Kenshi - open-ended sandbox RPG set in a desert world

[Sweeper]

The Troon phenomenon has been especially hard on mannishly-faced, somewhat ugly women. When I see one online I just reflexively assume it's a dude now.

I like those though. Mannishly faced, somewhat ugly women, not troons. They birth masculine sons.

 

[Kruyurk]

You people are so disrespectful, I hope the devs don't come around here.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Just started.
Got eaten by dogs.
DIED

INCLINE
par for the course, eh?

Bonedogs don't eat living characters like Beak Things do, only corpses. It probably felt like you were preyed upon becase you had 0 Toughness, so you died very quickly. If you're just knocked out, they will just do other things and maybe chance upon your corpse later.

Just one of the million things that would be easy to fix but the devs would rather hope you don't notice.

You people are so disrespectful, I hope the devs don't come around here.

They wouldn't appreciate the kind of contrarianism we have here. Their audience is Reddit and Youtube.

Also that fucking thing is obviously a troon. WTF is wrong with some of you?

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Maybe the situation in England is even worse than I imagined.

 

[Zanzoken]

Now who of you left this review?

warning : long
With praise from rpgcodex and sseth I had high expectations from this game. Very very disappointing.
To start with. DO NOT PLAY VANILLA. The game is under-delivering so hard there is no point in having 30% of the experience you should have with mods (+ various QOLs never implemented.)
Kenshi tackles on way too much for the small dev team behind it and ends up a "could've been, would've been" type of game. Its not an interesting sandbox. Its not an interesting RPG. Its not an interesting RTS.
"The game will never seek to limit you or restrict your personal play style." - as the game forbids you from joining half the factions in the game, forbids you from being a cannibal and gives you 0 tools to meaningfully interact with the world aside from starting wars.


The game's tediousness is EXTREME. Its not "hardcore XD" to make the player run around with a backpack for an hour to increase STR so he can actually swing his weapon around. Its redacted game design. This applies to every other stat as well. Am I playing offline WoW classic?
"Ha...haha...I must be...crazy..." my character says as he gets up for round 109 against the local hobo to grind 1% EXP. This is the kind of sh-t that makes redditors go :O and feel like they're guts from berserk. This all feels so forced.
Kenshi's ost is incredibly timid. I appreciate minimalistic ambient but whether you're fighting a low level dog in the starting area or the most elite samurais of a powerful country, you're getting 1 note of flute/guitar with the reverb cranked up every 40 seconds. Coupled with a total lack of NPC reactivity to events this game is very very good at making you feel like you're non-existent despite the herculean feats you eventually achieve after dozens of hours of grind. Unrewarding.
You will get to a bar on the other side of the world, in a place filled with in-sa-ne dangers and you don't even get to ask the bartender "whats up with this place?", nope, gotta break the trope of the PC asking questions for the sake of breaking it. Every emplacement is the same, every npc is interchangeable. This is taken to a level so ridiculous the community pretty much agreed on installing a fan mode to incorporate dialogue to inject a semblance of life in the empty world of Kenshi.
The game is more bugged than every Bethesda game (on launch) COMBINED. Dev visibly doesn't care about bugs that have been around for 7 years so its up to the community to fix them. This is absurd.
Its sad because there's clearly a vision behind all of this. But the end result is Cookie Clicker with a desert punk skin slapped on top of it.
Game is only okay with 25 mods and bought on sale. I'm still looking forward to Kenshi 2 because the potential is still very much there.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198066250806/recommended/233860/

Wasn't me but I agree with most of it. The highlighted parts in particular. I get that the dev did not want to create a Chosen One fantasy, but it's just as immersion breaking and unsatisfying for the game to go out of its way to not acknowledge you or your achievements when they are clearly exceptional.

The other big weaknesses in the game:

• copy-paste dungeons that almost never have anything interesting to find besides generic loot
• basebuilding that really serves no purpose beyond doing it for its own sake
• raids that have no stakes (just leave the base and eventually they despawn and nothing bad happens)

He is wrong about the music though.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

I think the problem that guy had with the game was he looked up mods and strategies online, when he should've gone completely blind. I complain about most of the same things he does, but that's my perspective as a veteran who is painfully aware of the game's limits. He's right about the grind, but why is he even grinding as a new player? Kenshi is only fun when you play inefficiently. That is its major flaw, but as a new player who doesn't yet know what he can and cannot do, who's happy to see just one number increase each time it happens, none of that matters. Then again, he mentions WoW, so he's probably a recovering MMO addict who seeks the grind. Too bad for him.

 

[behold_a_man]

basebuilding that really serves no purpose beyond doing it for its own sake

How do you efficiently plunder new, desolate lands without those? Cities weren't always convenient for restocking, restoration (especially of robots), or keeping prisoners.

The things I hated the most about this one were performance-related. Seeing 0.2 frames per second when traveling through the swamp does not seem to be optimal by any means. 10-minute-long loading times by the late game didn't help either.

 

[Zombra]

basebuilding that really serves no purpose beyond doing it for its own sake

How do you efficiently plunder new, desolate lands without those?

This is the Codex. If a number doesn't go up and there isn't the ring of a little bell when you do something, it's not worth doing.

 

[Ol' Willy]

I think the problem that guy had with the game was he looked up mods and strategies online, when he should've gone completely blind. I complain about most of the same things he does, but that's my perspective as a veteran who is painfully aware of the game's limits. He's right about the grind, but why is he even grinding as a new player? Kenshi is only fun when you play inefficiently. That is its major flaw, but as a new player who doesn't yet know what he can and cannot do, who's happy to see just one number increase each time it happens, none of that matters. Then again, he mentions WoW, so he's probably a recovering MMO addict who seeks the grind. Too bad for him.

This also means that he looked up unoptimized strats, with optimized strats you can raise your stats/skills much faster

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

basebuilding that really serves no purpose beyond doing it for its own sake

How do you efficiently plunder new, desolate lands without those? Cities weren't always convenient for restocking, restoration (especially of robots), or keeping prisoners.

The things I hated the most about this one were performance-related. Seeing 0.2 frames per second when traveling through the swamp does not seem to be optimal by any means. 10-minute-long loading times by the late game didn't help either.

Armor King sells the best armor and food was never an issue. Keeping prisoners, again, why? so you can grind your skills to a high level? I've admittedly never played robots, they're interesting but kind of OP.

I like the base building, although I've only done it a couple of times. It's fun by itself, but it's true you don't need it. Last time I played I had a solo one-armed bugman and I did fine. I used one exploit, though, to get my Toughness way up. After that it was easy peasy.

 

[behold_a_man]

Keeping prisoners, again, why? so you can grind your skills to a high level?

Because the prisoners you send to the cities' prisons get freed all the time, returning to where I found them along with a bunch of followers.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Keeping prisoners, again, why? so you can grind your skills to a high level?

Because the prisoners you send to the cities' prisons get freed all the time, returning to where I found them along with a bunch of followers.

That never even occurred to me. I guess we play the game in very different ways, which is cool. You can conquer the world just the same without a base, though.

 

[Seethe]

The Troon phenomenon has been especially hard on mannishly-faced, somewhat ugly women. When I see one online I just reflexively assume it's a dude now.

Those women don't really need your pity. It is after all your brain that was fried.

 

[mondblut]

Just started.
Got eaten by dogs.
DIED

INCLINE
par for the course, eh?

Almost. I think the usual first "Kenshi moment" is getting beaten up by a score of bandits and left broken and destitute, crawling desperately to safety that doesn't actually exist before dying of hunger.

Git gud. Luring enemies to town/waystation guards so I can make tidy profit looting their bodies is literally the first thing I learnt in Kenshi.

 

[mondblut]

the being eaten alive thing in kenshi is so cool
most games, animals just kill you and then walk away or whatever

in kenshi they literally eat you

...and it makes a convenient training opportunity

 

[mondblut]

I get that the dev did not want to create a Chosen One fantasy

Ironic given that the player is literally the only thing that affects any kind of change on the world. Even the vaunted lolrandom stuff like NPCs scuffling only happens as long as he is around. The game was rigged from the start

[*]basebuilding that really serves no purpose beyond doing it for its own sake

Point rejected, there's an entire genre centered on basebuilding for its own sake. And in Kenshi, there's a plenty of purpose if you're playing it big. Massive food production, mining and smithing industry to equip dozens or hundreds of people, safehouses on the road as your newborn recruits travel naked across half the world to the main base, raid magnets to capture more high quality slaves… Bases are the best part in the game, you just gotta play it like Mount & Blade, not Ultima.

 

[mondblut]

Kenshi is only fun when you play inefficiently.

Nonsense.

 

[Jason Bright]

The Troon phenomenon has been especially hard on mannishly-faced, somewhat ugly women. When I see one online I just reflexively assume it's a dude now.

Those women don't really need your pity. It is after all your brain that was fried.

Hope 'she' sees this dude.

 

[MerchantKing]

 

[Major_Blackhart]

When it gets out I'll get it. Loved Kenshi. Still do.

 

[Ontopoly]

If you want to play it like I do, with a sizable army rather than a few really strong guys, then you need a base with some good food production. It's also nice to collect people with missing legs you don't like in a big prison.

My preferred playing style was to have a bunch of my soldiers flood a town and have some chaos going on. It helps a lot with the game's tendency to have soldiers go unconscious then just get back up and try to regroup when you aren't paying attention.

A base also helps a lot after some major battles when your units need a long time to recover. Not an issue when you're willing to over grind before engaging in any real battles but over grinding typically ruins most experiences

 

[Zanzoken]

Point rejected, there's an entire genre centered on basebuilding for its own sake.

Yes but in city builders and the like you have to engage with those mechanics in order to win the game. In Kenshi it is entirely optional because there is very little you can't do without a base.

And in Kenshi, there's a plenty of purpose if you're playing it big. Massive food production, mining and smithing industry to equip dozens or hundreds of people, safehouses on the road as your newborn recruits travel naked across half the world to the main base, raid magnets to capture more high quality slaves…

At that point you are incorporating mods which I think are out of bounds for critique. The default limit on your faction is 30 people, at which point having a base is probably more efficient but still not required.

Bases are the best part in the game, you just gotta play it like Mount & Blade, not Ultima.

I think basebuilding is a perfectly valid way to play. I built one in my last run, albeit not a fancy one, and I enjoyed the process and got a lot of utility from it.

Agree to disagree on it being the best part of the game though. For me the strongest part is the world design and exploration. There is a lot of cool shit in the world to see, and playing the game like a typical murderhobo RPG facilitates that.

But regardless of whether you are an explorefag or a buildfag, Kenshi has a lot to offer. I would like to see richer content & systems to support both, and endgame goals that can only be achieved via one or the other. Maybe Kenshi 2 will deliver on that, if any of us lives long enough to see it released.

 

[mondblut]

Point rejected, there's an entire genre centered on basebuilding for its own sake.

Yes but in city builders and the like you have to engage with those mechanics in order to win the game. In Kenshi it is entirely optional because there is very little you can't do without a base.

But you can't win in Kenshi. Everything you do or don't in this game is entirely optional.

At that point you are incorporating mods which I think are out of bounds for critique. The default limit on your faction is 30 people, at which point having a base is probably more efficient but still not required.

Well, raising the limit to 256 is basically the first thing people do when they launch FCS for the first time. Why limit yourself to 30 when you can have much, much more?

If God didn't intend you to play with over 30 people, he would've hardcoded it.

Agree to disagree on it being the best part of the game though. For me the strongest part is the world design and exploration. There is a lot of cool shit in the world to see, and playing the game like a typical murderhobo RPG facilitates that.

Dunno, seeing a few landmarks is rather poor motivation to keep on playing. You see that fallen satellite or dead giant skeleton or whatever, you walk around it, and then... what? You can't even chip off a piece as a memento or spray "Zanzoken wuz here" on it.

Meanwhile, my base-building campaign is on day 2639, with over 800 citizens populating the blessed Mondblutia.

 

[Mauman]

Just started.
Got eaten by dogs.
DIED

INCLINE
par for the course, eh?

Almost. I think the usual first "Kenshi moment" is getting beaten up by a score of bandits and left broken and destitute, crawling desperately to safety that doesn't actually exist before dying of hunger.

Git gud. Luring enemies to town/waystation guards so I can make tidy profit looting their bodies is literally the first thing I learnt in Kenshi.

er....ok. I mean, I've long since beaten this game (in the sense it can be "beaten") and was talking about a first time, but ok.

 

[kangaxx]

Just started.
Got eaten by dogs.
DIED

INCLINE
par for the course, eh?

Almost. I think the usual first "Kenshi moment" is getting beaten up by a score of bandits and left broken and destitute, crawling desperately to safety that doesn't actually exist before dying of hunger.

Nah it was the dogs for me too. In fact just a single dog, inside a town.