fights, mixed with the usage of shields, bows, crossbows and magic staffs. The various melee weapons have different move sets that are influenced by the directional movements, meaning that moving in a certain direction is going to change the attack animation and it is going to do a different move, this is true for all 4 types of melee weapons. The shields protect from the attacks, a little interesting thing is that the shields posses physics: if you are attacked on the sides the shield will block the blow even if it wasn't raised, therefore it is possible to attack, and to be attacked, on exposed body parts if the shield isn't big enough. The bows can use different kinds of arrows, each one having a different effect and use. The crossbows are the least interesting weapons, some variants can shoot more darts before needing to reload, but that's about it. The staffs have different effects similar to the arrows, with the difference that they use mana which regenerates over time. There are also two consumables objects: health flasks and grenade. The flasks can be bought before a mission or retrieved from fallen enemies, the grenades are exclusive to a specific character.
The variety is satisfactory and allows a good dose of choice and elasticity, in my game session I've used mostly maces, they have an area of effect attack powerful enough and capable of hitting multiple enemies. I really enjoyed the close combat fights, however using ranged weapons is a mess: the scope is too small and aiming in third person is hard. To mitigate this you can use first person mode pressing the G key, you aim better, and the scope seems to be bigger.
My advice is to use the third person during the hand-to-hand combat and switch the visual in first person to use ranged weapons better. The vast majority of the magic staffs are effective even in third person, since the projectiles tend to chase the enemies or cause area of effect damage.
The level design is linear, you are given an objective to complete and a corridor full of challenges to beat, the vast majority of these challenges revolves around combat, to vary a bit there can be platforming sections or search and recovery of an object.
At the start of the game, you will be able to only play as one hero, as you progress, other characters with different characteristics and equipment will be unlocked. Beware, often to unlock them you will have to save an NPC during a mission, otherwise you run the risk of not being able to play with that specific hero. At the end of the adventure, 6 characters will be unlocked, plus a secret one after completing the campaign.
There are 3 levels of difficulty: easy, normal and hard.
In addition to the changes to health and damage received/given, the difficulty chosen will affect how the checkpoints scattered throughout a level work. In particular, at easy difficulty the checkpoints are free to use, at normal you must have 10 coins to activate them and they will be spent if you die, finally at hard the checkpoints will not be available at all. If you die without an active checkpoint or quit the game, you will have to restart the mission from scratch, you cannot save during one of them.
The game is for the most part well balanced, with the challenge scaled according to the player's progress, except for some difficulty spikes in some levels. These spikes mostly occur in mission twelve and thirteen of the first campaign and are really frustrating. Specifically, in the first phase of the thirteen mission it's a massacre with enemy archers who can kill you with one or two hits, it was the only time I had to switch hero instead of using the knight.
A particular aspect of the game is that every character, except some bosses, that you face is controllable in one of the two available campaigns, you will face enemy NPCs mechanically equal to the player. This clashes with their artificial intelligence, basic and almost passive. It has happened more than once to stare at an enemy for a couple of seconds before he activated and fought, other times it happened that he jumped off a ravine or had difficulty jumping over a small wall, I guess it's because NPCs can't handle player-like movement skills and it makes them do huge mistakes.
Gold is the main currency of the game, there are two ways to earn it: finding the various treasures scattered throughout a level and completing missions. Hidden maps can also be found, which will unlock side missions of one of two types: arena combat or a tower defense section.
They provide great prizes, useful for extra expenses.
The gold collected is used to buy equipment such as weapons, ammo, life restoring flasks and an armor for your characters, the currency earned increases the budget available before a mission, allowing the purchase of better items. Don't spare expenses, the gold will be returned to you in full in any case.
For the rest there is nothing more to say, the better equipment costs more and the greater the number of items you want to take on a mission, the greater your available gold must be.
Playing all the missions at normal difficulty, I've beaten the game in 10 hours and a half.
In short, while some elements are rough, the core systems work like well and entertained me a lot.
Narrative
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The pre-rendered cutscenes are used to give a bit of lore and
various events
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In the past, the world was in peace, with the area of the modern enclave containing a high concentration of magic, but this changed when the demon Vatar invaded with his hordes to seize this energy and become invincible. To avoid total defeat, the mage Zale cast a powerful spell that opened a crack in the earth, splitting the world in two, but swallowing the demon in its depths and forcing the retreat of his forces. After years, the wounds to the ground have started healing, with the fissure decreasing day after day, but this has given a chance to the hordes, now known as Dreg'Atar, to invade the territories of the enclave once more and try a new conquest. The enclave is governed by the elven queen Aylindril, with the objective to protect the capital Celenheim from the unending attacks at any cost. The inhabitants of the dark lands beyond the rift are focused on conquering the territory of the Enclave that see as theirs by right. They are under the command of Mordessa, supreme sorceress and with the desire to bring the demon back to life.
From this premise it will start the adventure of the user, playing in the enclave campaign that, once beaten, will unlock the campaign for the Dreg'Atar.
As for the events taking place during the campaigns there isn't much to say, the pre-mission contexts are used to explain the objectives and nothing else, the campaigns progress linearly with at best one event out of the norm.
The controlled characters are not characterized, while the nominated ones receive some line of dialogue and that is it.
There aren't many legends or lore, just some line during the pre-rendered cutscene.
In conclusion, the story is not a strong point of the game.
Recommendation:
I've enjoyed my time with Enclave and so could you, but only if you're willing to turn many blind eyes to its defects.
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