I bought Kenshi because I saw a Reddit conversation asking about games where you are not "the chosen one." Kenshi fits that description perfectly. You wake up as a poor outcast in a desert community. The world cares nothing about you and you have little to your name. I figured out that I needed to recruit some of the locals if I wanted to get anywhere. Unfortunately, I quickly ran into a bug where the population of neighboring towns would not load. Unfortunately, this is where my play stopped. The early game had a lot of grinding, and I expect the rest of the game to have grinding as well. I did not want to start over after the bug, and all internet sources said I needed to start over.
The game looks like it has a lot of potential, especially with mods to improve quality of life. I want to try again once I install some mods that make bugs like the one I encountered less common. It seems like such mods are out there.

Kenshi is a fantastic game where you genuinely make your own story and can do anything in a huge open world with a post apocalyptic samurai aesthetic.

In the same vein as Mount & Blade, UnReal World, and other similar sandbox games; Kenshi has no main story, no pre-determined path to follow. This game is truly a story generator, you will become attached to characters, despise certain factions, genuinely feel affected when someone dies or loses a limb or becomes enslaved. You will make allies, enemies, friends, bases, do anything you want to. You wanna play a lone wandering samurai who bounty hunts? Do it. You wanna be a trader who runs a caravan and makes money selling things at higher value? Do it. You wanna renovate houses in cities and run businesses or training facilities out of them? Do it. Mining operation, hunting guild, farming plantation? Do it. You can ignore so many systems in this game or use all of them. There is an entire city-sim in this game you can choose to not do and not truly miss anything because you are still getting an amazing generated story the way you want it. Group-based rpg. Bounty hunting sim. Solo RPG. City builder. Guild organizer. Thief simulator. Business simulator. All of these things you can do or not. Your choice.

The gameplay is satisfying, very similar to Morrowind in the way of early on you will be missing and getting hurt a lot, but by the end you can feel the grind pay off, your characters becoming skilled and useful. If you enjoy the power gap in games you will enjoy this one, it is not a game about being powerful at the start as you won't be. You need to train. You need to lose fights. You need to get better gear. And it is all so satisfying.

The world is gorgeous and unique, the cities and wilderness and just overall design is so alien and fun and horrifying and beautiful. The music too is just outstanding, the Main Theme in particular makes me feel so emotional, the same way some of the most memorable tracks in gaming like Ezio's Family for AC2 make me feel. Its so good, the mournful yet adventurous and bright sound of the world is hypnotizing and invites you in.

Also, Beep is my truest love.

Another game where it's hard to rate objectivity vs opinion.

I want to like this game SO bad. The player freedom is unprecendented, the world design is phenomenal, the ideas present in this are some of the best fuckin shit i've ever seen


But for me, it's just missing fun. i could forgive the repetition if it just made more sense. I could forgive the lack of direction if it was funnier. I could forgive the lack of explenation of systems if it had more to offer. Sadly it's too "make your own way" and not "make your own fun"

Bro why is this INDIE GAME so fucking big??????? I have 87 hours and only have explored like half the map because going further than that means beak things are going to get a little angry for some reason. Not only is the game massive, it is more realistic than AAA titles, fuck I even think this game is more realistic than the last cod, you can interact with everything, everyone and everywhere, and all the choices you make are permanent (kinda), lost an arm? bummer, lost a leg? bummer, everyone in the party died? make a new one, EXCEPT YOU DON'T HAVE TO, you can buy robotic legs from the hive that are even better than your flesh, and if everyone dies the game is not gonna delete your file like a rouge-like or charge the last save as other games, it will stay moving until you leave the game.

It's so massive that it shouldn't be possible for an indie game.
10/10

Genuinely a real indie gem, and frankly deserves more love.
It's a massive game by a small studio, which is impressvie on it's own, but the world, the aesthetics, the charecters and the lore are all fantastic.
It's not flawless, it's got kinda clunky controls, low graphical fidelity(although the aesthetics more than make up for this), and some of it's mechanics have issues.
But
If you get this, and you persevere through it's unforgiving approach to difficulty, you will be able to live free within a brutal, grim, yet expansive world, with political dynamics and real measurable decisions and impacts you can have.
There are many ways to play Kenshi, and all of them fun.
I really cannot recommend this game enough.