Ensora Reviews

the games alright, theres more depth than you'd think and some decent progression... but some controls and especially the combat is pretty dang jank ngl. i also paid like $2 for this game

Very fun, combines the classic feel of many old side scroller shooters with modern gameplay mechanics. It also leaves the player to actually think about what they're doing, rather than spoonfeeding them. My sole complaint is the "clunkiness" of the characters movement, though I imagine it becomes easier to deal with as you play more. All in all, 10/10, surprised this game isn't blowing up yet

Really disappointing. I had seriously high hopes for this one. This game has a neat idea, but a better control scheme could've been thought up by a drunk monkey. Combat is clunky and just overall a pain. This is what flash games would've evolved into had we not killed off Java. 4/10

A fun little sci-fi exploration/scavenging game. I enjoyed the storyline about this alien world where humans are cut off from Earth and have a frail situation, hammered between a tyrannical corporation and a bloodthirsty bandit organization. I also liked the crafting and upgrade system, although I feel like the game would benefit from more content in the future. All in all it all looks quite promising.

[i] My Experience [/i] I've always loved scrounging in games. Any game that gives me a ton of locations to explore, each littered with containers, immediately becomes more engaging. I'm always on the hunt for that [i]STUFF[/i]. Many game series have leveraged this mechanic to their advantage, including [b]Resident Evil[/b], [b]Fallout[/b], [b]The Elder Scrolls[/b], [b]Dead Space[/b], [b]Bioshock[/b], [b]The Last of Us[/b], and even last year's breakout darling [b]Baldur's Gate 3[/b]. I'm always looking to find weapons or items to make the next encounter that much easier, or make me that much more prepared for the game's next surprise. In the game, you're essentially just exploring different locations on a desert planet, Ensora. You're looking to find a way back to earth. On the way, you'll run into thugs from a gang called "The Pride," soldiers associated with the "ENSO" Corporation, and even former humans called "Infected" that mindlessly attack. However, how thorough and efficient you are in your scrounging will decide whether the endeavor is feasible or a nightmare. You'll fly your ship from location to location using fuel. Some fuel sources are better than others, and you can upgrade the fuel efficiency and speed of your ship by locating certain materials and taking them to a kiosk in the game's "free city" (you can upgrade a number of things here). You'll need food to survive your journey (and sometimes heal), so you'll want to keep your food storage box full with anything you find out in the field. Combat will be much easier if you keep yourself stocked with batteries that serve as ammo for your laser rifle, and if you've been able to find or craft grenades and homing missiles. Although your storage capacity is limited (both on your ship and on your person), you'll quickly develop a hierarchy for what is most important to collect and have on hand. For me, this was often chemical fuel canisters, any food, batteries, homing missiles, and any materials needed to craft homing missiles (sorry, I like homing missiles - shoot me - but not with a homing missile). The only things I didn't like about the game were: [list] [*] The hacking - this was just way too difficult for me. There were too many symbols and they looked too similar for me to discern. [*] The bike - I honestly just ignored this, even though there's a separate section of upgrades for it and it seems that you can make it quicker and more powerful by devoting some of your resources to it. I found many locations that were heavily-mined, and just assumed that going slow was the best way to do things. [/list] If you look closely, you can identify mine locations by the slightly different texture on the desert sand. You can shoot these mounds of disturbed earth to go ahead and set off the mine (or you can lure enemies into them). Another tip is that your character can jump a lot higher than you would imagine. He often bounces up and over off of the lip of whatever platform you're attempting to reach. If you think you could appreciate a side-scrolling, tactical open-world game with a heavy dose of scrounging, give [b]Ensora[/b] a try. I must admit, it was more fun than I anticipated.

I enjoyed this game! :) It has a mysterious world story and a nice visual style. At first you have to learn a set of game mechanics, after which it becomes really interesting to play.

+ You can do headshots and dodges + You have smart helmet scanner + Smooth death animations for mobs + Nice sounds and music - Hacking is hard, you need to learn - To install new upgrades you have to fly to the city every time - Player's death is expensive :( you lose some reputation, food and loot Some say that the game has difficult players control, but almost every action is assigned a hotkey, and the awkward buttons can be reassigned in the settings, so here I did not notice difficulties. The main thing is to pick up items and open boxes not with the mouse button, but with the use key, F by default. For me there are more positives in this game, I give it 8/10.

I like the free exploration of the world map. You can follow the story thread or go on your own journey for loot and glory. The combat is well done. With good reactions and aiming you can do wonders on the battlefield. Really fun to beat back a knife flying at you with a pistol shot. Overall, the game is atmospheric, I recommend it.

A good balance of genres. Here we have electronics hacking, shooting, resource management, upgrades, and storytelling in books and notes. Combat mechanics are numerous, there's a lot to play with. For example, to lure a zombie on a land mine!) Or push the enemy down from a height. I managed to shoot down a flying drone so that as it fell, it exploded killed two more enemies)) It is worth playing.

Complete dud. Where to start ? The controls alone are a nightmare, even after remapping the gamepad. Some GUIs such as Navigation cannot be used properly with it (actions don't register) and I had to shift to the mouse in those. Many pop ups can't be exited from, until fiddling like a maniac. The fact that the Cancel button is also used for something else might be the cause of that. Inventory management is a disaster. You can transfer everything at once, or 1 item at a time; you can't transfer a stack in one go. Furthermore, your ship's cargo is split into several containers, each with limited capacity, and with limits on stacks as well. The induced micro-management is miserable. Personal inventory is limited in the same way. You can't even carry all the loot from 1 map, and you can't come back to grab the rest once you have returned to the ship. Speaking of which, looting is probably the worst abomination. After the dust has settled upon a pile of corpses of your making, you have to select them 1 by 1 with a key to highlight them, then search them; there is no group looting. You'd better count the bodies while you shoot, to ensure that you won't miss the one corpse that gives something. Indeed, empty corpses stay active and basically pollute the playing field, which has poor enough visibility already. Meanwhile, most of our time is spent kicking rocks and bushes to gather resource while we advance, and none of those are automatically collected. The protagonist seems to think that we are telling him to kick out of spite. There's a hunger mechanic, one of the greatest banes of gaming. I didn't experiment with dying of starvation, since I don't trust the game not to come up with a complete game over and a restart from scratch. However, it does an awful job at informing us on how much food is stored, on when food is consumed, and how much so. In fact, it doesn't inform at all. A lot of the text, including the entire lore, is written too small to read without squinting hard, which is marvelous for causing migraines. No setting offered for improvement. Another visibility issue, many items are tiny and easy to miss, scanner or not. The interaction indicator is small and tucked into a corner, also easy to miss. Better games put it on top of items for a reason. The issue is made worse by the frequent proximity of spots. When you touch one, it's often by chance, discovering it while trying to interact with something else. There is no saving, thus no way to explore the mechanics and try things without instant regrets. There is a bike in the ship, yet I was unable to take it out for a ride. I crafted some items thinking they might improve something, but none of them had any use. If they become useful hours later, that's a level design flaw. I went to the city, and there's nothing to do there except for buying upgrades. Anything else you touch reduces your reputation, which is apparently your most important asset since you spend it to buy said upgrades. Combined with the poor interface, against my will, I lost rep by trying to talk to a guard, likely because there was an object behind him that the controls chose to steal instead. There are supposed to be cool features in the game, but none is available in the first 2 hours; maybe much longer. I could go on about the interface alone; there's so much to patch to make it worthy. Grinding for rep (basically XP) then losing it all by walking onto an invisible mine (or was it? Can't be sure...) was the final straw for me. There are no more checkpoints than there is a save menu. A loss means redoing an entire map, which is painful enough for sane people, those with a low repetition threshold. Grinding simulators should at least make the grind worthwhile.