I purchased this game because of a Steam review, where the person compared this to a turn-based Mount & Blade. That is the biggest lie I have ever encountered in a game review. I'm so grateful I caught this game at 50% off because it was a complete waste of money. The RNG is garbage! Of ALL the games I have ever played this game is the most brutally unfair. The straw that broke the camel's back was when I watched a low level bandit with a hatchet 1 shot my BLOCKING front-line Sergent (I was playing on easy mode btw). The percentage on that must have been near zero. That kind of thing happens all the time, regardless of well played strategies, and proper kitting of my group for the encounter. I'm so done with this game.
Pros: Music is really great Interesting Premise Well researched historical story Cons: RNG nightmare, even after several replays with superior stats This is a TEXT-BASED choose your own adventure style game $7.00 is WAAAAAY overpriced for how little you get You will start out weak and die often. However, even with SUPERIOR stats from several playthroughs, you will STILL die often due to RNG. I've had it happen multiple times where I get over a dozen bad rolls in a row. Also, the description of this game lies, specifically: "Replay value. You will only see a fraction of the game in each run." Bold faced LIE. While there are "random encounters" there only seems to be about a dozen total and they happen over and over throughout your playthroughs. Lastly, there is a foraging game that starts to happen regularly once you increase your rank for the first time. It's annoying and really adds little to the game BUT is the ONLY way to increase your mental stats...though RNG often has you failing to receive a stat increase. Overall, a forgettable game that can be beaten in one day and has very limited playthrough. Unless you like games that torture your soul so you can eek out the perfect game...stay away.
I've played Kenshi about 100 hours total. When you first jump into the game it can be quite overwhelming. The sky's the limit. Pretty quickly you realize that there's a lot less to do than you first thought. Explore, research, base-build, fight. That's it. However, the map never changes...it isn't randomized. Researching follows the same path every time, giving you minute increments in efficiency instead of cooler toys to play with. Base building is utter crap unless you build near water, exploiting AI pathing as you fill them full of arrrows. Otherwise, you will be attacked so often you'll rarely have a chance to recover. Fighting is boring as can be. Crossbows are superior and you can literally beat any opponent on day 1 with enough bolts. Kenshi certainly has its high points but its not without its low ones too. A lack of cohesive story or "quests" really limit the game. This game could have been amazing but it's more like No Man's Sky with swords instead of mining...though it has that too and is just as boring.
The title says it all. This game has the look and initial feel of Final Fantasy Tactics but none of the heart. The story is leagues behind FFT. Their are twenty "regular" classes overall but all have an annoying tendancy to be redundant and overlap...a lot. Whereas in FFT, each class was unique and completely different to play, Fell Seal: Arbiter's classes vary little between say a wizard and a druid, or a knight, templar, mercenary, beserker...which all possess many of the same abilites instead of unique ones. They are more or less grouped into three roles: spells, melee, ranged. Gameplay is far inferior to FFT. Instead of real choices on which damage dealing NPC to target first and how to do it, Fell Seal focuses on overlapping extreme amounts of buffing and lopsided character afflictions. Fights become slogfests as you attempt to dispel and then kill enemies; all the while, they're using items and spells to ressurect their teammates while hitting your team with every curse under the sun. There's no worse feeling than seeing a double spell casting druid with the abilities of one of the many classes that posssess charm, take over two teammates at once. Where FFT was hard with respect to complimentary classes working together, Fell Seal's class mixing causes frustrating fights that last 30 min longer than they should have. Tactics don't really apply to the game either. Elevation, line of sight, and most positioning is useless. Oh, and the cheapest ability of them all, pushing attacks into water insta-kill players. I have no idea why they thought dropping a character in water would immediately reduce someone to 0 hp was a thing but yeah...it's in this game. Also, there are so many enemy monsters that exploit this ability that you will want to pull your hair out. Beware every frog monsters' kick flip!
This is not an American made game. Usually, that doesn't matter, but in this game it does. Translation is okay at best but don't expect to be reading any signs unless you know Russian. Balance is busted. Melee is useless. Crafting is crap. Difficulty spikes constantly and random encounters, even on easy, is a mix between boring merchants to over the top death encounters. Scum-saving is not only helpful but absolutely necessary in many parts of the game. I highly suggest new, potential customers move along.
