Kenshi

I really enjoyed the first few hours of the game, but now I spend more time trying to fix it than actually playing it. My ai often refuse to follow my commands, enemies frequently phase through walls, the game loads for 5 minutes at a time on 2020 hardware, frequent crashes, etc.

A good RPG sandbox game with an interesting world. Hunting for artifacts encourages the player to explore the map. Base building allows the player to create an industry, home or an isolated safe house. Very useful. Robotics makes losing an arm or leg a mild inconvenience instead of losing a part of your body or can potentially specialize a character. There are some bugs. The AI for followers can be improved on. The world as it is, is mysterious and wonderful to explore. Ruins present challenges and rewards that will entice the player to go into dangerous and far away lands. The game worlds history and current events are simple enough to follow, however each bit of lore isn't ever presented to the player in swaths of exposition but instead gives the player very small but enticing grains of information about the world which serves to inform the player allow them to make of the world as they wish and create their own perception. Artifact hunting 5 Exploration 4 Robotics mechanic 4 Bugs 4 (I personally wasnt impacted much) AI 2 (Followers have parameters for their actions like if your near a home or not that can make them do random things like run to an oven and eat bread) Lore 5 Base Building 4 NPC interactions 3 (Dialogue is sparce. I wouldnt mind some NPCs with more personality. mostly the NPCs that sit on thrones as I feel like they should have something to challenge the players viewpoint. This would give the politics in the game more life) 3.87 total. General experience is fun. Can use some polish and some additions. The game though is practically together as long as you dont mind a game that is meant to challenge the player. Perfect for classic rpg enthusiasts who dont like hand holding.

Wow what a game. My group, 1/2 of which were escaped slaves, waged war against slavery and all slavers. Had 1 fresh escaped slave recruit die outside Catun from a damn Skin Spider. We moved to The Hub and built up our skills. Struck out to build our own town and wage war against the Holy Nation and anyone who pissed us off. Shek proved to be very useful allies. Built Immortal's Rest town just to the west of Black Desert City. We fed our limbs to the fogmen to become truly Immortal, having Masterwork Scout Legs and Masterwork Industrial Lifter Arms. Masterwork crafted armor and Meitou weapons. Fogmen were unofficial allies to The Immortals. :P Have done just about everything in Kenshi with my 30 man army... The game is pretty easy once you GRIND, learn the map and take proper precautions, but the journey there was amazing. There are issues with the game, like lag and needing to reset the game multiple times in a long playthrough. For me, those things are minor in a game with depth, fun, lore and progression like Kenshi.

I have played for hundreds of hours on Steam; only discovering this game about two years ago. I have been playing role playing games for the better part of 25 years now and have to say that what Kenshi offers is like nothing else you have played. The vastness of the game world, the free-form building of individual characters, and the freedom to interact with NPCs and towns as you see fit all contribute to a unique role playing experience that can fully immerse a player who is capable of getting pats Kenshi's flaws. The flaws being: buggy game engine, dated graphics, and optimization issues. The modding community orbiting around this game is phenomenal, and have added some amazing content and fixes over the years. TL;DR: If you can get past the bugs, dated graphics, enjoy totally immersive environments and soul-crushing difficulty, you have a masterpiece in your hands with Kenshi.

First, I loved what I got to play. It reminded me of Runescape mixed with Fallout and a hardcore survival game. I got to play one in-game day very well and was hooked, and the second day intrigued me even more. So, why the negative review? It kept disabling my laptop's screen after the first day and a half and ran my system extremely hot. This is despite exceeding the requirements by a fair bit. Four times, I had to perform a battery pull to get my screen working again. Mind you, I could hear the game running, and when I would hit escape, I would hear it pause. Since I have a dual-card system, I figured it might be using my integrated graphics instead of the ol' gaming graphics card that exceeded requirements dramatically. Following all of the support page's known fixes for screen issues, there was no luck. Four times, I was forced to open my rig and remove the battery to get my display functioning, again. In the end, it wasn't worth continued tries. No game is. I understand "jank". I'm a fan of many janky games, and I'm especially easy on indie devs (a trait I will be overcoming after this). I read the reviews and expected a great experience with a little poor optimization. I had no idea THIS was "poor optimization". It's not jank. It's poorly done, and it's unacceptable. I'm not running it on a potato, and it performs admirably on games far more demanding. I'm sure a lot of the glowing reviews are by people who have had a great time, and that's something to consider, because I loved what I did get to experience. Maybe it's hardware-specific issues that I experienced, but either way, that leaves the chance that another buyer might have the same hardware and experience the same thing. So, 1 star, and that's purely for how great the initial experience was. Take a risk. You'll get something great, or something that is infinitely infuriating.