Enclave is a first person shooter without actually having the decency to be first person.
Enclave details the story of a war between two distinct groups of people who are separated by a wide chasm. On one side, you have the humans who live in a few different cities on the inside of the chasm. Those who live outside in the wastelands are servants of a foul and dark demon who was banished long ago. However, the great chasm that keeps them separated has been closing in recent years, the powerful magic that created it seemingly fading. As the gap closes, the forces of evil have been able to make small raids on the human cities. You will get the chance to control both sides of this war and take each to victory in two distinctly different stories.
This all sounds very interesting and the backstory for this game is fairly good. However, this doesn’t hold up once you begin actually playing the game. The story is told in a very flat and boring manner, none of the little cutscenes that come across are very interesting. Don’t even get me started on how lame the voice acting in this game is. Honestly, I found myself not wanting to listen to these cutscenes any more than I had to. I wanted nothing more than to get into the next level and play a bit more.
This game actually starts to fall apart really quickly once you start playing the game. If you are expecting to play an action game, you are sadly mistaken. What you are actually playing is a first person shooter that they put into third person for some inexplicable reason. Not just any first person shooter, but a FPS that paid absolutely no attention to the fact that it had melee combat in it. This has to be the most mind boggling decision in any video game I have ever played.
Controlling your character is done exactly like a FPS with one controlling movement and another for the camera. This means that the melee combat is far too loose and the jumping, movement and platforming feel really spastic. The ranged combat is a bit tighter, but since the bows and crossbows all have limited ammo, you have to be really accurate with each shot. This is to say nothing of how slow firing the weapons are, which means that it is doubly important to hit each shot you fire. So what you are basically ending up with is a FPS that doesn’t actually feel like one. This stinks hardcore especially when an enemy is right in your face. As you try to pull off a melee combo, your character and his target are moving all over the place, sliding around and desperately trying to whack each other. Honestly, I avoided melee combat like a plague due to this.
There is one thing about the game that I actually enjoyed. In each stage there is gold to be found hidden, whether it be on enemies you defeat or hidden somewhere in the level itself. You may have to break walls or doors down to get to it or do some really hair-raising platforming to get to it, but it is there to be hunted down. You can use the gold you find to buy improved weapons, armors, shields, arrows and potions to help you get through the later stages.
Also, something else I enjoyed, is that you will unlock a bunch of different characters when playing through the stages. You will get them, either by rescuing them during stages or by simply beating certain stages. These ranged from archers to melee warriors and even mages. Each has advantages and disadvantages, although the melee warriors feel fairly gimped due to the nature of this games control setup.
I like to keep the fact that this is an early X-Box title in mind when I think about the graphics. They aren’t all that great, even for the time, but they are most certainly passable. Some of the spells that will be thrown around are nice to look at, but overall the graphics are fairly underwhelming. The backgrounds are a fair bit nicer to look at though.
The audio for this game fairs about the same as the graphics. Most of the sound effects are fairly flat and bland. This applies double for the mostly horrible voice acting. I was much happier playing through the levels than sitting through cutscenes because even though the controls for this are sloppy, they are still much less annoying to sit through than the narration is.
Basically what you end up with Enclave is a mediocre game with a boring story that could have been saved by a better control setup. I’m honestly not sure what they were thinking when they put this game together, but there are better games out there by far. If you want a FPS where you can kill enemies with a bow, then try the Thief series. Heck, the melee combat feels tighter in that game than it does in this one by far. I would say to pass on this game unless you like fighting with your controls to do anything.
Pros: Interesting characters to use for both the good and evil, fun gold collecting / upgrade system and some of the spells are pretty awesome.
Cons: Horrible control scheme, worthless melee combat, melee warriors are basically useless and the storyline is very boring.
Score: 5
Recommendation: If the above review didn’t put you off, it’s cheap enough to pick up.