Kenshi

i played only for 3 hours on steam but over 3000+ hours as a pirate, this game was good (or addictive) enough that it persuaded a life long pirate living in a third world country with a devalued currency to make a legal purchase. best endorsement i can think of to be quite honest

I didn't get it
I tried 4 different times to get into the game and each time i just wandered around and gotten beaten to death or unconscious or enslaved and lost interest as i had no clear goal or any idea what to do
But then i stuck to it all these years later, mining to get money, getting more guys, getting beaten half to death over and over, understanding the game more and more as time went on
Now i have a successful settlement with lots of people i give jobs to and make my own gear and cactus rum, while my main dude is so jacked and powerful from almost dying a thousand times that i send him out to sneak around and knock people out with a bounty for extra money or steal things from shops when they close or solo a whole pack of bandits to loot
This is not a game that is going to hold your hand, or even give you any goal to work towards
This is a game where i genuinely thought there was nothing to do
But it was my fault, i thought there was nothing to do because there was everything to do, but i didn't know where to start and i had no personal goal i wanted to achieve
This game will now consume my life so this is also a goodbye letter to my friends and family
The game is also very mod friendly and i would argue many of them are necessary
If you need a new addiction i highly recommend Kenshi
Its janky, it loads every 2 minutes while travelling long distances, nothing makes sense at first and theres quite a few bugs
But if you can look through all it's issues you'll find a masterpiece
I hate the Holy Nation btw
Anyway great game

>Made an outpost
>Taxed 4k a week by the United Cities.
>Doing well.
>Traders guild sends a diplomat asking for a cut.
>Not a trader so I tell them to piss off.
>They send goons and raid my outpost.
>A day later they send slavers, shackling 6/8 crew.
>Main toon escapes and flees, gathers forces and spends the next in game week rescuing the gang.
>We are now recognized as escaped slaves and are considered 'property' by the United Citites and Traders Guild.
>Destroy the outpost, pack up everything on a bull and head south, where we find a new city governed by the Tech Hunters.
This game has radicalized me and i am now on the warpath to abolish slavery with a mechanized general named Tinfist.
10/10

I just realized I never reviewed this game and I'm a bit surprised at myself, since it has been my most played game for over ten years. That's probably enough for me to say about it, really, but there's more.
It's not the prettiest game ever, but it makes up for that with depth. You start out as a nobody, and you can move forward however you want to, but as you grow and gain power, the game responds to you. Your impact on the game world is visible to you in how the gameplay unfolds.
There are a number of things that make Kenshi unique, but I think the most unique thing about it is the health system. It's very complex and closer to reality than a basic HP system, The most common cause of death in this game is blood loss, which can be caused by any of a number of injuries. Also, characters are very much affected by their injuries. For example, amputation is possible. You can even start with a character missing their left arm. I always start this way because I am one handed myself and I relate to that character. My one-armed character struggles to do things in ways that make sense to me (perhaps not entirely accurate, but it's close enough for a game), and I love seeing the improvements in function when I get prosthetics. I wish I could have the same prosthetics in real life, honestly.
Anyway, if you like isometric RPGs, RTSs, city (more of a village) builders, survival games, or any mix of these, this game has something for you to love.

spent 20 days as a starving slave. escaped, slowly starved to death as a free man 10/10 experience

I launched a game in hardest difficulty. 3 hours in I tried to fight a dying slave missing an arm, low on health and with cuffs. I lost.

What is Kenshi?

By now everyone knows that it's a game where you're just some guy and not the chosen one, that it's an unforgiving situation where your character(s) don't matter at all, until they do.

What I want to elaborate upon is a bit different: at its core, Kenshi is about absolute freedom, but more importantly, about potential. Having potential, by itself, means nothing and, at the same time, doesn't mean you should strive for something great. You can, sure, the world is there for this, but you can also just decide to be something other than "the best". See, one's existence it's not necessarily about being on top, rather, it's more about doing what one likes, what gives a sense of accomplishment or satisfaction.

Kenshi gives you all the potential to be anything you want. You can be a simple shop owner, a food vendor, a travelling merchant, build a city, become a bounty hunter, carve your own city out of a hostile land, be a slave, become a zealot of Narko after liberating yourself from the slavers at Rebirth and go on a personal crusade in the name of revenge, be a drug lord in the swamps, and so on.

The entire world is your canvas, what you need is the will to find some form of purpose. Some people might just be content with roaming and exploring the land, without any grand objective of sorts.

As with real life itself, at the end of the day, the most important thing to remember when playing Kenshi is that you should do what you enjoy doing, not what you think you should be doing, and sometimes that means being just some guy, but a happy one at that. The entire experience will be infinitely more rewarding.