My review is for the game itself: some of the original questline and modules. And not for the mere potentials of 3rd party modules. The main campaign is just boring and uninspired. But that's the typical opinion. The modules that new players are commonly directed to are just as bad. Boring story with poor design. To get this straight: these kinds of CRPGs are adaptations of DnD rulesets. Yet, they are designed around ways which would never be done in a game of DnD. I'll give an actual example. You have an encounter where you have to kill a high level character, called J'nah. One of the worst designed fights I've ever seen in a game. You can do many things to prepare for this fight, and make a lot of different choices. Yet, not one of them matters. You turn a group of her underlings against her. You prepare with items you find in the preceding area, and you get from another character. Not one of these things will matter after about 10 seconds into the fight. Your build could very well make the fight unwinnable. The best way to win is to come in with prior knowledge and to repeat the encounter and redo for better rolls, which is so counter to what you would do in a tabletop game. Fine enough, but this is adapted from tabletop rules. For reference, there's no 'parties' in this game, like in a traditional tabeltop. You go by yourself, and maybe one companion at once. But a lot of the game doesn't feel designed around it, but still has parts designed around complimentary builds. It makes for a very boring experience, like playing the most boring, grinding free to play MMO. That's what it feels like. An absolute downgrade from previous CRPGs (which, personally, I think are over rated to begin with). The design is sloppy and thoughtless, like nobody had a simple plan for how it should be as a cohesive experience. The best thing about the game is the potential of the module system.
I have no nostalgic pretenses, and I'm basing this purely on the game and not on the Enhanced Edition. The main campaign is notoriously dull, so I opted for the expansions. The fact that this game had such multiplayer potential is irrelevant, since the community is long past decline. I suppose that's a whole element which you may deeply enjoy, as a way to play DnD with your friends. Which brings up an important point: the way "parties" work. This is standard DnD adapted to CRPG. However, since you don't have a party (as in Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale) but a tangentially controlled henchman, it takes out most of the strategizing and an unsung pillar of the "role-playing" aspect of DnD: playing your role for the party. At least for a lot of classes. That's forgivable, but this makes a chunk of the game repetitive and fluff for the padded dungeons, because the combat encounters go on and on, but that's a factor for most CRPGs. The anatomy of a DnD session is entirely different than sitting alone playing a CRPG, with turns being protracted affairs by comparison to the distillation of a CRPG, and that mingling with the lack of a party just makes that part of the game a grind. The story and conversations are fine enough, and that's where Neverwinter puts in some substance. At least beginning with a low level adventure and immersing you in the role of a simple adventurer is a fresh take in a genre awash with Chosen heros. It's a kind of generic I don't think the game should be criticized for, because genre conventions are something many enjoy and desire out of a Forgotten Realms game. A middling 5/10 is where I'd properly land my review. The entire experience, from the interface to the music, lacks the charm and atmosphere of other genre classics. In total, this is an unseasoned burger ground from a mediocre slab of meat, cooked with a Kraft single. You may not starve, but there's burger joints that'll give you a tasty burger with real cheese for the same charge.
Many of the finer attributes appraised of this game, like its true "survival" factor, the fact that you really are just one drop in the world, also contribute to its worst parts. And it's true that Kenshi does cater to that free willing experience, where you build your own goals. There's many things you can be. A wandering Ronin? A bounty hunter? Warlord? A slavery abolitionist? A town leader? You can be any of those things. And the game has a reasonably middling level of detail for each of those functions. It plays like an RPG and a city builder. It resembles stuff like Rimworld, Mount and Blade, and Sid Meier's Pirates, if you've played those, a type of syncretic and creatively designed game. And unlike others of its type, it really is free willing. There's no one thing that puts it all together behind the curtain, which in this case is a positive for Kenshi. However, part of it makes it an atrocious time sync. There's large swarthes of playing where just nothing is going on but waiting for something to finish. Or trodding along the countryside trying to do one thing, and avoiding something else in a a bland fashion. Sure, all those tough mobs of raiding goons and monsters are to inspire that ruthless feeling. But it eventually becomes a chore. But it's too much. Not because it's difficult. But because it makes the game way too damn long. it needs to be tuned, like by decreasing overleveled monsters. Rough patches need to be smoothed, for this to stop being an upgraded one person Runescape. People sink 1000 hours + into Kenshi not because it's just that engaging (which it can be), but because it requires a lot of time to see the meat of the game. If you buy, see what you can do to modify the XP rate (the game is very moddable). You or I only have so much time in the world. Screw grinding.
