Kenshi

My Story in Kenshi so far.
I made a female starter character. Started in the Hub and just went out into the desert.
Met my first Starving Bandits and got knocked out. They took my food.
Found a bar to restock my supplies and discovered some ore nearby. Mined for starter money, while narrowly avoiding more bandits.
Took my meagre earnings to built myself a base, but got a visit from a patrol of the Holy Nation. They reported me to their inquisition and returned with reinforcements to burn me for being a woman.
But I knew the area by now and baited Black Dragon Ninjas into their raid. The inqusition won, but suffered heavy losses and had to retreat, which left me in a field of wounded and dead. I took their equipment as loot while the crippled survivors got eaten by scavenging Bonedogs.
I vowed to take my revenge on the Holy Nation and destroy them without leveling up other troops, just with this one character.
So I started training, beat up Dust Bandits and explored more of the world. My travels yielded better loot and better tech, my outpost was growing, and then I found a rare crossbow.
In a dessicated world of unarmored targets, speed, range and a copious amounts of bleed inflicting bolts are king. I began to utterly destroy bandits with this crossbow. Improved my stats and hunted down bigger bountys to measure the strength of my character.
After some time, I found myself in the Ashlands, an even more desolate lategame area. In the ruins of a fallen civilisation, I stumbled upon a powerful "skeleton" (think mad max samurai terminator). Kiting him to hell and back, I somehow managed to knock him out... and took him back home with me.
Now I'm very much tempted to return his monstrous weapon to him and throw him in the capital of the Holy Nation, so he can nuke their cities.
So yeah… I am about to start a war.
10/10 This game is amazing.

Grindy as all hell, a slog to play, everything kills you in a heartbeat and 2 swings. But there's that one character that manages to patch himself up just in time, run just a little faster and not get caught stealing from the shop that one time... That is when a legend is born! That's how a story is told, on the backs and corpses of ten thousand others that did not make it.

you start as nothing, you are nothing, you will always be nothing, unless you do something about it, so what do you do you try to kill a lone bandit. ASS BEAT. you try a starving guy. ASS. BEAT. you try steal some bread to live and a guard sees you, next thing you know you have 6 ninja guards all chopping you up.

you havent even left the first town.

I started as a thief, spiraled into becoming Pablo Escobar. Started kidnapping officials from around the world. And managed to ruin a world that was already ruined twice.
Excellent game.

This is one of the games that has small but devoted fanbase. Its like dwarf fortress, rimworld, factorio, project zomboid and other indie games with overwhelmingly positive reviews.
So Kenshi....you create an ugly ass dude and are put in ugly ass world (the game uses ugly ass engine from early 2000s).
You get beaten by literally everyone and have no idea what to do and how to play.
Then you keep trying, dozens of hours pass and then you are the greatest force in the ugly ass world who can beat anyone, anywhere.
Its 10/10

**More updates below**
In just 22 hours, this has been my experience:
Started with 1000c at the Hub, a run-down criminal dump with only a working bar. I bought a little food and got to mining. I went through the "get beat down, toughen up, build skills, and acquire gear" grind with the character I forgot to rename before hitting confirm in the editor, "Feck."
Feck was a loner for a long time. Built a shack, a storm house, stone quarry, stone processing, and a few other production facilities by himself. After awhile I found an NPC who wanted to be free of his master and I paid his contract. Voth joined me and we built a walled camp worth being proud of. We faced countless bandits and wildlife along the way, but we did it.
No rest for the wicked, though. We set to making steel and crafting weapons, and probably managed 15 swords and had 8 in the chest to sell when 20 black dragon ninjas showed up to beat us bloody and toss us out of our camp. Feck and Voth recovered and launched a two-man counter attack after some rest, but were beaten again. We recruited mercs and the lot of us managed to whittle their numbers, but now there's "hungry bandits" trying to edge in and our heroes were ousted again.
I have spent the last several hours recruiting a handful of new characters to train and arm as elite warriors. Feck and Voth are hardened killers who outmatch any 2 black dragon ninjas. I don't care if we can recover our base, as long as we can make them regret taking what we worked for, I don't care if it burns.
So yeah, you could say I'm deeply invested.
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138 hour update: I am at all out war with the Holy Nation, the Slavers, and every kind of bandit. I've got a team of 30 now, including 2 pack bulls and 3 bonedogs, all over 50 in every stat. Several with strength over 90. Feck and a Shek named Ruka have both reached 90+ in weapon smithing and armor smithing, respectively. Out crew is well outfitted and what we can't make we can afford the best of anywhere we choose to slaughter our way too.
I can't even describe how it happened, but I've found myself with a full industrial complex, textile complex, and a Casa de Feck all perfectly situated to compliment each other. Complete with two caravans constantly traveling between either. I have an overabundance of resources and I just finished kitting my guys out with the best gear I can give them.
And the crazy part? It feels like the starting point. Like a whole new game is about to begin. Feck and Voth have survived together, Voth the stronger of the two for now. We recruited and lost a few people along the way. Freed slaves who gladly joined us, replaced limbs lost in battle with robotic upgrades. Even made friends with a few skeleton robots who joined out crew.
I'm familiar with all 30 of these surviving characters, like they all have their own personas. I edited each one that I could, and renamed a few. Like a skelly named Diesel Wedge, one of my 90+ brutes.
I'm going to keep a save from here and let everything going forward ride as it will. I haven't scum saved since my first few hours, and it has made for a pretty amazing experience.
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169 hour update:
Joined with the anti-slavers and have been overthrowing slaver and holy nation camps all across the south eastern map. Still based outside of the hub, but spent a few months outside wandering with packs filled with food, med/repair kits, and camping supplies. Lost a few limbs, and one of my guys named Blackfruit got cannibalized in the mists outside of Mongrel. Met and recruited Beep. His life is hell trying to train up to the same level as the others. My skelly Faultline has gotten pretty skilled at robotics and makes masterwork limbs, but I only have the blueprints for KLR legs and some strength based arms.
Everyone has Edge 2 weapons and Master work gear, crafted in my industrial outpost. We get attacked costly while in our base by the Holy Nation, the United Cities, and random Elite Hunter groups. One leader of those groups, Eyegore, kept coming back stronger. He's locked up with Feck ((F-E-C-K) I'm not sure why that is censored, it was an auto-gen name) being whittled down until the end comes for him at last. That 79 in toughness is the result of mercy. I lock the gates when they get inside my compound now. I take no prisoners and will suffer no survivors to return as a greater threat later.
Being in my outpost ensures I can sell my top class wares, though. I have more than 20 shopping counters filled with Edge 1 and specialist level gear, and under, that easily fund all our excusions.
Several beakthing nests and countless bandit camps, fogman nests, and beast dens have been wiped off the map during my faction's quests. A lot of my guys have notorious (lifetime) bounties and end up waiting in a group outside cities we're not allied with. Still finding more and more I can get into.
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To this day kenshi really shows up modern development studios, and demonstrates that a game can be great if it isnt infected with the business investor CEO parasites demanding modern audience appeal and in game transactions