Should I play Palworld or Enshrouded? Survival games compared

Enshrouded and Palworld are two Early Access survival crafting games that have been released too close together to be as similar as they are. If you’re torn and can only play one of these games, here’s a guide to help you choose between Palworld and Enshrouded.

All similarities and differences between Enshrouded and Palworld

As someone who has put several hours into both survival games, I can tell you what sets each game apart. Palworld came out first, has reached record-breaking numbers in sales and active players, and can be boiled down to Pokemon meets Ark Survival Ascended. Enshrouded sits in the shadow of Palworld by dropping a few days later, but it’s equally impressive, immersive, and enjoyable. What else?

For the TL;DR, here are a few key differences and similarities between Palworld and Enshrouded:

• Palworld
  • Ark Survival Ascended meets Pokemon
  • More focused on providing fun and breaking the rules
  • Amazing farming and progression
  • It’s Pokemon with guns… I mean, come on
• Enshrouded
  • Valheim meets Elden Ring
  • More focused on providing an action-adventure RPG
  • Phenomenal building mechanics
  • Rewarding open world

Palworld

You should play Palworld if you like survival crafting games like Ark Survival Ascended and love Pokemon. The survival crafting experience in Palworld consists of going out into the open world, collecting resources, and capturing Pals which helps create farms at your base. You level up which allows you to unlock better stations for your base, stronger Pals, and, inevitably, guns for you and your Pals to wield.

Palworld is much jankier than Enshrouded and doesn’t take itself as seriously. It’s more focused on collecting than quests. The primary point of leveling up is to unlock more stations for your base so you can do more with your Pals, but the base building itself isn’t why you should play Palworld.

To me, Palworld presents a novelty experience that we’ve all wished for. It breaks the rules by giving us Pokemon with guns in a game featuring base building and open-world exploration. Its central focus is to let players have fun. Culturally, Palworld is becoming one of those games you need to experience. It’s mere existence feels like a fever dream.

Enshrouded

The best way to describe Enshrouded is Valheim meets Elden Ring with a dash of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The survival crafting experience in Enshrouded features a stronger emphasis on building since it uses a voxel system, a stronger emphasis on action-adventure because it features quests, and an RPG system featuring a Skill Tree which Palworld lacks entirely.

Enshrouded also features a more thoughtful, dense open world to explore. It’s very Elden Ring-like in that there are marked and unmarked locations on the map that both feature fun enemies to fight and the prospect of better resources and higher-quality loot, none of which is copy and pasted. It’s more Borderlands in terms of loot than Elden Ring, but the thrill of adventure is the same.

By comparison, Enshrouded is more generic. It’s a medieval fantasy setting with a basic premise that we’ve seen many times before. What makes Enshrouded shine is its focus on building. Since I’m not a big builder, I enjoyed the quests, exploring marked and unmarked locations holding the promise of better gear, and the light RPG class building. That said, people will be talking about Palworld for decades and Enshrouded will likely get filed away as just another great survival crafting game.

Which is better? Palworld or Enshrouded?

I like Enshrouded more because I’m not the biggest fan of survival crafting experiences and Enshrouded gives me a meaningful, if a bit simple, action-adventure RPG to enjoy between the building and resource collecting.

But just because I like one more than the other doesn’t mean you have to. The purpose of this article is to give you information so you can decide for yourself what game you want to play. Are you looking for a more laid-back ridiculous experience that is the metaphorical child of Ark Survival Ascended and Pokemon? Or are you looking for a combination of Valheim and Elden Ring that features in-depth building, questing and looting, and RPG elements but is less goofy and eccentric?

One key advantage Palworld has over Enshrouded is that it’s on Game Pass. Hopefully, Enshrouded’s Game Pass status will change in the future, but either way, both Early Access games can be played right now for fairly cheap.