Enshrouded

Technical problems come up in more negative reviews than any other subject: performance, shader compilation, crashes or lag appear in 37% of them, and they show up as a caveat in positive ones too. Players with recent high-end graphics cards reported 50 to 70 frames per second at high settings, reliance on DLSS or FSR ("Please do not rely on upscaling tech to optimize your games for you!"), no frame generation, stutter in the Shroud and in busy fights, sound that lags behind the action, and a need for a fast SSD. Shader compilation runs from half an hour to several hours and repeats after patches and driver updates ("It takes 30+ minutes on my 4090 but my girlfriend with a 4070 it can take like 3-4 hours."), and several reviewers said the wait used up the two hours Steam allows before a refund. Crash reports describe minidumps, black screens and full PC freezes: "The crashes are the issue. They happen every day, multiple times, and completely at random." For some reviewers this decided the review on its own: "The number one issue preventing me from recommending this game is the poor optimization." The problem grew after Update 8: technical complaints went from 34% of negative reviews written between December and April to 41% of those written after it. Some players, including several on Linux ("Runs absolutely flawlessly under Linux Mint"), reported no trouble at all.

Complaints about the grind, crafting chains, storage and timers come up in 17% of negative reviews. Each biome adds a long list of materials ("Every new area in this game has ATLEAST 15 or more materials you need to gather to progress"), crafting is split across many rescued NPCs and their stations, processing runs on real-time timers, food stacks only to 20, and items are picked up one at a time ("You have to pick up every single item in the game off the ground individually."). Storage draws its own complaints: "There is way too much junk to pick up and an endless amount of chests to manage, scattered all over the place." Players asked for quick-stacking to nearby chests, a shared base inventory and bigger stacks. Magic chests, which let stations pull from storage, got credit as a partial fix ("Magic chests that pull resources from anywhere in your base are a huge win for me"), though one long-time player complained that updates kept "making Magic Chests even more expensive and harder to craft."

There is no climbing or ledge grab, so cliffs force long detours or digging, and slopes behave like ice: "there is a lot of verticality in the world and no good tools to deal with it." Players described sliding off mountains into lava or red Shroud and losing their loot to a death marker they could not reach ("The #1 killer in this game is gravity."). Stamina governs running, gliding, blocking and mining, and rain cuts it further, which prompted "You're out of Stamina: the Game." Some also objected that the double jump and glider updraft felt mandatory yet cost skill points. The glider and grappling hook themselves were well liked.

Negative reviews report lag, rubber-banding, desync and disconnects, some on a local network or a rented server ("I'm disconnected every 3-5 minutes."), and a few lost items after a disconnect. The other co-op complaint is about design: quest progress, unlocks and Shroud root rewards belong to the world, so a friend who plays ahead completes content for everyone. "The game expects you and your friends to play at the same time to unlock things," one wrote, while a positive reviewer answered the critics: "Co-op meaning the game and world is shared, not at each persons own pace." A missed-quests list lets players redo quests others have finished. One reviewer called it a great co-op feature, another said it mostly reminded them how far behind their friends they had fallen, and players still asked for personal progression.

Mage players described staff spells that are crafted ammunition, also cost mana and fly slowly, wands with short range, and wand auto-aim that cannot be turned off and tends to target enemies out of reach instead of the one attacking. "If you're going into this game hoping to do anything related to being a magic-based character, don't bother." The same complaint was still being made after Update 8 ("the game is better if you just pretend that magic doesn't exist."). One player countered that magic classes are "overpowered as hell but they start off slow."

Reviews name the dragon boss in the snowy summits more than any other encounter. Players described an arena ringed by deadly Shroud, a flying boss that needs stun arrows, a long fight against a damage sponge, and a forced change of build: "if you are melee character playing solo up until this point, you need to respec just for this fight for any sort of ranged build." One reviewer who played it as a duo wrote that "it would probably be fun in a group of 5 or 6, but we played as a duo and it was an awful slog even with boss health and damage scaled down." Some cheesed the fight, one by digging into the mountainside and casting spells from safety, and a player who had heard it hyped as hard beat it fairly easily with stun arrows. The Hollow Halls, long multi-layer dungeons full of skeletons, drew similar complaints from solo players ("infinite skeleton nightmare land").

Some negative reviews said the world grows samey: "90% of what you're fighting are the same enemies you encounter in the first zone, but higher level." Loot gets the same criticism, with gold chests that roll gear below the player's level, legendary weapons that differ only in numbers, and "It feels like every enemy drops the same boring loot." Players wanted weapons with unique effects and armor with set bonuses.

Player characters' proportions, with short legs and a large head, drew regular comparisons to hobbits and dwarves. Some meant it fondly and others did not ("Why do we have to play as an ugly dwarf person?"), and players asked for body types, more hair and face options, and less blocky female armor.

Rescued villagers and pets get stuck in walls, under floors and behind furniture, wander off when needed, and greet the player loudly over and over. Players wanted them to do something besides crafting: "once they're recruited they're essentially just moving crafting tables". Even a happy reviewer asked for this: "My only wish is that they did a little bit more than offer crafting!"