RPGWatch Feature - Kenshi Review

Could it be an RPG if I wanted it to be?

This made me laugh, but all this thinking about Kenshi has prompted an actual answer: For me it is. But maybe I'm strange, because I've done some of my personal best role playing in Kenshi and Crusader Kings II.
 
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This made me laugh, but all this thinking about Kenshi has prompted an actual answer: For me it is. But maybe I'm strange, because I've done some of my personal best role playing in Kenshi and Crusader Kings II.

I found Frogger to be the most rewarding role playing experience, maybe I'm weird.

I loved the unique and interesting take on the genre whereby the enemies levelled up as the game progressed from your actions rather than you gaining levels. Now that was thinking outside the box.

I loved the open world approach that allowed me to go anywhere on the map and that all areas of the map had both dense content and BRUTAL combat.

By doing away with the health bar you were placed into a realistic world where just one hit could kill you, and the death animation itself was satisfyingly realistic.

I also loved the immersion the game provided as you really jumped in your seat as if you were actually the frog each time you got hit by the traffic. They really caught the atmosphere of a typical road crossing nailed so perfectly, you really felt like you were there.

Frogger masterfully combines both the RPG and Survival genres to such a pinnacle of perfection that it has been the inspiration for all that follows in these two genres.

Most importantly, you aren't at all railroaded by the developers into any specific gameplay choice. You can roleplay a hesitant and nervous little jumper or you can go bold and unthinking and all in between with no overriding narrative to throttle you into one specific playstyle.

And if that's not enough for you, you can even mod it to however you want it to play:

Frogger-Fail.gif
 
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I have written this elsewhere, but I will leave a list of negatives as another take at this fun but extremely flawed game. Those who played it for a great length of time will surely have experienced one or more of the point I will make.

I would rate it 6.5, and that is because I like sand boxes and survival games.

The main problem here is that the game is infested with bugs, many of them being quite serious and, when you sum them up, they detract a lot from the experience and require quite a bit of patience. Not only that, many of its mechanics are half baked and don't work. It seems the developers tried to do a lot, but with very limited resources, and the result shows.

A lot of these problems were present far before the game went out of early access and were known by the developers, but the game was released in that shameful state, unfortunately.

Some examples from the top of my head:

- Graphics and art direction are really ugly. Like 10 years old ugly. The only models I found acceptable were the humans and skeletons. The other races and monsters are just ridiculous. I have the best hardware money can buy and even in the highest setings, it's just not pleasant to look at.

- The camera gets constantly in your way. I find myself in a constant struggle to find the best angle and every time you enter a building you have to adjust to get an acceptable view, which gets annoying really fast.

- UI and font scaling are broken. I play on a big screen and I had to adjust scaling in the video options. The problem is that it breaks the UI and the texts, to the point a lot of information is lost, such as skills and skill descriptions in the character window, inventory descriptions and slots, bounty and book descriptions. It's ridiculous, there is no scrolling for these items and I'm not even in the max scaling settings.

- Pathing and automation is a nightmare. The caracters cannot find their way around stuff. You can control up to 20 characters at the same time, but you have to keep babysitting each and every one of them, because if you let them act for themselves, even for a short while, they will end up stuck somewhere. If you build a base that is even worse. They get stuck in the props or crafting stations built there and you need console like commands to free them. If you send characters far away on the map, there is a 100% chance they will just stop and wait for commands halfway through, and you don't get notified they bugged, you have to check constantly.

- There are no quests. You make your own goals. That could be a positive, but the map is so vast and devoid of points of interest (and the ones present are too samey) that you find yourself asking what you should do next, what goal to achieve. Bounties, which are present in the game, are ridiculous to do, because they are very vague as to where you should go, and, as the game is pratically devoid of conversation with NPCs, you're on your own figuring out where your quarrel is, which is dumb as while you are looking for the bounty, you could be making tons of money elsewhere.

- Base building is obnoxious and very badly implemented. If you are in uneven terrain, be prepared to get bored out of your mind trying to build walls that work well. Not only that, there are four levels of walls. Once you spend hours building level 1 walls, you can upgrade them to level 2, once you research the tech. But, in an awful design decision, the devs made you destroy your level 2 walls to build level 3 walls in their place, which will take a lot of time and boring labor from the player's perspective. Also, gates are made of paper: a few sword swings from invaders is all it takes to get the gates destroyed.

- AI is terribly dumb. You can post turret shooters on your walls, and you can make kill boxes so your turrets kill all invaders before they can destroy your gate. The problem is, the turrets hit the other friendly turrets too. I mean, the turrets are on the wall and the enemies are down, on the ground. How can the turrets hit themselves? And since turrets are pretty strong, they easily KO one another, so you have to babysit them to healthy status every so often, which sucks.

- Speaking of AI, my turrets are at the highest level, and tear any invader force to shreds in seconds. Even so, they keep sending trash mobs to harass you, which just pisses me off as I have to keep one character just to burn (dispose of) the corpses automatically. But burning corpses is another automatic function that bugs every once in a short while and doesn't work properly, prompting more micromanagement.

- In order to get tougher, combat is mandatory. Alas, when you fight a lot, you're bound to lose limbs. You can replace your lost limbs with mechanical parts. The problem is that there is a big faction in the game that attacks on sight anyone with mechanical parts. It's ridiculous to have one basic mechanic of the game make you hostile towards a whole nation like that.

- Buildings frequently bug, causing the game to have weird issues so you have to constantly snap them to place via a console like command.

- The game crashes to desktop A LOT, especially if you don't snap buildings to place.

- The world is not interesting, the NPCs have nothing interesting or engaging to say, and there is practically no dialogue.

- If you don't like respawning, be prepared as there is a lot of it in a supposedly realist game like this, both for human enemies and factions, but also for enemies, which can be frustrating in harder places, such as the craters, where beak things (a hard monster) can make your life hell.

These things are just off the top of my head and I could go on and on, but, as one can see, this is far from perfect and, really, it feels like an apha game at most.
 
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- The camera gets constantly in your way. I find myself in a constant struggle to find the best angle and every time you enter a building you have to adjust to get an acceptable view, which gets annoying really fast.

^This is the main reason I couldn't get into Kenshi.
 
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^This is the main reason I couldn't get into Kenshi.

What really got me were the many building mode issues, ridiculous enemy AI, pathing issues galore and enemy respawning as if there was no tomorrow.

Camera issues are high in my "this ruins this game" list too.
 
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1. Graphics and art direction are really ugly.

1. Agreed. But not the worst on the market.
Main issue for me is the performance on the highest settings.
Game has issues with constant uploading from HDD every time you enter new map grid, which are getting much worse if you try to increase you visuals. I install on SSD and use compressed textures mod.

2. The camera gets constantly in your way.
2. Not the best, not the worst. but I can see it could be a problem for some people. I use the mouse for camera rotation and keyboard for scrolling. In addition, floor levels change button works wonders.

3. UI and font scaling are broken.
3. Full screen is bugged. Play in borderless window. Fixes all the UI problems. Using better UI mod improves the fonts, but it is not mandatory.

4. Pathing and automation is a nightmare.
4. My greatest problem with the game too. I found only one solution. Click travel point on the map for your fight team and switch to you base team. Clutter, trees and rocks do not render off-screen, so you travel team doesn't get stuck on terrain.

5. There are no quests. You make your own goals.
5. Depends. In classic RPG way, there is no quests. Nevertheless, there is lore, you just have to listen to NPCs and read books. There are bounties that affect the world. Cities are destroyed, factions attack etc. You kill a person with diplomatic status, things change in the game.

6. Base building is obnoxious and very badly implemented.
6. You can play the game without base building. You only need the base if you want to create your own armor and robotics.
If you do want to build, first set up in the city, do all the research and then go build an outpost.

Even then, location will determine how good your base will be. It has to be close to the markets, it has to have good stone, iron, copper and arable land. Which limits it to literally 3 places in the game. Anything else will be hard, but doable.
My current late game base is in the Pits, in a very defensible place, but dead biome (i am planning to clean up the Ashlands). I have hydroponics researched, so dead biome is not a problem and about 1.5M coins, so do not need trade.

7. AI is terribly dumb. You can post turret shooters on your walls, and you can make kill boxes so your turrets kill all invaders before they can destroy your gate. The problem is, the turrets hit the other friendly turrets too.
7. Not sure how you managed that, anything is possible. Game mechanic, if there is a person between shooter and the target, person can get hit. There is a skill that reduces that chance, called precision shooting, I think.

8. Even so, they keep sending trash mobs to harass you, which just pisses me off as I have to keep one character just to burn (dispose of) the corpses automatically.
8. There are major factions’ borders, if you settle inside the borders, they send taxmen after you. Minor factions nearby try to rob you. And there is trash spawns, which include wildlife.

You have to pay off major faction, and destroy the minor faction to reduce the frequency of attacks. There is no way that I know about how to reduce the trash mob attacks, killing off the wildlife around the base seems to reduce the critter population.

When I was located near Dust Bandits and Black Dragon Ninjas i didn't even bother with corpse removal. They were rotting at the gates in a neat pile. I had 2 six-barrel turrets located at the top of 2 guard towers flanking the gate and they massacred the incoming waves (2-3 per day).

Then I killed the ninjas leader and dust bandit leader. Ninja attacks stopped, but bust bandits split in 3 factions and kept attacking me. I had to go and clean up another 3 camps to reduce the frequency of those attacks.

9. In order to get tougher, combat is mandatory. Alas, when you fight a lot, you're bound to lose limbs. You can replace your lost limbs with mechanical parts. The problem is that there is a big faction in the game that attacks on sight anyone with mechanical parts. It's ridiculous to have one basic mechanic of the game make you hostile towards a whole nation like that.

9. It’s just who they are. Holy Nation will attack you if you are non-human without human escort too BTW. You can remove your limbs into backpack and HN will be fine with you.

Obnoxious clowns from UC were forcing me to kneel and kiss their boots. Randomly. On the streets.

Guards at UC city gates were planting drugs on me and demanding bribes. Just because they felt like it.

Sheks fed some knuckle sandwiches to my team just for kicks and giggles. Then healed me and put in the cage, then released me later. Honorabru.

10. Buildings frequently bug, causing the game to have weird issues so you have to constantly snap them to place via a console like command.
10. Only on uneven terrain. Ctrl-Shift-F11 snaps them back. F12 editor is for moving buildings if they were placed wrong.

11. The game crashes to desktop A LOT, especially if you don't snap buildings to place.
11. I may be had couple of crashes at all and none since i moved the game to SSD, luckily.

12. The world is not interesting, the NPCs have nothing interesting or engaging to say, and there is practically no dialogue.
Recruit unique NPCs and install Let's talk mod. Mod makes them repeat their pre-recorded dialogue. There is some good dialogue, BEEP is absolutely hilarious. But yes, compared to any run of the mill RPG dialog is non-existent.
 
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1. Agreed. But not the worst on the market.
Main issue for me is the performance on the highest settings.
Game has issues with constant uploading from HDD every time you enter new map grid, which are getting much worse if you try to increase you visuals. I install on SSD and use compressed textures mod.


2. Not the best, not the worst. but I can see it could be a problem for some people. I use the mouse for camera rotation and keyboard for scrolling. In addition, floor levels change button works wonders.


3. Full screen is bugged. Play in borderless window. Fixes all the UI problems. Using better UI mod improves the fonts, but it is not mandatory.


4. My greatest problem with the game too. I found only one solution. Click travel point on the map for your fight team and switch to you base team. Clutter, trees and rocks do not render off-screen, so you travel team doesn't get stuck on terrain.


5. Depends. In classic RPG way, there is no quests. Nevertheless, there is lore, you just have to listen to NPCs and read books. There are bounties that affect the world. Cities are destroyed, factions attack etc. You kill a person with diplomatic status, things change in the game.


6. You can play the game without base building. You only need the base if you want to create your own armor and robotics.
If you do want to build, first set up in the city, do all the research and then go build an outpost.

Even then, location will determine how good your base will be. It has to be close to the markets, it has to have good stone, iron, copper and arable land. Which limits it to literally 3 places in the game. Anything else will be hard, but doable.
My current late game base is in the Pits, in a very defensible place, but dead biome (i am planning to clean up the Ashlands). I have hydroponics researched, so dead biome is not a problem and about 1.5M coins, so do not need trade.


7. Not sure how you managed that, anything is possible. Game mechanic, if there is a person between shooter and the target, person can get hit. There is a skill that reduces that chance, called precision shooting, I think.


8. There are major factions’ borders, if you settle inside the borders, they send taxmen after you. Minor factions nearby try to rob you. And there is trash spawns, which include wildlife.

You have to pay off major faction, and destroy the minor faction to reduce the frequency of attacks. There is no way that I know about how to reduce the trash mob attacks, killing off the wildlife around the base seems to reduce the critter population.

When I was located near Dust Bandits and Black Dragon Ninjas i didn't even bother with corpse removal. They were rotting at the gates in a neat pile. I had 2 six-barrel turrets located at the top of 2 guard towers flanking the gate and they massacred the incoming waves (2-3 per day).

Then I killed the ninjas leader and dust bandit leader. Ninja attacks stopped, but bust bandits split in 3 factions and kept attacking me. I had to go and clean up another 3 camps to reduce the frequency of those attacks.



9. It’s just who they are. Holy Nation will attack you if you are non-human without human escort too BTW. You can remove your limbs into backpack and HN will be fine with you.

Obnoxious clowns from UC were forcing me to kneel and kiss their boots. Randomly. On the streets.

Guards at UC city gates were planting drugs on me and demanding bribes. Just because they felt like it.

Sheks fed some knuckle sandwiches to my team just for kicks and giggles. Then healed me and put in the cage, then released me later. Honorabru.


10. Only on uneven terrain. Ctrl-Shift-F11 snaps them back. F12 editor is for moving buildings if they were placed wrong.


11. I may be had couple of crashes at all and none since i moved the game to SSD, luckily.


Recruit unique NPCs and install Let's talk mod. Mod makes them repeat their pre-recorded dialogue. There is some good dialogue, BEEP is absolutely hilarious. But yes, compared to any run of the mill RPG dialog is non-existent.

I appreciate your reply, but a lot of effort, workarounds and mods to fix what should not have to be fixed in the first place.

First, I never use mods. 100% vanilla experience for me, always. Second, the game was installed on an SSD.

I will comment on some points:

3 - Not true. I tried both fullscreen and borderless window to no avail. Might work with some screens, but not all of them, such as mine.

4 - Not true. I always did that and set the camera to my base; nonetheless, the travelling squad always found a way to bug and get stuck, waiting for new orders.

6 - Base building is a major feature of the game and a big focus of mine, since the desura days. If the feature is there, it must be fully functional. There's no such thing as "just don't build, then". I wanted to build my city and it was bugged AF.

7 - This happened constantly and my turrets were very experienced, both in shooting and precision.

8 - My point was that I had a huge stronghold with level 4 walls and gate. I had max level turrets with experienced shooters working full time. The rabble and high level mobs alike just got cut like paper at every raid. And yet they kept respawning and mindlessly sending new attackers, sometimes one by one, to the slaughter. Ridiculous AI and respawning mechanics for a theoretically realistic simulator.

9 - Sure, it's who they are, but they are directly clashing with a basic mechanic of the game. If the player wished to be allied to them, he/she will have a probably impossible time, as combat and limb loss is almost mandatory.

10 - So what? I wanted to build on uneven terrain. It should either be forbidden, or not bugged. I am allowed to build anywhere, provided there's a distance from settlements. So anywhere I choose to build should be a smooth experience and not this bug fest.
 
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I appreciate your reply, but a lot of effort, workarounds and mods to fix what should not have to be fixed in the first place…

I presume we are not arguing with each other, our posts are for other people to make
an informed opinion about the game.

I understand your points. They are all valid, i just had a different experience with the game.

Maybe I should state my hardware? 2080ti on 3440x1440 screen.

No UI bugs, none. Camera. No bugs. Buildings. No bugs. Walls. Bugs if you build them on rough terrain, they get under the surface, you need to lift them up with +/- keys.
Turrets. No bugs.

yes, building on rough terrain is annoying as hell, I tend to build on platoes. That said, outpost3 and outpost4 buildings fit extremely well to rough terrain. I'll try linking screens later in the evening.

yes, pathfinding is bad, in some places (I encountered 2) outright broken. In order to travel off screen you other team needs to be in different map grid.

Finally, I have to say, though the guy who developed the game said there will be no more support, minor patches are still coming.

It is a unique and fun game if you are willing to overlook and work around some problems. I think it's worth the money they are asking for it twice over.
 
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Well @arthureloi; and I differ on our opinions of Kenshi, but I respect his opinion. To me, Kenshi was unbelievably good, so much so that I consider it one of the best games ever created, a true labor of love 12 years in the making. It's not going to be everybody's cup of tea, though, that much is certain.
 
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Hmm, blackvoid, I seem to remember that name from a thread once. Ah yes, here it is:

One of the reason i didn't get PoE2 was that I hate RTwP and was sick and tired of it after PoE1, DoS2 and Tyranny. I only finished Tyranny out of those.

I don't have any experience of Divinity Original Sin 2 either, but I'm sure that game wasn't RTwP. Further, if I hate something I don't tend to stick with it for too long, let alone game after game. Still, glad you're enjoying the really clunky real time combat in Kenshi, I guess you're delighted that at least you can't pause it, then you'd hate it, right?
 
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....Still, glad you're enjoying the really clunky real time combat in Kenshi, I guess you're delighted that at least you can't pause it, then you'd hate it, right?

Fair point. You can pause it though, so it is a straight RTwP :).

Hating combat, doesn't necessarily means not liking the game. Positives just need to outweigh the negatives. Like in BG, like in Torment, like in DOS2.

I bought the game in December as a present for my son (I would never have bought it on my own).

Then I was bored and, instead of nailing my ballsack to a chair, like i usually do for fun, tried Kenshi.

Combat in Kenshi is RT and very simplistic, almost an afterthought. Just simple RNG on top of ATT/DEF stat. With cut and blunt damage, limb damage for sure. Still kind of, mhe.

But for some unexplained reason I don't mind it. Exploration sandbox, free roam, base building outweighs the combat system.
 
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Combat in Kenshi is RT and very simplistic, almost an afterthought. Just simple RNG on top of ATT/DEF stat. With cut and blunt damage, limb damage for sure. Still kind of, mhe.

Yes, you're right, sounds really shit.
 
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I imagine I'd probably find Kenshi pretty fun too if the alternative was nailing my ballsack to a chair.
 
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Yes, you're right, sounds really shit.

You really wouldn't more than that in a game which can feature up to 30 (or even more with mods) companions. The combat at least has limb damage, torso, head, etc., and the equipment system is important for dealing with that. You can get electronic prosthetic limbs that vary in quality, you can train your attack and defense up, and the battle plays out like a mini Total War type of game. It's simple combat but extremely satisfying to me, especially when fighting a tough group of enemies and coming out on top, even while battered and bruised in the process. :)
 
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I bet there's a game for that somewhere on Steam.
 
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Thank you for another great review, Forgottenlor

Sadly, a game with no story is a big minus for me :(
 
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Looking great BlackVoid! I played 200 hours and near the end dozen or so I started building a base in Shek territory. It's kind of rough sledding at first since you're getting raided by Barbarians and tougher enemies, but it was starting to come together before I shelved it for awhile. 200 hours and barely scratched the surface honestly, the game is massive.
 
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