Kenshi

I wish more games were like Kenshi. There's not much I can add that hasn't already been said about this gem, but I'll throw in my two cents for others who might have similar taste. - It artfully blends the RTS and RPG genres like nobody's business. I've never seen anything else that has even attempted to do this. - It is a true open-world sandbox experience. Absolutely nothing is trying to bottleneck you into anything, not even questlines. Your characters can do whatever they darn well please. - The setting is wonderfully fleshed-out and interesting. But more importantly, though there is plenty of ambient lore to discover if you want to, the game NEVER forces you through any kind of story. No time-wasting cutscenes, no boring plot that the writers desperately need you to care about, no wading through fifteen pages of dialogue before you can even play. Every time you boot it up, you can jump right in. No bull. (Interestingly, this actually makes me more invested in the dialogue and worldbuilding that is there. The writing is an absolute gem. Funny, serious, intriguing, silly... it's all done so well.) - Every member of your clan is customizable, which gives the game an almost Sims-like open-ended story generator feeling. You will get very, very attached to your people... - ...And then mourn them for IRL days when the brutal difficulty, gruelingly slow progression, and your own overconfident bravado get some or all of them killed. This is one of those games where the seeming unfairness of the difficulty actually enhances the experience. You learn to love the pain. Then fifty hours in, when you finally kill your first goat without losing leg, it will feel like a true triumph for your faction. Such an emotional rollercoaster! - As a game made by mostly a single person over many years, of course there is some jank - but if you go in with the right expectations, all its little quirks are forgiveable. This beautiful timesink will stay in my top five forever.

Own copy on steam + gog, got 300+ hours in it. Absolutely awesome open world rpg that allows you to control and have agency over multiple characters, upto 256 with mods. I recommend people watch gameplay or a review like seth's review of Kenshi to get a good idea of what Kenshi is, because it is too much to encapsulate within a review, in my own opinion it is a must not miss experience if you enjoy RPG type games. There is no narrative story to the game, you make your own story with your choices and interactions with the world, there is alot to explore and there is a lore behind things that unravels if you pay attention and listen to the conversations and explore the world.

Long story short, the game absolutely thrashes SSDs and on HDDs are effectively unplayable for running settlements because of load times transitioning between your characters. This could be ignored if focusing on a single character didn't mean you'd spend hours simply running around. And THAT could be ignored if the game didn't require significant micromanaging of running multiple characters in seperate areas of the world map. What's there is very good, but I think that it would have been better focused as a small squad based RPG rather than potentially having dozens of characters as part of a settlement system combined with way too much downtime that effectively amounts to staring at character's running or waiting for them to wake up and get up. It's actually, very literally, like EVE Online but in a post apocalyptic setting and you get to manage your people. But it's also like Skyrim in that mods are kind of 'needed' for some things. This is not for the average person, and requires a LOT of time investment but if you're looking for something to dump hundreds of hours in, this is it.

I absolutely adore this game. It's full of jank and glitches, but man is it amazing regardless. There is also a huge amount of mods to help with the jank/glitches and add new features. If you're like me and enjoy taking games slowly and avoid playing optimally then you'll get a huge amount of mileage from this game. It doesn't hold your hand so there are a lot of hours you can spend just learning the basic mechanics. It's a great time.

The concept of this game is amazing and it only gets 4 stars because it falls short in execution. The game is clearly unfinished and there is next to no polish. Honestly it looks like something out of a Garry's Mod RP server when you go into the first city... But, if you keep playing and are someone who likes to make their own fun there is a great sandbox to be had. Youtube has plenty of great examples. The game is highly moddable as well!