It's good, very addictive and it has great moments. Also annoyingly hard which is part of the charm, you're gonna get beat, imprisoned or eaten alive a lot.

Sadly, a lot of features feel really poorly implemented and need to be modded for them to function properly. There's not much of an end-game, once you finally get strong and gather a small group, there's not many things to do, the game has a great journey and a dissapointing payoff. There's barely any dialogue so forget about that.

Kenshi 2 is in development and I'll sure keep an eye on it. I hope they add more stuff like armies, taking over cities, and more interaction between you and the world, so it reacts to what you're doing. Kenshi is a solid foundation for something great, I hope it'll get there.

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.

A very fun game where you can make & meet very wonky looking people and die in the wilderness together.
No story except what you make of it, though there are logs and books to read and (bosses?) to fight.

The repetitive short loading times are very annoying, and most characters have next to no personality. This is part of it being a huge sandbox.

Resource availability makes sense but imo is just really annoying and makes it so that even though one can settle wherever they want*, it's impractical in many locations.
It's cool to be able to build my own settlement, but annoying to have to babysit everyone in it rather than being able to have passive civilians. I'd rather manage guards to keep randos in my settlement safe than manage guards to keep my workers (that I had to equip and assign every job to) safe.
Some objects that should have collision inexplicably do not. When settling an area, one should test large objects (large rocks, uninteractable ruins) to see if they may be pathed through unexpectedly.

Pathing is often broken. Sometimes pathable objects such as walls or bridges are simply not recognized by the AI, leading to some normally accessible areas being inaccessible, or making the AI go very long roundabout ways to get to your settlement.
Moving long distances often requires countless course adjustments, as the map will continually load while your party moves through it and the previous course will become invalid, making your party stop. Invisible loading walls also do this, and can result in your character being killed/wounded/critically injured if evading enemies.
This also leads your characters to sometimes move one direction, provoke the map to load a little more, and then make your characters move the opposite direction since the previous course just became invalid. Even when moving small distances.

The skill gain is neat, but can really drag. Unarmed combat is reasonably weak at first and then becomes ridiculously powerful very quickly.
Stealing is absurdly profitable and significantly reduces game difficulty at first.

The acquisition of wealth becomes pointless after a threshold, as there comes a point not far in where one does not need to spend much money for anything.

Despite all of my complaints, it's a wonderfully fun game with sometimes repetitive scenery and a cute bug named Beep. I am very much looking forward to Kenshi 2.

This game is ugly, runs like hot garbage, and is as wide as an ocean with the depth of a puddle. It’s not really a survival game, or a simulator, or an RPG, or a strategy game. Despite cannibals existing, good luck trying to eat people. The build tools are ultra simple and lack customisation. Economy and trade aren’t systems at all, there’s no market to tank or corner. Characters are one dimensional and story nonexistent, so you only get what you project onto the mostly empty world. The biggest strategic choice you’re presented with is where to build your base, if you choose to build one at all.

Yet I am still recommending it.

One day, I ran past multiple groups of slavers on my journey. They all ignored me, a fine specimen to be captured and sold as chattel. This offended me so I did what any rational human being would do: track down key figures in the slave trade and assassinate them, plunging the area into chaos and doing in less than a week what Tinfist has had lifetimes to accomplish yet was too cowardly to see through.

If I wanted, I could have knocked them out and left them for cannibals or hungry animals, or brought them back to a base to be imprisoned forever and used as practice dummies. These are all viable options. And the world reacts to these things more often than not, sometimes in small ways, other times large. With the death of a handful of nobles, I brought entire towns to ruin while famine swept through what little was left. Anti-slavers sang my name at the end of the day, not Tinfist’s, unaware a bruised ego had motivated me and I don’t really care about slavery at all.

This is a “smoke ‘em if you got ‘em game.” You’re given a few pieces of LEGO from disparate sets and locked in a room to figure out what you can do with them. You may become frustrated or bored, but once you come up with something, the game excels until you’ve reached the bottom of the container and have to come up with something else. If you don’t like the pieces you have, just use the modding tools it comes with to make your own. Difficulty or tedium can be easily solved in a few clicks.

Beep.

Kenshi is very special to me. Ever since I laid eyes upon this weird masterpiece, I've been obsessed with its world and gameplay. The character creator is pretty unique, letting you choose things like how crooked your character's back is and in what pose they stand, as well as offering very interesting races that all have their own lore and interactions. Depending on what race and/or gender you choose, different factions within the game will treat you differently and you'll often find that making friends is much harder than making enemies.
The world within the game is a cruel wasteland, populated by fanatics, bandits and slave traders, as well as scary monsters and giant lasers shooting from the sky. I can't even begin couting the amount of times my little troop of misfits and I have run for our dear lives, trying to make it to the next city without getting eaten or kidnapped.
Success is not handed to you and making enough money to pay for your next meal can be quite stressful, especially at the beginning. You'll have to train long and hard, if you're decent enough, you can make a living as a hunter or by turning in criminals. But desperate times will need desperate measures and selling people into slavery or getting others killed by guards to loot their corpses is often the easy way out. Generally speaking, it's always more difficult to be a good person rather than taking advantage of poorer and weaker people around you.
The world is constantly changing, whether you're around or not, with faction fighting their own wars against each other and patrolling through the areas, and you're most definitely not the chosen one who they'll turn to. You'll have to prove yourself first, make a name for yourself and do favours, just so they even consider your existence. If you're really strong and have the right people behind you, you can actually change the political climate within the game and go as far as banishing some and advancing others. And, if you're organised enough, you can even establish your city and become your own faction.
This and more awaits you within this game and I can't recommend it enough to anyone who's hungry for something new and refreshing. That being said, here come the cons.
The graphics are not good, and I mean, really not nice to look at. They do the job and I personally have actually grown to appreciate them, but it's a fairly new game and it looks like it came out in 2005. The gameply is extremely slow and hard and while that should be considered a feature, it definitely makes it a game not everyone can enjoy. The learning curve is steep and even after playing for 70h, I've still not learned everything there is to know and honestly, I'm not even close to becoming a proper faction member. The game is as brutal as its world and being sold to slavery has happened to me more than once, often setting me back, and I sadly have lost many companions in my pursuit of greatness.
If you're out for a hardcore adventure with no quests and an alien world, this game might be the next big thing for you. If you don't have the time or the patience, it's probably best if you look for something else to play, because it's as pleasant as eating nails for breakfast, yet so addicting.

Tinha muito potencial mas acabou estragando tudo... propaganda de que você pode ser tudo mas do que adianta se o mundo não reage de acordo com o que você é? Não importa se você é um líder com um exército gigantesco, mercenário sanguinário ou um simples ex-escravo, todos vão te tratar como um bosta como no começo e as relações não mudam, o game na questão de dificuldade e realismo é muito bom mas tirando isso é bem medíocre e até mesmo tendo gráficos de um jogo de 2006 ele tem problemas de otimização.