Enshrouded is a solid start, but hasn’t found a distinct survival identity

polygon.com:

Enshrouded is an early access survival-crafter RPG that has the unfortunate fate of debuting right next to Palworld, a similarly structured game enjoying massively viral success. However, while the appeal of Palworld is immediately obvious, it takes a little bit of digging to find what makes Enshrouded shine.

At the beginning of Enshrouded, you awake in Embervale, a once majestic world that has fallen victim to a sort of massive magical apocalypse. The details are lost to legend, but the long and short of it is that a deadly fog has spread across the land. You stumble out into this world and begin the time-honored survival game task of picking up wood and stone to make basic tools.

Embervale is a gorgeous, sprawling land with lots to explore, with abandoned hamlets and villages scattered between vast mountain ranges, lazy rivers winding their way through uneven terrain, and long-lost ruins.

Every survival game needs some kind of hook to bring people in: Ark has dinosaurs, Conan Exiles has the brutality of its IP (slavery included), Palworld has Pokémon-like creatures to catch. Enshrouded’s twist is the Shroud (hence the name), which covers the land. Going into the quite literal fog of war is an inherently lethal venture; as soon as you enter, a timer starts. If it elapses and you’re still in the Shroud, you die.

This divides Enshrouded up into two kinds of sessions. Sometimes, I explore the safe parts of the overworld, looking for new resources and recipes. Even if I die — and I can assure you that, due to this game’s treacherous fall damage, I perished on many a rocky crag — I keep all my useful gear upon respawning. The other kind of session is a prolonged journey through the Shroud, which is tense and time-sensitive.

Survivors of the magical apocalypse have helpfully left lore journals and chests full of loot. These chests regenerate quickly, which sort of spoils the immersion of scavenging an abandoned keep. If I die and find a chest that I had previously