I don't know where to even start with Kenshi. I began watching this game when the first demo of the engine was released almost ten years ago when the lead Dev was doing this all as a side project. It absolutely floored me then and it still floors me now with just how expansive and immersive the world is. Kenshi, at heart, is a brutal take on what people might be like in an unforgiving world. Technological ascendancy used to be part and parcel of this world, but now it's gone. That crashed space ship in the desert -- Well, to the everyday traveler of this world, it's an unknown magical relic of the past. It's left there to the rust and dust. Primarily because that everyday traveler is currently fleeing from a mob of people who want to beat him within an inch of death and go sell him to a nearby slave trader. That everyday traveler is you, by the way. And if you want, the game will simulate this entire scenario to whatever finality you want. From your imprisonment, escape, eventual rise, then fall, from power. When your character dies, you won't get any fanfare or pomp and circumstance. Your character will simply disappear from the list like anyone else. You're not special. This world will remind you of that every bloody step of the way.
Want to play as a Hive Mind? How's about utilizing a planet killing weapon to strike fear into the hearts of your enemies? Maybe assemble your very own Ringworld or Dyson's sphere? Fight gigantic space leviathans? Or just give it all up to play as a galaxy spanning devouring swarm that goes planet to planet eating your enemies? Maybe space borne Necromancers sound a bit more to your liking? Well I hope you're willing to pay at least $30-40 extra for those features because they're not in the base game. Stellaris is primarily a DLC marketing tool. The game will show you all the neat features you simply do not own and even go so far as to suggest stuff from DLC you do not own in an attempt to literally market you content while you create your first race to play as because you had the audacity to not buy all the DLC. I also hope you're ready for the same game breaking AI bugs that have been around since launch and the worst implemented war system I have ever had the displeasure of playing with. To put it simply, this game has a balancing mechanic called War Exhaustion. Wanted to role play as the Zerg or the Borg and go around assimilating or devouring the galaxy? Say hello to War Exhaustion! It is entirely a mechanic to keep players from ROFL-stomping the galaxy because the AI cannot keep up with you. This balancing mechanic is to ensure players can't become too powerful or ever feel powerful. What's that? You conquered all their planets and all destroyed their fleets? Too bad! You lose the war because they managed to kill off three corvettes and conquer this backwater planet that only produces alloys. Now you have to forcibly settle for the 'status quo.' Too bad galaxy spanning devouring swarm that eats everything it touches! You'll just have to try again later to eat my face because I am being defended by an arbitrary mechanic to keep you from having fun!
If you're looking for this as a game, I suggest you avoid it. It has a myriad of issues: models stretching into nightmare fuel when they take showers, random crashes while trying to display story dialogue, poor implementation of a barely functional active economy, crew needs that cannot be met because the crew obsess over a vending machine when there's a fully functional canteen that is staffed around the clock, instant homing pirates where literally the entire sector targets just your ship because you decide to haul cargo forcing you to pay them all off at once, etc. etc. etc. – Seriously, the issues go on and on. Sometimes a pirate will catch you just before you reach a planet and then you get pulled into combat, but even if you immediately pay off the pirate, you'll over shoot the planet and have to wait until you're in alignment AGAIN sometimes doubling or tripling your travel time. The crew interactions are nonexistent. It's nothing more than paying the hiring agency over and over again to ensure everyone has a matching symbol. As crew level up from doing their jobs, they will randomly gain negative traits and increased needs. The game does not explain this to the player very well which leads to having too high leveled crew and no rooms that can satisfy them. You can only remedy this by forcibly doing “research” to unlock things. It's literally just padding for the basic requirements to even play the game. The final nail in the coffin for me was trying to upgrade my ship. It doesn't display any of the important information such as speed, hull points, or firing arcs. Nothing. It's all guess work. The insult to injury is you cannot even TRADE IN your current ship until you sell it. Combine all of this with a save system where it auto-saves constantly and doesn't let you reload to specific points or and you're left with a recipe for irritation and disappointment.
I love the setting, I love the concept, I just hate everything about the execution. Conceptually, it's not difficult to understand and it makes sense. The issue comes in when you're trying to get into the meat of running the inn. A lot of it is stuck behind this really unfortunate skill tree that is heavily reliant on your fame which is in turn heavily reliant on ensuring you take good care of your guests and they leave happy. This is complicated by the way you go about hiring employees and setting them to work. When you initially hire an employee they can have up to 4 traits and you may or may not know all or none of them. Half the time you'll get some good and bad traits. The issue being that the bad traits usually make the employee unproductive. This can be so bad that it directly impacts running the inn and therefore gating you from additional content and progress. Normally this wouldn't be an issue if you could just fire them and hire a new employee, but you only get maybe 1-3 employees to choose from and almost all of them are not good in some manner. This quickly devolves into a numbers game where you have to throw more employees at a problem to solve it. It creates an overall vicious and annoying cycle while you try to get your employees to function well enough to unlock new things. Couple all that annoyance in design together with random bugs here or there, such as employees getting stuck, items not being able to be deleted, or blank/empty entries in the journal and it just comes crumbling down. Which is an absolute shame as it's such a great concept, I just can't willingly recommend to anyone the asking price of $25 USD as it's just not worth that. Maybe $10 USD on sale, but I'd recommend you go spend that money on another game. This game needs a lot more work and cleanup before it's worth it.
Let me give you a small taste of this game and the strategic thinking that you will require. Imagine sitting at the galactic map, paused, for about 10-15 minutes. You are looking for your next target. You are deciding how best to use the hour you get between forced encounters with the AI. Each encounter could give the AI that critical moment of weakness that it can, and will, use against you. Just how much are you willing to trade for that extra fleet? That defensive bonus? That extra economic output for your forces? How much is too much? What if it's too little? Everything you do can give your opponent the power to crush you. This opponent knows your weaknesses. It understands them. It will prod and poke you to understand what is where and how best to counter it. And it will, when the time is right, try to kill you. It will succeed at least half of the time, if not more. The name of this game is Critical Mass. You need to reach this as fast as you can, as safely as you can, and in the best position that you can before it is too late and the AI crushes you. Best piece of advice I can offer you -- If you go into this thinking it's Starcraft, Civ, or any other RTS you've played before that has a large emphasis on quick growth in the early game to outpace our opponents -- You will not like this game until you train yourself to not think that way. You're resistance fighters. A rough collection of misfits who think they can topple a god. It's all a gamble and you better be damn sure what you're gambling with. Everything you do is critical. Every second counts because that timer is ticking to the next instigator that will force you to make a move against the AI or suffer the consequences. When you do make your move, the AI is watching. The AI is waiting. It's going to go for your throat at the worst possible time.
Excellent to finally get a chance to play this game at a full 60FPS as opposed to the 10 FPS or so it ran on the N64. Some open level design areas that repopulate and having to actually conserve ammunition is rather amazing compared to other games that were out at the time. However, some levels I have had issues finding out where I had to go and they left me wandering for some time. If you miss a key that you desperately need before you leave, that can also really be aggrivating as you'll have to repeat the level again in order to get the key before you head back to the Hub Area. Worth it if you only ever tried it in the past with low frame rates and want to see how this game handles at higher speeds with enemies that react more in real time than the snails pace that the consoles of yesteryear allowed. That being said, I give you full warning: Due to the enhanced speed and the camera 'lean' effect the game has when you run around at fast speeds, it can cause motion sickness. You might have to limit your time playing it and it could potentially make you sick to your stomach. You have been warned!
Beware - You cannot adjust the UI scaling unless you have a minimum of 1920x1080 monitor. No matter what you edit or change. The game itself is fun, but because I don't have a 1920x1080 monitor (I own a 1680x1050) I can't read anything so I don't know what anything does and there is no fix unless you buy a bigger monitor.
