Enclave

"Just maybe one more month of tweaking"

All right, I'm reading the new issue of Xbox magazine, looking at all the cool games coming out, new hardware, and the soon-to-be cult Xbox Live, excited to the max. Then I hear that a new RPG hack and slash has come out, a game by the name of Enclave, well hey, I'm done with my games, let's go out and try out this new Enclave and see if it's worth it.....................it isn't.

Story 8/10

The story is actually kind of neat, not to get to complicated so I'll make it basic, there was this nation, with two cultures, cultures at war with each other, and the good side, Celenheim, was about to be defeated by the bad side, Vatar's evil army, until a mysterious Wizard showed up and sent a powerful blast of magic into the earth. This indeed help Celenheim win the battle, but not the war, because of this blast a gigantic ''moat'' was made around a section of the earth, and the Celenheim were safe from the hordes of Demons...for now. Now the ''moat'' is healing, the world across the chasm is drawing closer, and also drawing evil closer, it is even accessible in some places, allowing smaller armies of Demons to invade the land of Enclave, the final battle is almost here. At the start of the game your a Knight whose been locked up because you didn't pay your taxes, but your prison is being Invaded by Orcs and Goblins, and an explosion has created a hole just big enough for your character to walk through, and here is where gameplay kicks off. Now while the story is great, it doesn't really have that good a plot to it, as you traverse the game avoids the main story for a few missions, and haves you doing stupid, pointless missions where you could be saving the world, but instead your leading around a Merchant, wow...what depth, and to top it all off the reason your character is doing this is because you can get your charges dropped, it's not enough that you were basically left for dead and instead of running you saves the prison, but now you have to do their job and save the world...can you smell chickens?

Gameplay 6/10

This is where the game plummets, all right, you can switch between first and third person perspectives, nice, but seeing as how in third person the camera easily gets obscured and your character doesn't turn until you've aimed at least a 180 degrees around, it doesn't work, and in first person it's impossible to clim down ladders, and you can barely seen your sword and shield, so swinging is a task and blocking is harder, that shouldn't happen. Then comes in difficulty, it isn't that the game is to hard, it's just that the developers didn't realize how difficult their combo and blocking system is to maneuver, you need precise aiming, so your basic hack and slashing won't come in handy, thank god they have long range weapons. Bows and magic will probably be your basic form of attack, but then that doesn't even work, because of your reloading your not as fast as with your sword, so enemies who run up and attack at close range will maybe kill you before you can even load another arrow. The game is mission based, which means it's very linear and they'll be throwing you into new and hard territory before you can even say load, which makes the game not as quite fun, you don't even get side quest, just what the game ask you to do, do it, your area is usually confined so you don't have a whole lot of freedom, I think our RPG aspects are minimizing. There's also a matter of skill, as in you don't level up, at the beginning your a knight with a sword and umm...wait that it. Depending on if you find gold in your area (since you barely get paid for missions!) you only can find so much, half of the areas near the start only hold about 200 gold in their entire level, lame! At least you get to suit up your character before the start of the level, wait second, I need new armor, let's get the leather armor for 500 gold, what? I only have 100? Oh that's right, I bought a better sword and shield so my butt wouldn't get handed to me, of course! But then again, you get new a character, so that's really cool, and all of them have a special look and ability to them which adds a whole lot of replay value to the game, you may like the knights great efficiency with a sword, or the long range magical attacks of a druid, which gives you many, many options to choose from, so in that case the game makes up a bit, but not enough, especially with the games saving, oh lord! Get this, on missions, short yet hard, no checkpoints unless at the beginning of a boss battle or when the developer looked up difficulty in the dictionary, but, as the manual says...........you can use checkpoints at a cost!!!! At a cost!? C'mon people! Xbox! Hardrive! This makes it super hard and when your at the end of a level and suddenly your characters dies too an enemy that does 100 damage and your still doing 15, forcing you to start at the beginning, you'll be getting PRETTY upset. But they make up in straight pre-scripted action and adventure where they lack basis and thought

Graphics 8/10

Wow this game looks good! Hey, you may suck at it, but you'll look good doing it, there some nice vertex shading on characters hair and grass, and the water effects are really good as well, but only at a long range, when you get close, the textures bland, they get edgy and pre-rendered, and don't awe amaze you, but still they keep you interested, the lighting is good as in tone and level, but when it comes into shadowing the games a little iffy, as in you don't get much of a shadow, but rather a kind of twitchy fade, a wannabe shadow if you will, but hey, if you more focused on gameplay and your really just glancing at detail then you'll be in for a nice surprise

Sound 7/10

Hmmmm, I don't know, nicely orchestrated but strangely repetitive, like it's the same song, but a different beat, like they'll be throwing remixes of the opening and battle sequences at you but they nicely fuse it all together so it sounds a whole lot better than you think. The effects you get are really good as well, each weapon sounds that much different, depending on how you use it, and water, stone, wood and grass effects sound really good, very realistic, background noises add a lot more, like your not the only soul in the level, there is still something else going on else where so you can get even more into the action. With what they did with the sound it makes up even more for the flaws so, kudos to Starbreeze for a nicely paced soundtrack

Final Score 7/10

This score was hard to achieve, while the story is enough to at least give a back bone to your hacking and slashing, the gameplay still falls short and becomes too irritating sometimes to keep playing, though the graphics and sound were done just right, probably they belong to a different type of a game? Either way, Enclave deserves a try, when you think about it the developers were trying to peak your interest to the max, which I'm sure they will, with the fact you get 12 different character, both good and bad, long winded gameplay, and some medieval style action, I'd say Enclave needs to be treated as a rental before a buy

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/20/02, Updated 08/20/02