Kenshi

When I first loaded up Kenshi, I thought I had made a mistake.
I knew the graphics were not great, but I didn't realize just how jank the visuals actually were until I saw them. Worse, the game was pushing my aging laptop to the brink of overheating, and the game was, despite the seemingly low-tech visuals, not running well. The interface was one of the ugliest I'd ever seen, and was totally obtuse. I had no idea what I was doing or where I was supposed to be going. The game's spartan tutorial suggested mining outside of town, so I went with that. It was slow. So painfully slow. I increased the game speed and promptly got attacked by about ten bandits with clubs. As the game's weakest enemy beat me to a bloody pulp, I considered refunding the game, but the game's tutorial brought up another window - I wasn't dead.
When my character came to he was in bad shape. Luckily, he had started with a first aid kit, and he bandaged his wounds and limped back to the tiny town with only one shop. As he rested, I checked his stats to see what went wrong in that fight. His stats were all 1's, with the exception of his Toughness, which was now a 6. That was just the beginning of my understanding of Kenshi.
In Kenshi, there is no generic pool of "Experience" that you get that you can just dump in to whatever stat you want. You can't go out and fight bandits for experience and dump the experience points into your mining skill. If you want to get better and mining, you have to mine. You have to mine a lot. The same goes for any skill. If you want to fight, make weapons, grow crops, or sneak around, you have to give your character time to be terrible at it. And once you learn this system, you can learn how to exploit it.
Want to become a martial arts master? Build a Prisoner Cage. Catch a bandit. Heal him. Feed him. Protect him. Drag him out of the cage every once in awhile and beat the shit out of him and then put him back. It seems cruel. A few days ago this guy was slashing at you with a Horse Chopper so it's fair. But be careful, his Martial Arts skills are going up too! If he beats you, he'll head of the hills and you'll be starting from scratch with a new sparring partner, and you won't get better fighting an unskilled opponent.
Want to get stronger? Fill two backpacks full of Iron Ore and give one to a friend. Then, pick up said friend and carry him around. Walk back and forth in town for as long as you want. Your character actually bulks up visually as you gain strength.
Of course, you don't have to learn to fight if you don't want to. Why not build a base in the Holy Nation, and start farming? You can make tons of money cooking advanced foods and selling to the surrounding towns. You can do this forever if you want. You'll have to fight or flee from the occaisional animal or bandit attack, and you'll have to deal with Prayer Day (the best day!) Don't like Prayer Day? Feel free to go live somewhere else more dangerous. Each area has its own features and hazards, from rampaging slavers to acid rain and giant dinosaur death machines. You can look up each area online, but in my opinion, learning where you should and shouldn't go from experience is a huge part of the fun.
So what brought about my change of heart with Kenshi? The realization that my character was nobody until he earned everything he had. Every coin, every stat-point, every brick that made up his shoddy looking base was earned. The game didn't magically dump them on me in some plot event or through some level-up perk. He trained, he labored, he scavenged, he seized opportunities. He started his own faction and they ran from danger until they got tired of running, and built an impregnable fortress a few hundred yards from the starting town, and barely scratched the surface of the game.
Also, mods. A Dark Mode interface mod to make the UI easier to look at. A graphics mod to reduce ground clutter for my ancient laptop, improving performance several times over. You can get mods that change the way the world behaves, add new weapons and items, and even new locations to explore.
So do I recommend Kenshi? Absolutely, but just remember that like your character in the game, you have to play by its rules to enjoy it. If you can't get past the graphics or the cumbersome interface, give this one a pass. If you want a power fantasy where your character can take on an army, well, you can get there, but its a grind. If you want a sandbox that rewards experimentation and exploitation of the gameworld and the rules, this is your game. Just remember that it can take awhile to get used to.

The best game I have ever played. No other games in this genre are even close to pulling off what Kenshi is capable of. Actually, Kenshi should have a genre of it's own and kick start games that will be called "Kenshi-like" or "Kenshi-lite" or "Amazing."
Now, I am a big fan of The Elder Scrolls series, The Witcher, Read Dead Redemption and other famous open world games. I'm also a fan of games that are considered to be quite similar to Kenshi in their Sandboxy mechanics like Rimworld or Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. Kenshi is somewhere in-between those games. In some aspects it's quite similar to Mount and Blade. Or The Sims if it had combat and slavery and was set in a Post-Apocalyptic Japanese-themed world and was actually fun.
But the thing that makes Kenshi so great is not the scarcity of boring side-quests that poison every other open world game. It's not the lack of cutscenes that makes playing modern games more like watching a movie with your hands on a keyboard. It's not even the fact that it's the only game where your choices actually matter and doesn't just lead to a different dialogue sequence. The thing that makes Kenshi so great is it's usage of the "Emergent gameplay." Wiki describes "Emergant gameplay" as "complex situations in video games, board games, or table top role-playing games that emerge from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics."That is exactly what makes Kenshi my all time favourite game. Let me explain.
Let's say you're playing Kenshi and you're travelling from one city to another. In any other open world game you will run into some enemies, you'll either fight them or run away from them and there is that. In Kenshi tho, you might get attacked by enemies that are not only stronger, but faster than you. They will outrun you and cut off your leg. As you're lying there surrounded by enemies, unable to run due to a lost limb, on the verge of death and close to a game restart, another group of enemies MIGHT appear and defend you from your initial attackers. Only they turn out to be slave-traders and they're not here to save you. They're here to enslave you. You're taken to a slave camp with no means of escape, because well, you're missing a leg, which makes it pretty hard to run. You're crawling around the slave camp and slowly starving to death, when you approach and befriend another slave, who is eager to escape and suggests teaming-up. He joins your squad. There's two of you now. You wait for the Sun to go down, you lock pick your shackles, you ask your new friend to carry you and make a run for it. You might succeed or you might get caught and beaten to death. If you do succeed, your new worry is getting a robotic leg, which costs more money than you have, because you don't have any money and that's less than most of the amounts. Now imagine all of the above, but instead of losing your leg in the first fight, you lose your arm. The slavers come in to attack your initial attackers and you use the commotion to make a run for it generating a completely different turn of events. A simple mechanic of losing a different limb creates complex situations that are unique to your play-through alone. That is the depth of "Emergant gameplay" Kenshi manages to pull off. And I'm only scratching the surface here. That's why it is highly advised to play Kenshi without the so called "savescuming," don't just save and load, unless your character dies. Let the events unfold until the last moment, Kenshi is about the journey, not the destination. If you wanted to travel to a city mentioned above and you were attacked and instead of going with the flow, you decided to load and choose another path to avoid the enemies, you would have missed out on a struggle and the story that would emerge if you just let things happen. As Gandhi once said: "This is how memories are made... By going with the flow. Especially in the game called Kenshi. It's really a great game." What a wise man.
Another aspect that makes Kenshi amazing, is the possibility to role-play. Actually, role-playing is the only way to play the game since Kenshi has no quests, no narrative, no-one tells you what to do or where to travel, you are the creator of your own story and to make it fun, you need creativity. Once you get familiar with the game, the best way to enjoy it is to set your end goal, because the game itself has no end, it's you who decides that it's over. And your goal can be anything from Slave Liberator to Religious Tyrant, to a simple farmer or a travelling merchant that sells hats. And that's all possible because the world of Kenshi is huge! I have more than 200 hours in it and I still haven't explored everything. The world is not only huge, but also rich and has an incredibly deep lore, which is somehow told in fewer words than your girlfriend's grocery shopping story. The classes you can play as or encounter are not your regular Elves or Dwarfs, or Orcs or any other overused Tolkien creatures. They are all unique to the world of Kenshi and have their own backstories and attributes.
But Kenshi, as everything, does have its flaws. It is full of bugs and crashes. Your characters get stuck in walls and the path-finding at points is infuriating. If you're a min-max player and wanna be as strong as possible, prepare for a grind. If you let it, Kenshi can become Grindshi, do you get it? Cuz it's a "grind"? Anyway, to avoid that you can either level-up your stats slower, but naturally, or download a specific mod from the workshop that makes it a bit more fun. Oh yeah, this game has a huge modding community with such wholesome mods as the "limb/skin peeler machine," "Crucifixion" or "All-in-one Murder + Cannibalism." Truly, a mod for every taste.
To sum it all up, this game is shit, not worth the full price. JK. If you read till here and you think that Kenshi is something that you might enjoy, please just give it a go. If you don't like it, that's fine, but if you do like it, it has a chance to become one of the best games you've ever played. Peace out!

Kenshi is one of the best (if not the best) games I've ever played and I totally did not expect that. I just found it a year ago while browsing through the steam store during the summer sale and after watching some videos about the game I decided to purchase it and I instantly fell in love-hate relationship with it.
GOOD STUFF:
1. The world - Kenshi's world is fucking huge, I have played it for 150 hours and I still have maybe explored 80% of the map. It may feel really empty for some, but I think the emptiness just makes it fell more like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. You can really fell that the world is not built specially for you, but is a home to many people and factions that fight, kill, die, trade and just live there.
The cities can sometimes feel like they are a little bit too empty, but of course there are mods to fix that.
2. The gameplay - Kenshi lets you experience what our grandparents tell us they had to experience while walking to school when they were young. This game can really kick your ass. The second you will leave your city you can be attacked, looted, enslaved, hunted for fun by a local noble, killed by racist priests, eaten by cannibals or just starve to death while roaming the desert in search of some bread. However, by losing the fights your characters will only get stronger, You will be able to grow your party and finally get a revenge on that group of bandits that has been harrasing you for days. And that feeling of slowly building strength is extremely satisfying. After getting enough men, you might even be able to capture an entire city, liberate slave camps or even kill the leader of one of the main factions.
3. The combat - After landing a hit, the game detects where your blade or limb has touched the enemy and applies damage to that specific body part. Because of this system, the battles with the same enemies can have a different output every time you meet them, one time you kick their ass by landing a few hits in a row to their head, and the other you lose a leg and fall to the ground.
Kenshi also lets you choose what weapon you'll use to fight your opponents, there are many melee weapon types as well as crossbows and the hardest - martial arts. That means that you can beat someone to death with your bare arms or chop an arm off with a well aimed kick.
4. The politics - The world is controlled by a few major factions that administer most of the cities that are in the game. The Holy Nation is a religious nation that only really lets white males live inside their territorry. Theoretically they are against slavery but in the mountains they have an huge prison called rebirth where they send people to be give them a chance for "redemption". The United Cities (The empire) is a huge nation that spreads almost through the entire continent, their government is very corrupt and consists of fat nobles who just want to sit on their assess and drink blood rum. And their also are very engaged in slave trading - they have slave shops (you can also trade slaves!) in every city and many slave camps outside of them. There is also a nation of the Shek people - a race of warriors who once raided everything they had seen but now they've been united under one king and established many cities and settlements on the continent. There are also the hivers, humanoid creatures that i know almost nothing about because i havent been to the hive yet. But why am I telling you all this? To just try to explain how complex is the political world of kenshi. The major factions all have moral codes, laws, they all hate some minor factions and cooperate with some others. And they all fight wars with each other that you can take part in. You can help the shek in their goal to defeat the holy nation. You can help the anti-slavers to kidnap or kill the emperor of the united cities. You really can't fell bored in the game
5. The outposts - later in the game, you will be able to build cities and outpost allowing you to grow your own crops, have a giant prison with machines that peel the skin of your worst prisoners. Just anything you need or want.
6. The mods - Kenshi is kinda like gmod sandbox for me, but with a much bigger vanilla version. You can find mods for everything you need in the game, starting from a mod that lets you recruit your prisoners to mods that are a complete overhaul of the base game. There are also mods for more torture devices of course, and more weapons, more clothes, more characters, more buildings, better economy, rebalances, more bounties, more factions and just everything you may think about
NEUTRAL STUFF
1. The graphics - Kenshi's very fucking ugly at first, but it's consistent in it's art style. The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland so most of the equipment will be old and rusty, made from scrap and sometimes improvised (like the concrete sandals) the buildings look like they were made from the remains of some old cities that once stood in their place. The graphics itself may be bad, but after a few hours it won't be as noticable as it was at the beginning and sometimes you might even find some really pretty places. (just remember to turn on shadows if you have a good pc, because they were disabled by default for me and enabling them really helped to increase the quality of the graphics)
2. The combat - Very rarely the game detects characters being hit when they are at a safe distance from the enemy. Also sometimes the game applies damage to a different limb than the blade touched but these are just minor problems.
BAD STUFF
1. The Optimization - The game can sometimes lag even on a good PC. Also make sure that you install the game on an SSD drive if you have one, because otherwise prepare for occasional ~10 second freezes during changing areas of the map.
2. The Bugs - for this one you really have to prepare before buying the game and this is the reason why i fucking hate this game sometimes. Kenshi is really, really buggy. This includes your characters walking in the sky or below the ground because the map didn't have time to load, pathfinding problems (this mainly happens near the town of Clownsteady idk why). You can also get blocked on the map and if you have no one to free you and you have no auto/quicksaves your character will just have to slowly and painfully starve to death while chilling inside the wall of the city. There are also occasional crashes but they mostly happen if you have too many mods installed (and you probably will). Also keep in mind that Kenshi is no longer in state of development, so most of the bugs will probably remain in the game.
SOME ADDITIONAL INFO
I recommend visiting the Kenshi wiki if you're playing, you can find a lot of interesting information about the lore of the game or stats of weapons etc.
If you need some more information about the game just hmu and I can help
TL;DR if you see this game on sale, just get it, its absolutely worth it. This game would be literally almost perfect if not for the many bugs and the low-res textures.

Starting off, I noticed the brutally-oppressive town guards would beat the hell out of nearby bandits and undesirables, but then just leave them bleeding out in the sand. I was horrified, I had to do something, but often these unfortunates would die from their wounds before I could haul them back to town and sell them into slavery.
So my first recruit was a medic to help me to stabilize them long enough to survive the trip back to the flesh peddler. 200 hours later and I'm heading up a 50-man drug cartel out of a massive walled compound. Your own journey can (and more than likely will) look much different. This is a true sandbox and a gem if you don't mind, or relish, making your own fun.

This game is best described as an hidden gem.
Like me, most players that play this game, did not want to play it at first. They saw the graphics and thought they were crap. That's ok... So did i!
BUT after.... *cough* Jacksparrowing it *cough* in order to try it first I fell in love with the game in the first hour, so i bought the game instantly.
This game give you a unprecedented amount of freedom.
You hear this from games all the time, where they say: You can be a trader, you can be a warrior, a king, a builder, etc etc etc. and in most cases... it's not true at all. BUT !! in the case of kenshi, you really can be almost everything you want. You want to be a baker ? WELL YOU CAN! research baking and shop counter, buy a little place for yourself build an oven and start cooking. Buy or plant your own crops in order to cook. You want to be a trader? buy here sell there for more... it WORKS ! you want to be a drug dealer ? Well... without spoiling much.. Go to the swamps or build your own hemp crops.
Look i could go all day. The point is.. what you can be in this game is limitless. Specially with mods, there are tones of great mods!
Gameplay/Mechanics 10/10
Graphics 5/10
Replay value 11/10 (yes 11)
Updates/patches 10/10 (devs patch the game frequently)
MODS: 11/10 (More mods than you can think of)
Hope this helps.
Please try this game, don't think its bad because of how it looks. ( and youtube videos don't make it justice. Trust me)

Set out to become the sword saint of the wasteland.
Get ransacked by starving bandits.
End up a miner.
Save up for an extra set of hands.
Buy a dog instead.
Raise that pup over months of mining.
Eventually form a lucrative mining crew to fund your silly pipe-dream of becoming a master of the sword.
Watch that vigilant pup live a life, filled with love and all the dried meat Cats could afford.
Watch starving bandits butcher your pup for meat while you're on a trading expedition in another town.
You get there in time just to watch her bleed out.
You pause the game to reload, when did you last save? When what the last auto-save?
Ditch everything to avenge your dog.
Sell more copper.

Just noticed I've got over 1000 hours in this game. Thanks COVID. I must like this game. Definitely got more than my money's worth. Oh, had Cyberpunk pre-ordered and downloaded the day before release, but still haven't played it because I'd rather play Kenshi. Hope that helps.