Good Old – Enclave

At the beginning of the second millennium, game developers began to think more and more actively: what could they come up with for their toy, what kind of feature should they shove in there?. Some found a way out of this situation in the latest graphics technologies, demonstrating an incredible level of graphics. Others won hearts with their scale and open world. Someone tried to diversify the gameplay. Today we will remember the 3rd person action with RPG elements called Enclave.

The game was developed by Starbreeze Studios, which you may know from The Chronicles of Riddick duology, cyberpunk shooter Syndicate and the recent arcade game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.

The main character of the game, being a prisoner, was drawn into the war. The brutal army of Dreg’athar invaded the territory of people, deciding to seize the lands and enslave the inhabitants. Naturally, the main goal of our hero is to save the glorious fantasy world and all its inhabitants. As the plot progresses, we will be thrown into different corners of the game world, divided into levels. They are far from being linear corridors, as it might seem at first glance. You can often get lost in the local labyrinths, remembering how you used to get lost in Doom, Quake and other old-school games and wonder how you didn’t manage to figure out the right path right away. The difficulties are also added by the enemies scattered here and there, and each type of enemy in the game requires its own tactics. The smallest ones can be killed with one blow of a weapon, but the larger ones have to be picked out for quite a long time, running around the stunned enemy and waving the murder weapon. There are not very many types of opponents. In general, there is a standard fantasy bestiary here – orcs, goblins wearing armor, various elementals, hellish magicians, and other creatures. At some levels there are also bosses, the battles with which are quite moderately difficult. Of course, you are unlikely to kill the first time, but by thinking through tactics, you can quickly calm the enemy. For example, one of the bosses is a huge fire elemental that throws fireballs at the main character. You have a sword in your hands, blazing with icy power, and your first thought will definitely be to run up to the freak and beat him to death. In fact, after dying a couple of times, you understand that you need to kill not the boss, but the enemies around him. With the sword we freeze small elementals and (!) we shoot or at the boss, thereby wounding him until he runs out of lives.

Climbing through the labyrinths of levels https://allspinswincasino.co.uk/withdrawal/ is motivated only by bags of gold scattered everywhere. If you complete a level without collecting all the gold, you can return to that level and steal absolutely everything. Gold plays an important role in the game. For it they will sell you a large number of different uniforms for your character. Here you will find armor, weapons, various potions, arrows, and much, much more. And weapons and armor play a very important role in battle, especially for war. By the way, you won’t be allowed to create a character in the game; the game limits its RPG elements to only purchasing equipment. You have eight different variations on the theme of War, Archer and Mage to choose from, namely: knight, huntress, druid, halfling, engineer, sorcerer, earth golem and one bonus character who can be unlocked by collecting all the gold in the game – android. You can choose a character to suit absolutely every taste and playing style. Each character has his own personal equipment that needs to be purchased, for example, a huntress needs bolts for a crossbow, and a sorcerer definitely needs a magic staff. Characters, by the way, are not immediately available, they are revealed as the game progresses. From the first level we play only for War, then we open the Huntress, then the Mage and so on. Before each level you can choose a character. That is, for each new level you can take a new, different character. By the way, in total there are not 8 characters in the game, as I said earlier, but 16 characters. The fact is that the game has as many as 2 story companies! Good and evil, respectively. Each company has its own set of characters and outfits for them. In the company of the dark side, we will have to walk through familiar locations from the company of light. The differences between the companies are small, mainly in the plot, characters and atmosphere. But, despite the fact that the companies themselves are completely linear in plot and did not give us any choice, the very opportunity to accept the dark side was very pleasant. You don’t always want to save a world in which cruel, greedy and vile people live. But no matter how much you want to save or not save the game world, you will not get a complete picture of what is happening by going through just one campaign. The developers showed us the war from two opposite sides, forcing us to take the side of both. Few games at that time could boast even such variability. But the game takes more than just the opportunity to be good or evil. The developers tried to create a fairly beautiful and colorful shell for the game. A visually pleasing picture is the best way to attract people who don’t know about the game. But I hope that you, readers, remember this game, because there is something to remember. Some characters, locations, various situations, etc. are clearly outlined in our heads and sometimes remind us of themselves, squeezing out a meager nostalgic tear from us.

Gameplay-wise, the game was not much different from games of that time. The combat system can be called simple and uncomplicated, but you had to miss a lot with melee weapons. Enemies, piling on you in a heap, forget about any tactics, only ranged fighters try to stay away from us. There are no free saves in the game at all. There are only checkpoints found at levels. In case of death, you appear at this checkpoint, having lost some of the gold.

Superbly drawn locations keep us glued to our screens. Wherever our heroes take us – here you have a prison from the very beginning, and cities, and elven forests, and hellish lava rivers and a whole mass of diverse architecture. This entire location design serves as an excellent backdrop for spectacular crowd-on-one battles. No matter how wonderful this world is, we should not forget that it was subject to war. The game is far from easy. You will die often, especially when you are choosing tactics for a new unknown enemy. The difficulty, of course, cannot be compared with Dark Souls, but not all modern players are ready to endure even that. If you have straight hands, then it is quite possible that you can reduce the number of reboots to a minimum. The main thing is to take with you as many life-giving potions as possible at the very beginning and press the buttons as deftly as possible. Approaching the finale, the difficulty rapidly increases, not allowing the player to relax his buns for a second. Well, defeating the last boss will be a real triumph, after which, analyzing in your head all those hours spent on the game, you can enjoy the last screensaver, in which we are told about what the main character has done for the whole world, leaving before us an open ending that you can come up with yourself.

The game shines with colors from almost all sides. Beautiful picture, variety in the choice of equipment, many different characters, each of whom fights in their own way, two storylines. What else was needed in 2002 for complete happiness?? Probably just a free city and the opportunity to steal cars. Overall it was very nice to remember this wonderful game. I hope you enjoyed it with me, or at least you were interested in hearing about this game. It’s definitely worth a try if you haven’t caught it yet. If, of course, you are ready for periodic deaths, to find the right path through the levels and to control your finances by choosing the ideal balance of available weapons, armor and other equipment. If not, then just know that there is such a game that has given many very vivid, unforgettable emotions.

Enclave – a fusion of great story, great graphics and fun action that you couldn’t pass by in 2002. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the game appeared in Russia only in 2007, 5 years after its release (if you don’t count the localization from Fargus). The game was published by Akella. There are no special comments regarding their localization, other than being 5 years late. The game itself leaves very pleasant memories that can be refreshed even now, fortunately the game is sold on Steam for only 129 rubles.

Thank you for reading to the end. Future plans include a story about other old, but no less good games that are difficult to forget. Play old games! All the best, comrades!