Kenshi

Kenshi is mostly a desolate and barren wasteland, with a few strips of arable land and some even more inhospitable zones where you need protective gear to survive at all. The setting is very well fleshed out, akin to one of the Elder Scrolls games. You control a character or group of characters, and each of them gains in ability directly through doing, not by spending "experience points" to increase something they've never actually worked at. Initially, you are by far the weakest thing in the game, and the only way to improve is by doing (mainly losing), so you end up grinding at mining (or enslaved) to feed your character(s), as well as getting into fights against enemies who (hopefully) won't actually kill the character, just loot or enslave them until they escape. Either you do the long RPG grind until your stats improve, or else cheese the mechanics (such as by sneaking everywhere to build up Sneaking skill, or drastically overloading the character's inventory and then walking around to boost Strength). After 50-80 hours of play, it's pretty obvious to me that Kenshi gives you a brutal starting experience, until you eventually hit the point where your character(s) is/are stronger than almost everything else out there. At that point, it turns into another city building sim, where you build, fortify, and defend your fortified town or outpost against attacks while building up industries to make it self-sustaining. Even if you download one of the gazillion "harder" starts (starting with limbs missing and other handicaps), it's just a matter of grinding longer until you hit that "overpowered" point, going from being prey to everything to top predator. Overall, it's a pretty impressive bit of work (especially since it started as a one-man project), but your level of enjoyment may vary a LOT from player to player. Many players will definitely NOT like it. For me, it's good, but a bit too "all or nothing" with only a short sweet spot between the two.

Kenshi was programmed by one guy for most of its development time. This means that it's a shambling mess from time to time, kinda looks like poo, and runs like eggs, but it also means that it was made with one very specific vision in mind - and that very specific vision was one of post-post-post-apocalyptica, where two catastrophic events happened thousands of years apart, and the world is gasping for breath. There is no plot, only a fleshed-out world that you're dropped into. You make your own plot. If you aren't good at setting your own goals, Kenshi isn't the game for you - but the world is so rife with interesting shit to look at and stats to train and mouths to feed that it might coax goalsetting out of you. It's squad-based, and it controls like an RTS. To level up, you do things: to not die to every sword slice, you first have to get the shit knocked out of you over and over again without dying so that your Toughness skill can increase. While you're getting the crap beat out of you by goats and starving bandits, the guy healing you back up (train Toughness with two people!) will gradually get better and better at his Medic skill. All NPCs in the world are built using this system with no exception, meaning that there's no essential characters or characters that aren't something you could eventually achieve yourself. The catch is, you start as an insignificant random NPC, so you have no stats for a *long* time - most of the early game is picking your fights very carefully so that they don't cut you to death. This is absolutely not a game for everyone. It's really tedious. Some gameplay loops are more satisfying than others. The sheer size of the game is daunting the first time you start it up - the map is HUGE! But it's one guy's very specific vision, and it feels like a labor of love from the bottom of his heart. If you dig shit like Morrowind, HoMM, Mount and Blade and Plainscape: Torment, you'll dig the hell out of Kenshi.

I have had my eye on Kenshi since it entered early access ages ago, but had been holding off on purchasing it until its 1.0 release. In the years since, I’ve heard Kenshi compared to Morrowind due to its uncompromising alien world and player freedom. I’d heard it compared to Mount and Blade due to its strategic party management and unguided sandbox structure. This was enough to confirm that this is very much my game. I bought it shortly after release, and have only played a few hours so far. On my first save, I tried to rob a villager in the starting town. He called for help, and a warrior came over and beat me into submission. He carried my unconscious body to a bar and left me outside. When I came to, I crawled into the bar in search of help. Three warriors beat me with sticks and threw me back outside. Then, a gang of slavers cane and looted my body and carried me out of town. My second save has gone much better, but has been equally interesting. Despite my short playtime I can tell this game will be one I get a lot of enjoyment out of.

Seriously, I'm pretty lucky. Some close calls, a few giant spiders almost ripping them off in two hits. This game doesn't want you dead, but it wants to make you work for everything you get. It is one of the most rewarding games I've played in a long time. Why? Because everything you do is YOUR choice, and sometimes your team can give it everything and still fail. You just keep on trying, new plans, new schemes, new adventures and NO HANDHOLDING. Join a gang? sure. Build an army and fight other nations, sure (probs not your first playthrough though). Build a thieves hideout in the swamps and make drug runs to larger cities? sure. Do what you want and live with the consequences. BTW if you want the game to look a little better, go get reshade (results may vary)

In Kenshi, the player begins as a near-useless nobody in a dangerous post-post-apocalyptic world. The goal is simply to survive and become somebody, and how you do that is up to you. Strangers can be recruited, corpses can be looted for valuables to sell, animals can be hunted for food and eventually you'll build your own stronghold (and defend it). There is a streak of black humour in the game world and lore, with several interesting ways to meet your end. Combat is physics based, with an RPG-like stats system dictating how well your characters fight, with more advanced fighting techniques unlocked as they gain in skill. It's very different to pretty much every other game out there, and works pretty well. There are a number of fairly intricate systems in the game, like detailed tracking of limb damage and amputation, and lost limbs can be replaced by prosthetic ones. I predict that Kenshi will turn out to be quite an influential game, and even if not outright copied, some of its systems will be borrowed by other game developers. Graphically, the game is not cutting edge, but the world is original and can be quite scenic in the right place at the right time of day. Kenshi 2 is now in development, and I'm very much looking forward to it.