RPGWatch Feature - Kenshi Review

Myrthos

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Forgottenlor has penned down his thoughts about Kenshi, after spending quite some time with this sandbox game.

My character was an insect drone. For some reason he was expelled from the hive into the harsh world of Kenshi. There he started his new life in a borderland town run by the trade ninjas. But he came with a plan. After all, his people were diligent workers. First, he started mining ore, then he began to weave clothing. With his profits he hired bodyguards so he could transport his goods to the nearby city of Stack. He became an armorer, then assembled a team of warriors to help him travel the world he once feared. He found abandoned factories, ninja towers, ruined libraries, fearsome beak creatures, fire storms, slavers, dangerous robots, and terrible outlaws. Kenshi is a sandbox rpg in an extremely unusual setting. It gives you many paths to success, but no set one. There is no main quest. No real story. Kenshi is a game for players who can get into its world and define their own goals.
More information.
 
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Thanks @forgottenlor; for this very detailed review.
The game is obviously not for me (no story). :(
 
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While being directed to the Codex the other day in another thread about another open world survival game, I checked out their thread on this as well, curious to see how the survival trend is escalating.

It seems this game is hugely popular over there as this game is one of those games that allows you to simulate your inner genocidal maniac & most of the posts are screenshots of piles upon piles of dead humans & discussing the myriad ways you can kill ever more humans ad-infinitum.

If that helps anyone decide whether it's their thing or not.
 
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LOL
So it's lazy undertaker sim.
 
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Kenshi can be most anything you want it to be. If you're of a mind to create a pile of bodies, that is easy enough, as well as playing as a peaceful city of trading robots, though you will have to defend yourself…or hire others to do it.

Nice review, Forgottenlor. Even handed and accurate.
 
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While being directed to the Codex the other day in another thread about another open world survival game, I checked out their thread on this as well, curious to see how the survival trend is escalating.

It seems this game is hugely popular over there as this game is one of those games that allows you to simulate your inner genocidal maniac & most of the posts are screenshots of piles upon piles of dead humans & discussing the myriad ways you can kill ever more humans ad-infinitum.

If that helps anyone decide whether it's their thing or not.

An unfortunate reminder of why I don't particularly like to visit the codex. There are some good reviewers there, but also some real sociopaths.
 
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Those graphics are really bad. Talk about lifeless and drab. And I'm someone who loves desert settings, but definitely not this one. The desert should be way more colorful and interesting than this brownish-grey drab landscape of nothing. The review is too kind in this department. These kinds of graphics ruin the whole atmosphere and the setting from my perspective.

Anyway, sounds like if you can overlook the dreary graphics then it has some game play, but this game is a "hard pass" for me.
 
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Well, spoilers below.

There is a minor faction of very powerful genocidal robots, run by a madman.

They catch people, skin them alive and wear their skin as armor. They use a skin peeler machine. So any of your knocked out guys get kidnapped during the fight and put in that machine, getting killed permanently.

You can battle your way into the fortress. Kill the robots, capture the leader. put him in his peeler machine and watch him scream while his limbs fall off.

Then you can build said peeler machine in your outpost and cut off limbs from your teammates. Why? To replace weak meat limbs with superior interchangeable mission specific robotic limbs!!!

And that is just one minor faction.

BTW, I am exactly on day 30 of playing this crack-game non-stop whenever I have time.
 
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One of the best games I've ever played. Morrowind meets Mount & Blade or something. Very unique and crazy, loved it, played it for 200 hours and barely scratched the surface! Highly recommended if you want something a bit unique, different, and somewhat hardcore.
 
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Thanks for the review, forgottenlor! Very interesting read as usual :)

Unfortunately, this is something I won't enjoy so I will have to pass up. The graphics is too ugly for my liking, and sounds too much of survival management game than an RPG.
 
One of the best games I've ever played. Morrowind meets Mount & Blade or something. Very unique and crazy, loved it, played it for 200 hours and barely scratched the surface! Highly recommended if you want something a bit unique, different, and somewhat hardcore.

Agreed. I would add a word of caution to those opposed to such things that there is a real grind, but it can be tweaked to your personal tastes pretty damn well with mods in the workshop. There are a ton of mods for all sorts of things.
 
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And I would caution there is a grind, but it can be tweaked to your personal tastes pretty well with mods in the workshop. There are a ton of mods for all sorts of things.

Yeah, tons of great mods, I must have ended up with 25 of them installed over time. I even modded it myself a bit but never released it (it was a companion Shek character). I'm not sure if grind is the right word though, I mean, it's all gameplay, you build up your strength like you do in an RPG, it just takes some time. I never felt like I was grinding, I was always having fun.
 
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Those graphics are really bad. Talk about lifeless and drab. And I'm someone who loves desert settings, but definitely not this one. The desert should be way more colorful and interesting than this brownish-grey drab landscape of nothing

It has more than 1 biome..

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Pretty easy to mod too if you don't like something, e.g making the desert colorful (not sure too many would agree that a desert wasteland should be colorful or even that interesting).

The graphics aren't great, they have that thing where the world just doesn't feel very.. solid, where things are drawn and changed and stuff pop-ups.. pretty sure i had the settings at highest when i tried it the last time.. lighting is poor.

It's one of those games i think i would love if i could get into it, the engine is a bit of a turn-off..
 
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Yeah, tons of great mods, I must have ended up with 25 of them installed over time. I even modded it myself a bit but never released it (it was a companion Shek character). I'm not sure if grind is the right word though, I mean, it's all gameplay, you build up your strength like you do in an RPG, it just takes some time. I never felt like I was grinding, I was always having fun.

I was thinking more of the collection of books, artifacts, etc. for the advancement of research. If you want to keep building your tech and city, you have to keep collecting all that, and some of it is quite rare (hint: mods) and the numbers needed high (additional hint: mods). I think that aspect qualifies for the term "grind."

But that all also depends upon how you play the game. I'm temporarily away from my game as a robot colony building towards an uprising against their human oppressors. I have yet to play it as more of a wandering RPG, which was the creator's primary intent.

But I also take your point. Before I even looked at the workshop, I was roleplaying scenarios in my head for each expedition my robots took in search of the advanced technology of the past.
 
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And I think the game is far from ugly. It's very unique looking, each biome is unique and consistent and looks cool and different from the rest. And it's got a ton of biomes to explore, each with their own lore and quirks, too. It's a beautiful game but I guess it's an acquired taste?
@Capt. Huggy Face;, I played it mostly as a wandering and "make your own adventure" game. I wasn't really grinding for books but I was trying to explore ruins and just see the world. I can see if your focus is grinding the research books, but even then, as you mentioned I would approach it like its own little adventure with its own unique story as I explored. So to me it just never felt like grinding but you're right, it could be interpreted as that. I think the game is a ton of fun and really the first of its kind, ever.
 
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My second game will be the wandering type. I find it intriguing and a bit intimidating that I have so much left to do in the city-building play style at 90 hours in (which certainly does include plenty of other things. You can't just turtle it up all the way. You have to get out in the world.), and there is a whole other side of the game that was the primary intent that still lies ahead.

I'm going to have to decide to give up my robots first, though. Might be a while.
 
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