Kenshi - Review @ PC Gamer

Kenshi review

In my time with Kenshi, I've crossed swamps so vast that I haven't dared return. I've been beaten shitless by a pack of goats that were intended to feed my rabble of listless nomads. I've been a shopkeeper and a thief, a lone wanderer and a slave, and I've been an entire community of people working together to--one day--erect our own city in the wasteland. One day.

None of these events were part of questlines. There's no such regimentation in Kenshi, no tangible sense of scripted behaviour, just a ragged web of vicious systems so myriad that they sometimes tangle and fumble and descend into absurdity. But there is a cold order to Kenshi too, a formidable degree of depth that's as impressive as it is stubborn.

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The early going can be cruel; basic survival plans can be easily derailed by a city guard who plants drugs on you then demands money you don't have, or by finding yourself deep in a region inhabited by vicious alien giraffes. It can all get a bit grindy too; it takes a long time before you can handle yourself in a fight, a long time to grow food, and a long time to get around. Even though Kenshi is capable of conjuring great scenarios to break up these anaemic stretches, it doesn't lessen the slog.

But after around 30 hours, I still feel like I've so much to uncover. I've still got to expand from a dustbowl community to a fortress; to send an expedition of battle-hardened warriors out into distant wilds while back at the township artisans and workers rake in profits thanks to the clockwork-like regimen I created. Kenshi is huge, amoral, and opaque enough that I'll be deciphering it it for a very long time.

Score: 84/100 - Work through the presentational ugliness and technical awkwardness, and you'll find an experience of frightening depth.

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Carnifex said:

A game like Ultima online but minus the other players sounds quite intriguing to me. I truly need to check this game out, but Tower of Time has got me pretty busy for right now.

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To add on to my review and impressions a bit, I'll tell about my trip through the Skimsands to Heng, the city you see in the screenshots. First, I was going to explore the Iron Valleys ruins, until I saw it was acid raining there, had some "evil tower" surrounded by security spiders (robotic spiders that are hard to kill), so I passed on that. I went north and I had to cross a Holy Nation checkpoint, and I wasn't sure if my team which includes both Shek and Hivers (different races in the game, hated by the HN) would be allowed to pass. We rush through and a guard says to keep my "beasts" in line and nothing bad will happen, great. So now I see a *vast* desert between our group and where I'm headed for - a United Cities city called Heng. I heard the UC has a lot of coin, goods and luxury things there, so I want to see what I can bring back to my house in a Shek town named Squin. So the journey starts okay, I spot a group of "Manhunters" in the distance, humans who apparently hunt men. I avoid them, don't want to be seen. Then I start seeing skirmishes far to the south and I'm wondering what it could be that is fighting there. I find out soon enough, people are fighting Skimmers, giant insectoids that roam the desert, sometimes in packs. We head farther east and encounter a few, kill them, but they're tough. Now a few in my group are limping, apparently these insects target the opponents legs first to try and gain an advantage. No problem, to make some members of my team stronger I have them carry the injured through the desert with us. We lose no speed and continue.

More Skimmers come, then another, then another. Before long we and a band of ragged recruits we met in the desert who happened to be in the same area are almost overwhelmed by Skimmers, sneaking in from all angles. We slaughter more but Griffin, a former Holy Nation Sentinel, loses an arm in the fray. He'll eventually need a robotic replacement, hopefully one we can find in Heng or somewhere in United Cities territory (our guy Stubs Mumoso needs one, too.) So we meet a traveler from the ragged band of mercs and hire him aboard, he says he can take care of himself, great, we need the help. However now, we have to carry almost half our team through the desert, and the ones doing the carrying are also injured. So we're at a crawl, no outpost in sight except for some strange Tengu Tower. We get there seeking refuge and are told it's a United Cities military outpost, leave at once and that will be our only warning. Okay, we get it, time to move out as hurt as we are. We continue east through vast stretches of desert fighting the occasional Skimmer (they sometimes leap from under the sand without warning) and we finally, after a long haul cross the border to Heng territory. It's a snowy mountain region - I'm hoping at this point we don't encounter some yeti or who knows what from the mountains. Finally, after a shorter hike we make it to the city on top of the mountain, Heng, and quickly get all our wounded in beds at the inn, that happened to have enough for all of us but 2 to sleep for the night and regain strength. In the morning we'll search the city and see what we can find, for now we rest.

Back home production is going good, our workers are mining copper and keeping income flowing in while other workers are researching new tech and making bread which is turned into meatwraps with raw meat, a good, hearty food source. It will be a long trek back to Squin but our wanderers will explore the UC territory for awhile until it's time to make a haul back to Squin or some other forgotten realm. I'm hoping to bring back things to sell and trade in Squin, if we're strong enough to loot an ancient ruin or outpost in Heng territory. I have to buy a few maps from the Traveler's Guild to see if there's anything close we can check out.

These are the types of adventures you find in Kenshi, and not one bit of it was scripted or told as some quest or anything like that. Just dynamic, emergent gameplay. Quite the incline, wouldn't you say?

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TheRealFluent said:

Not only am I impressed but I think it's a once in a lifetime game like Morrowind and the best game of 2018, even over Kingmaker. Kingmaker is amazing too but Kenshi is just other-worldly in how unique and different an experience it is.

Here's an adventure I had recently that I posted on the Codex for anyone who might want to see what a typical day in Kenshi is like:

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Capt. Huggy Face said:

Neither game is an RPG but what I think of as an RPS, a role-playing simulator (TM).

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Zloth said:

Ooo, can Egosoft's X series be an RPG Simulator, too? Your character has no stats or levels at all but I swear I do more role playing in those games than in 95% of the RPGs I play.

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