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All within a day, the hotly anticipated Valheim-like open world survival action-RPG Enshrouded launched into Early Access, became the subject of a flood of negative user reviews largely due to performance issues, and promptly hotfixed a major problem causing server crashes. At the time of writing, its Steam reviews continue to climb after another crash fix.
Recognizing that's a lot to unpack, allow me the pleasure of explaining this saga. We've had our eye on Enshrouded since it stole the show and became the most-played demo of the October 2023 Steam Next Fest, thanks to its alluring marriage of Dark Souls-style combat and Valheim-like, well, pretty much everything else.
The game launched in Steam Early Access on Wednesday, January 24, but complaints of low FPS, poor optimization, and server crashes weighed down the reception considerably. Not enough to call it a disaster, perhaps, but enough to have a significant impact on the day-one rating.
Crashes were arguably the biggest issue that faced Enshrouded on its foray into Early Access, which were most common when players tried entering a private server from a list. However, Hotfix 1 has taken aim at list crashes, and Hotfix 2, released just a few hours later, fixed "several causes for random crashes." In short order, the game has jumped from "mixed reviews" on Steam to "mostly positive," with 754 reviews out of 1,323 being a thumbs up – and that is, it's worth noting, quite a lot of user reviews for a few hours.
It's far too early to tell whether Enshrouded will ever hit the dizzying heights of the record-breaking and ethically ambiguous survival game Palworld, which has absolutely gulped down the internet's collective attention span in the few short days since its launch, but it's off to a solid start.
It also remains to be seen how exactly Enshrouded's reception will hash out in the coming days, weeks, and months until its full launch, which the devs hope will come "within a year." Still, in these very early hours, things are looking up for the Steam Nest Fest juggernaut now that its developers have cleared a no-doubt stressful hurdle.
It's even earlier to say whether Enshrouded, or Palworld for that matter, can join the ranks of the best survival games out there.
