Kenshi should be for me. But it wasn't. And exactly why that is, I'm not entirely sure. I love these sort of sandbox, realistic grand open simulator type games where you just go and do shit. But Kenshi just wouldn't click for me.
It feels abnormally opaque, even by the standards of these sorts of games. It really feels impenetrable. Many of my spawns just had nothing to do? Sparsely populated towns with people who wouldn't talk to me and shops I was too poor to buy anything from. I'd venture out into the wilderness to go find something else to do and eventually starve. That's probably 70% of my Kenshi games.
The others, I do manage to get onto my feet a bit. Maybe I'm enslaved early on or I find someone willing to give me a job I can try and complete. These normally end pretty abruptly thereafter too when I fail or starve again or what have you. I'm quite accustomed to games with steep learning curves or lots of fail conditions like Zomboid or Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress or DayZ or Smallaland or Mount & Blade. So it's not like this style of game or genre is unusual or uncommon to me. Kenshi is just different somehow.
Whatever it is, I just wound up really unable to play much of Kenshi. Not even just by some measure of success, I mean much at all. Most of my runs consisted of walking till I died.
Kenshi still gets three stars from me anyway, for a few reasons. I can see the promise and I can tell that in runs that do go well the game is quite miraculous. In my few runs that did manage to progress a little, the game is quite fun. There's quite a bit of effort in this little title and it's gotta be fairly rewarding to play if you can get that momentum going. I just think it's clunkier and more opaque than its similar cousins in Dwarf Fortress or Zomboid or Mount & Blade. You'd be better off with those, imo.
It feels abnormally opaque, even by the standards of these sorts of games. It really feels impenetrable. Many of my spawns just had nothing to do? Sparsely populated towns with people who wouldn't talk to me and shops I was too poor to buy anything from. I'd venture out into the wilderness to go find something else to do and eventually starve. That's probably 70% of my Kenshi games.
The others, I do manage to get onto my feet a bit. Maybe I'm enslaved early on or I find someone willing to give me a job I can try and complete. These normally end pretty abruptly thereafter too when I fail or starve again or what have you. I'm quite accustomed to games with steep learning curves or lots of fail conditions like Zomboid or Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress or DayZ or Smallaland or Mount & Blade. So it's not like this style of game or genre is unusual or uncommon to me. Kenshi is just different somehow.
Whatever it is, I just wound up really unable to play much of Kenshi. Not even just by some measure of success, I mean much at all. Most of my runs consisted of walking till I died.
Kenshi still gets three stars from me anyway, for a few reasons. I can see the promise and I can tell that in runs that do go well the game is quite miraculous. In my few runs that did manage to progress a little, the game is quite fun. There's quite a bit of effort in this little title and it's gotta be fairly rewarding to play if you can get that momentum going. I just think it's clunkier and more opaque than its similar cousins in Dwarf Fortress or Zomboid or Mount & Blade. You'd be better off with those, imo.