My First Two Days in Kenshi:

Whelp, this sucks. I'm in the middle of nowhere with a broken arm, a stick and no clothes. I don't remember much except that my name's Numura, I'm in a bad predicament and that predicament is due to some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ named Teuchi. Well, what's a girl to do in this situation?

I really, really want to find some sort of civiliation, hell even a simple shelter, but there's nothing for miles...

Oh are those people off in the distance? Maybe they can he- oh. Oh ♥♥♥♥. They don't look friendly. Time to run around blindly like a headless chicken trying to avoid three groups of bandits.

Oh hell, one of them spotted me! Run!

Hey, who're those guys fighting down there? Whatever, maybe I can lose my persuers in the chaos of the fight.

...aaand the bandits are all dead. Let me just look through their stuff.... oh hey, a shirt! And pants! And *shoes*! Yes!

Wait, those other guys aren't attacking me? Huh, Holy Nation, hm? Seem like nice people. I'll follow you guys around for now.

Wow, you guys mean business, just up and murdering any bandit you find! Can we be friends? Oh, you only care about bounties? Well fine, Mr. Stick Up Your ♥♥♥, I didn't want to talk and hang out and tell jokes anyways! Jerk.

Oh hey, there's another group of people over there. And they're not bandits! Awesome. Hey, Holy warriors dudes, it's been fun but I really want to find a bed and maybe a shop, and these guys are trader so... bye!

Aaaaaand trading post ahoy! Time for sleeping and buying and- whatddya mean I don't have enough money for that armored hat?! Damned traders...

I'm going to state my opinion straight out so you understand where my reviews coming from before reading it... I already love this game. I find it challenging, immersive and immensely satisfying. I can't wait for more content even though I think what's currently there makes it a worthwhile experience for the price tag, any game that can have me put 45 hours in without even realizing it is going to be worth twenty-ish dollars in my book. Also, this game is absolutely not for everyone. That can not be stressed enough, if you don't like struggling in the beginning of a game you probably won't make it very far, it can be tough as nails if you aren't careful and even if you are you'll probably end up suffering through a few coma's in the early section while you're trying to make your character not useless. There, now that that's out of the way let's talk about the actual game.

The gameplay is kind of a mix between a diablo-style dungeon crawler and an RTS. Every character has their own stats that can be levelled up through using them, every character can be as strong if not stronger than your starting character. In fact the only real difference between them and your starting character is that you didn't start with them. The movement and combat are fairly basic, there's not much in the form of tactics yet. Other than ganging up on specific units and some limited flanking ability you can't control much more than who attacks who. The path finding can sometimes trip up in the more hectic battles (more on that later) but it is early access and that stuff is being ironed out.
The RTS elements shine through a bit more in the base building aspects, you build preset layouts for houses and fill them with various different things like work benches, beds or storage for materials. So far there's farming and resource mining as well as some crafting for weapons, armour and clothing. This will be a lot more balanced when things like hunger get implemented, right now there's not much to point to a farm other than making money and there isn't much to spend the money on other than materials and blueprints for items. You can also build defensive walls with gates and mounted crossbows for defense (and you'll need them, believe me) but these things can trip up the pathfinding again (still more on that later). Considering how unbalanced the economy currently is it still took me a while to get a base I was satisfied with and I enjoyed building it. It's only getting better as well.

The world is both great and not so great all at once. I found myself heavily immersed in the world, I love the style and the sense that you're picking through the bones of an advanced civilization that's been long ruined, the atmosphere is just fantastic. The aesthetic is my kind of thing with obvious asian influences and you can really feel isolated and threatened in the early goings until you have a decent squad, then you feel like you're a match for the world and that's a really satisfying moment. However... as much as I love the feeling of the world, sometimes it can feel really empty. Yes, it's a wasteland and it's meant to feel that way, but if that's not your kind of thing it will really turn you off. I feel like the addition of small bandit camps to go along with the roaving bands and some oasis-like areas where more plants grow would really do a lot to help that. There's also some work happening on adding creatures to the world and I think that will do wonders for this particular problem. My bar for a well done isolated setting is set really high to be fair, once you play S.T.A.L.K.E.R: shadows of chernobyl it's hard to settle for anything less. The fact I'm even willing to compare the two is very telling about just how great the atmosphere is here.

Now, on to the bugs (disclaimer: I haven't played for a while so some of these may have been fixed since my last session, I'll explain in a bit). You get to hear about the pathfinding which is my main issue. It's kind of broken. It's serviceable for the most part, they can manage to traverse long distances and only rarely do they get stuck, however they still get stuck and that's pretty annoying. I use the "bodyguard" command to make sure my squad moves at the same speed (an option to just make them do that would be nice) but the pathfinding for that is far worse than the regular stuff, they match speed and stay at the same relative position to the character they're guarding and don't realize if they're about to walk into a wall, this is where they most often get stuck because for some strange reason edges like to grab hold of characters and they get stuck in the ground. Also, I've never had them defend anything while under the bodyguard command. Frequent quick-saves make this a mild irritation at worst and if you ever get really stuck and haven't saved for a while there's an option in the menu to pick up and drop all your characters on the center of your camera to unstick them, but it's still a bug and it needs to be mentioned. The other issues with it are also minor, in a big fight sometimes units can get confused about what they should do and end up standing around with their finger in their nose while their buddy is fighting three bad guys at once but they eventually get it together. The last issue I have is that closing the gates breaks the pathfinding when your units are outside, if you close the gate no matter how far away they are or where you tell them to move they will turn around about half the time and walk back to the gate to maually open it. It can be really frustrating but the only time you need the gate closed is when bandits are attacking and they give you advance warning so it can be pretty easily circumvented.
Aside from the pathfinding there's an odd (yet hilarious) bug with picking up and putting down characters, if you do it on the ground they pop up into the sky and get sent flying. They only stop if they hit a mountain or you use taht un-sticking method I previously mentioned. Again, it's just a minor annoyance and it doesn't happen if you put them in a bed or jail cell which is where you should be taking them anyway, but if you get attacked you can't put down whoever you're carrying and you run the risk of getting knocked out yourself.
This is less a bug and more of a flaw with the system itself, and it's also the main reason I haven't played in a while. There's a serious memory issue, the game runs on a 32-bit engine and it doesn't have a high enough memory limit for extended play. I'm not sure if everyone has this problem but I can only play for about ten minutes at a time now, it's progressively gotten worse the bigger my base got and the more people I had control of. It used to take a number of hours to crash on me. This could be my fault, I haven't exhausted every troubleshooting option yet, but all the same it's an issue that needs to be addressed. There's also talk of transferring to a 64-bit system which would probably eliminate the issue, but as of my last play session it wasn't implemented and I can only talk about my experience.

TL;DR, this game is an extremely rewarding and challenging experience if you're willing to stick through it and are a fan of post-apocalyptic worlds or deserts in general. If not, there's very little in it for you. The early game is pretty slow and it relies on you enjoying the world around you more than the gameplay, afterwards they both work together and that's when the game shines. If you can't handle crashes or potenitally broken AI then hold off on your purchase but definitely keep an eye on this, when all the issues are ironed out this game will be phenomenal. If you don't mind crashes or other early access problems then this game is worth the money as-is and will only get better with time.

I remember when I first got this game, back in summer of '13. I had started out with nothing but the clothes on my back, some cash, and a rusty sword.

First thing to do was to find some buddies to help, and so I went to the nearest town. In a tavern I met a short bald man (though we were all bald back then). His name was Dirt, and this was my new best friend. Dirt and I did some pretty bad things then, luring guards to get killed by starving bandits, and then stealing all of the gear. This changed when we both got a little close one fight, and got chased by bandits all the way into the entrance of town. There weren't enough men to hold them all back, so I went into a tavern to see if anyone could help. I found a huge man, named Vedi. Vedi was willing to help for a price, and after paying him he went out there with a rusty sword and killed 3 of the bandits before he passed out from blood loss, effectively saving the town.

It was the three of us for a good, long time. We killed many a cannibal and a bandit, and soon enough came upon the idea to make our own outpost, a safe haven to keep us secure and resupply when the going got tough. There was a town nearby, so all we had to do was get a few materials here and there and after a week maybe it would be set. By this time all three of us were pretty decked out, myself having a good long coat, Vedi with a huge cleaver, and Dirt with a tricorn hat. Most cannibals were either afraid of us by this point, or dead, there wasn't much worry of our safety by now.

We had almost finished the small base, with Vedi and I working on some some construction, so it was Dirt's turn to go get the materials. We had both finished our construction, and so had waited for Dirt to come back. A day had gone by, we were starting to get worried. By noon the next day, Vedi and I had decided to risk it and leave the base, to go see where Dirt had gone. The next town over must surely know where he went?

We didn't even make it halfway across when we found him, laying on the ground.

His hat and sword weren't far from him, and there were two dead bandits next to him. Incisions and cuts were all across his body, bones broken and blood everywhere. Vedi cried, I stared for a good long time, before getting his hat and sword. I walked to the nearest bandit encampment, which some members looked wounded, and slaughtered them all with Vedi, after he finally caught up.

Time has passed since that day, and the small base we had thought of originally is now a bustling town, with nearly eight residents there, all dressed and ready to defend their home. These people are the best I could have asked for, and I still keep the tricorn hat as a symbol of office, with Vedi forgoeing his cleaver for that sword, as his symbol of guard captain. But as much as I love these people, and would die for them, they will never be that man whom Vedi and I came to know as our best friend.

R.I.P. Dirt.
10/10

Great potential,

However, Its still Alpha the devs say, and its been that for over 3 to 4 years (talk about slow development!).
They have huge issues with their HAVOC software, and HAVOC isnt solving these issues yet.
Forum is full of diciples who dont want to hear anything bad on the product, even waiting for over 4 years for a proper functioning beta.

Best to wait untill they prove that they will actually finish the product properly, now its a bug filled annoying game, with great potential, save your money for now (and check in a year if they made real progress).

When it comes to early access, there are really two questions facing any potential buyer: "Is it fun yet?" and "Will it be more fun in the future?"

The latter question is always a matter of faith. In this case, having read the developer's blog and having seen meaningful updates regularly rolled out, I believe that yes, this game will only get more fun. But again, that's a matter of faith, and I've seen smarter people than me have their faith in other early access projects shattered. In life we can be certain of death and taxes, but unfortunately not of patches and content updates.

So, that leaves our first question, is it fun now? With 50 hours invested so far, I can say that I certainly think so. There's no story to speak of at the moment, but the travails of your custom character(s) as they trek through the wastes, gaining strength and equipment, are gripping for a certain kind of player. You will suffer beatings from bandits, scavenge after NPC battles like a vulture, discover profitable trade routes between towns, build a base, hire new recruits, and of course craft. Eventually you'll be strong enough to lay bandits squads low, assault cannibal camps, or event crush the Samurai and Templar who patrol the desert.

There are bugs, but they are more irritating than game-breaking. There is a lack of story content, but with enough imagination it hardly matters.

If development stopped today, I'd be disappointed (a major pathfinding overhaul is supposedly imminent, and an incredible alien bestiary is on the horizon) but I'd still feel as if I'd gotten my money's worth. I therefore feel confident recommending Kenshi as a unique and fun experience, already worth your time and money.

From what I've consistently seen from early access games, as soon as they go on special, the creators lose any financial motivation to continue development. I rarely give bad reviews, but there's no way in hell I'm letting them get away with this.
Conceptually, this game is amazing and full of potential. It's the closest thing we have to a Mount and Blade clone. However, with so many years in development and such trivial updates, I've come to realize this will never be a finished, quality product, ESPECIALLY now that it's on special, and it's nothing more than a buggy sandbox with few ways to interact with the world around you. I haven't seen such terrible development constipation since Cortex Command.
Please do NOT encourage such dishonest business practices.

I can't believe how many positive reviews there are for this game. Yes, the game has potential. Yes, the game is in alpha, and therefore can be judged based on the potential, but this is a game that has been in development for an incredibly long amount of time without significant updates.

I even retried the game today to see if there were updates added. Sure, the game is an open world, but there is still not much to do in the game. Dialogues are sparse and uselss at best, Combat is clunky, the UI is horrendous, pathing is bizarre and unexpected. Even building a city and grabbing a squad of your own feels tedious rather than fun. Character models are ugly, and though the devs are going to be coming out with a new GUI soon according to their announcements, it does not appear to be a significant upgrade from the current system. Landscapes and cities look great at times, but not enough to actually immerse you into the game.

The game itself is challenging, but not in a particularly fun way. Yes, everyone is stronger than you, yes, the game makes you work your way up in the game, but by the time you do, you've inevitably lost interest in the game, or it has crashed on you about a dozen times. It's a game that I really want to like as I enjoy open-world, sandbox RPGs, but there is simply nothing to do other than wander around, get pummeled, wait to be rescued or recover, and repeat process.

Avoid this game until it leaves Early Access, if it ever leaves early access. The game does have a strong (almost fanatic) fan-base, and the devs do listen to their fans, but the development is so slow, it makes almost no difference whether they do or not. And most negative reviews, whether warranted or not, will get torn apart by this crazed fan base.

Name: Kenshi
Developer: Lo- Fi Games
Genre: RPG, Simulation, Trading, Strategy, Squad Management

*Sigh*. I'll be straight with you, this game once consume me for a while. Therefor when I was chosen to do a review on KENSHI, i was rather taken aback and did everything i could to avoid doing it. But the time has come. And now i ask you the question, do you know what is KENSHI?

Most likely not, it's not a mainstream game nor a very well known indie for that one but those people who had the chance to try it will usually exclaim that it is better than most of the RPG on the maker and yet here i must make my statement regarding this game: It's not for everyone. Certainly not for me after i tried it.

Ok so what is KENSHI?
RPG game, with a dash of realism. That is to say it is still in early access and i had tried years ago the alpha build before it went on steam and i have to say improvements have been made after all this years. It's an eastern style RPG set in a apocalyptic world where sands rule the land and law and order are determined by might with roaming bands of brigands out for your blood everywhere you go.

It's a very atmospheric world. You can be beset by cannibals, saved by the Holy Empire Patrol, loot dead bodies and equip yourself and after months of training and war you started killing settlements. The tables have turn.

And that my dear reader is what KENSHI embodies, symbolizes and make you experience. You are a human being, in a world where other people are often times better than you. You will bleed in the middle of the desert before using your last medkit to bandage your arm and hobble slowly back to the city. At the end of the day, life goes on.

Why the bravado?
Simply because reviewing this game is subjectively hard. That and because i liked it. On with the review i suppose. Many parts of KENSHI will be miss however simply due to the scope.

Gameplay
You can choose to start with several preset such as having a good weapon, having trade goods [the goods are cheap, the bag however is not.] having a good weapon, having good combat skill [recommended for beginner.] or having several dudes in your party at start. Which i do not recommend.

Anyways customize your appearances, choose a name, gender [Race is coming. Not very soon however since the updates are slow but big.] and then *BOOM* You are drop into the magnificent world of KENSHI. With only a very brief tooltip to get you started on your journey.

The game is an open ended RPG meaning you can do pretty much what you want without any objective save for those you set yourself. Therefor people who enjoy reading story instead of making it should probably not find it very enjoyable. Anyways you can do a lot of things in the game but lemme just use the very rarely used bullet point instead of typing it out.

• Start your own town.
  
• Become a master of arms.
  
• Become a bounty hunter.
  
• Become an anarchist.
  
• A blacksmith even! with upgrades and blueprints!
  
• Or my personal favourite: Wandering the waste, getting into fights randomly healing people or breaking their bones. Then you become a warlord and do all of the above. Nothing really stopping you to be honest.

And here is where the gameplay gets fun. You see KENSHI utilizes a unique RPG system where instead of skill points you actually perform the action to upgrade your corresponding skill. System like Carrying extra weight to train your strength, running without any loads to increase your running speed. And actually fighting to increase your fighting skills because you truly suck at the beginning where even a small bandit can make you into coma.

Speaking of coma this game HP system should be utilize into more game. For example your limbs have individual health bar and each of them can bleed out individually reducing their effectiveness and preventing you from using two handed weapons and sword for examples. But that is not all! Wound your opponent enough on the head and they will faint, on the leg and they will hobble, on the arm and well.... have fun. Meanwhile you also have a blood meter! Lost too much and get coma and die. Subject to everyone. So everyone has an equal chances of dying with only their martial art skill being the tie breaker.

There is also the element of trading, by buying trading bag which reduces your speed and make you more susceptible to bandits you can buy trading goods and trade stuff from town to town. Then all those training carrying sacks of metal made you stronger so you can then beat up bandits!

The game is hilariously open is what i am saying. That is not even accounting for squad formation, squad order. create-a-town mechanic function and all the other things in this world. It's the tip of the iceberg.

Graphics
Compare to years ago the graphics have improve substantially although in 2015 its not really something to write home about. You can even sometimes see graphical glitches from time to time although seeing as this is a rather massively scope game such a thing are understandable.

Sound
While atmospheric the ambient sound is best turned off, the game set to windowed mode and you play supplied with your own music. Trust me the lonely landscape takes time to transverse even at top speed so having your tune would supplement it quite well.

Conclusion
My review will never do KENSHI justice, it is a game of such openness and it provides you with the mean to experience that everybody will play it differently. For me it is the ever path of the wanderer [And the warlord once I figure out how to actually kill someone with this metal rod i call a sword.]

Scoring Methology [Courtesy of Meat King]:
- S-Rank: excellent
- A-Rank: very good
- B-Rank: solid
- C-Rank: satisfactory
- D-Rank: inferior

Verdict: S-Rank [So long as the update is stable otherwise it's an A-Rank.]

Protip: Try the demo floating around the internet before you commit. The demo is rather old though with many new features have been implemented into the game. Still a long way before release though.

Early Access Hiccups?
Plenty. Many features are experimented on all the time on this game. And as such it breaks easily during update. Does not stop you from enjoying it though.

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If you like RTS + RPG combined in a sandbox then this game is for you.

If I'd state the cons&pros -

Cons

- Can crash sometimes multiple times, then work for few hours with no problems
(this is early access so this is more like problem now than later)

- Late Game can feel like theres nothing to do, no real threat presence when squad is well equipped.
(depends how you play it)

- All the bugs and pathfinder. (sounds cliche)

- It's weird how people find this game hard,
if you play the game smart you find eventually its easier than you thought,
and can feel depressing. (the feel of threat eventually vanishes when you approach late game)

- I add some more if I figure something worth listing.

- Big map, yet so little content.

Pros

- Many ways to play it.

- Basicly you are free to do what you wish to,
no restrictions. (kill whom you like)

- This game really needs thinking, if you set the difficulty too hard
it might be really hard to get the game going (getting past early game),
which I find nice, the harder - the better.

- You can build your own base

- Playing wise pays off.

--

Other thoughts

If this game had multiplayer I'd even pay a month subscription for it.

5/5 in its current stage despite being in early access.

As a child, I improved rudementery reading skills with classic RPGs like Dragon Warrior 3, Shining Force, and Fire Emblem. These games were amazing, because in adition to cementing a sense of justice in a 5 year old, they presented a memorable plot, different forms of character development (DW3 with the personalities, where the personality determined stat increases, and was determined by initial stats. Shining Force with the stories told by your squadmates in the various bases found over the 8 chapters, as well as themes of amnesia. Fire Emblem for being, well, Fire Emblem.) None of that is in this game. Which makes it perfect.

"Why would you tell that story to point out what it doesn't have?"

Simple: Kenshi has everything else that made those games personally iconic. From Dragon Warrior 3, you have each squad member being completely unique from creation, with nearly endless possibilities for customization, with an open world. From Fire Emblem, you have that strategic element, same with Shining Force. But with no 'level' or 'class' system, there are no restraints. I'll admit, I plan after writing this to re-create Shining Force in game, by creating each of the characters in order of appearance. That'll be fun!

But it doesn't stop there. The combat is fluid, and the AI is great. Giving each limb, and core parts it's own hit points, and changing gameplay according to damage (and changing DAMAGE based on how you choose to heal it) is something more in-depth than most heavy LARP systems I've seen. You can build a base and be a group of peaceful farmers/traders (not that you need to eat). You can start a war with one faction (though I wouldn't reccomend it... ever), or become a group of mercenaries. The sandbox element is strong in this game.

While the game is still in alpha, the groundwork has been set for so much more than is already released (as a player, I'd be fine if I had to deal with what i've got.) The few bugs that are in the game are minute and are easily bypassed with frequent quicksaves and game imports. The dev, while a little slow in getting the game out, is very careful to minimize bugs. A perfectionist, if you will.

And this brings me back to that 5 year old playing those games for the first time, because while I can't play through those stories again, every click is another element that goes into a script playing in my head. While the characters may not interract on screen, they can be in the player's mind. As an adult, I've been a DM for a few years now, but Kenshi gives even more creative freedom to the player, which is the ultimate goal of an RPG. The only thing you can't do multiplayer, and i'm sure that by the time it gets to full release, it will have addressed that.

This game can only be catagorised as a Sandbox/RPG/RTS/Simulation/Open World/Base Building Awesomeness. This is better than most games released today, and for the price, you'd be a fool NOT to pick it up. The true brilliance of this game is that there is a start point, but it is infinite. The end is wherever you choose to stop.

have had this game for a little over a year now, really hasn't been updated much since. Well in some ways it has changed, before you used to encounter all sorts of factions just roaming around and it was actually a decent game.. now all you will find is hungry/dust bandits, who half the time are spawned on top of unroutable terrain and cannot move, and i am only able to enjoy the glitch bandits when my game is not crashing. I would've thought after this long of waiting it would be at least half finished by now, but i would say it is not even 10% complete with what they can do with an open world system.

"Toughness Stat - How to train:
-Not wearing armor; armor is for wimps.
-Getting hit for high amounts of damage, like a man.
-Get up and fight when you should be playing dead."

Sold.

You probably shouldn't play Kenshi. It is going to suck you in. Just walk away.

JK... but not reallly.

The thing crashes semi-frequently, and there are bugs such as the path-finding and character edge-sticking which reviews have mentioned, but these don't ruin it by far and are still in development (if your character is stuck in a wall, just tell another character to pick them up). Gameplay took some getting used to, as did the interface. Kenshi has a very balanced mechanic between RPG and RTS without feeling like either. More specifically, it somehow manages to combine the feel of Mount & Blade and Dwarf Fortress, with a little influence from Bioware-style party-management, into one intelligent video-game-gasm with some serious yet subtle attitude and atmosphere.

The new content being talked about is going to expand upon what is already hours of playability. Apparently there are going to be new maps, beasts, quests, and I could even see more Mount & Blade-like politics with faction leaders (you listening, devs?), and mounts, or vehicles, and other characters, and maybe even a storyline, and then there's the modding community, and... and... let me stop.

Enter the desert.

You know those games that sound very, very good? Kenshi is one of those games.

Unfortunately, Kenshi has sounded very good for a long time now and hasn't actually had much added to it. You'll spend most of your time watching a character walk from place to place while keeping the game on fast forward.

But perhaps the combat is redeeming, you say? Nope, you fast forward that too. In fact, there's very little reason to not just play this game on fast forward the entire time. It's basically a watching simulator.

But the fun doesn't end there. The forums are rather heavily censored and anything that isn't praise toward the developers is deleted and followed by a ban. As of now, I don't think people who don't own kenshi can even post there. This is clearly just an attempt to censor the forum more heavily.

So, why should you consider kenshi? Well, if you like games that have been in development for years with minimal progress it's right up your alley! If you like games where you hit an endgame with almost nothing to do it's perfect as well!

And if you go to the forum for tips you'll be told to "make your own game(Within kenshi)." Yup, the consistent suggestion on the forum is to make your own little game, with your own rules and a load of artificial difficulty that you impose on yourself. The reason for this is, of course, that there's absolutely nothing else to do.

You make a little base, get a few guys, and that is it. That is completion of the game. It's not even a matter of ignoring a bunch of features. That is all the features right now(and has been for a very long time).

Well Ive been playing this for a few days and I love the game, as long as it works.
It bugs out 70% of the time.
I understand its an alpha game. Its been six years, so I figured Id try it out.
The experimental mode is very unstable and game over before you can get too far in your quests.
I don't recommend getting this game until they do more work on it.
Not playable in my opinion.
Lots of hoping and wishing here because this game has a lot of potential.

It is buggy and occastional hard to use. But it is just so much **** fun.
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3/13/15
Still hard to use, but I'm enjoying the packs of Demonic hellhounds that kill your whole party in a heartbeat. You walk 5 feet, hellhound, you die. You walk the other direction, bandits, you die. 7/10 Harder then Darksouls.

My my... this game is still Early Access and yet it managed to catch me in a way no game ever did. I really get in touch with my characters, and even wrote a notebook on their backstory, characteristics and personality.
I think I am a little crazy.

The slow development pace and the incredibly poor game quality make this game not nearly worth buying. Don't bother picking it up until it leaves early access, if it ever gets to that stage.

Great model of what a greenlight game should look like. Solid dev team, great game concept, regular community updates.

>pros
-gigantic open sandbox
-RPG elements for each memeber in squad
-hundreds of weapons and variations
-economy and base building
-regularly updated
-scalable enemy encounters to manipulate difficulty

>cons
-performance drops at times (actively being worked on)
-currently one biome environment (actively being worked on)
-not too much explanation for the building mechanics

8/10
tremendously fun and different gameplay. would beat cannibals to death again.

Kenshi as an idea has taken me in a way that most largely produced titles haven't been able to. Having played just above 80 hours I feel I can write a decent review of this game. Having bought the game almost a year and half ago and seeing short progress I was worried; however, it's good to see that there are dedicated people still out there not just trying to get their quick cash and move on.

Kenshi offers you a vast empty (which is good) desert world where you must fend for yourself and that's as far as the story will take you at this moment in time. The choice is yours, what do you do? Read a bunch of f**king guides is what you do, or at least myself, but I digress. Throughout gameplay you must make decisions where to incoporate your time....as in...do I take my only 2 soldiers to escort my 3 traders to a town to sell Ale/chainmail/katanas/fragaxes/medkits/etc, or do i keep 1 soldier at the outpost guarding 2 of those traders while they continue to produce while only sending 1 soldier and 1 trader....which could possibly be attacked by a multitude of people (have fun with that population setting!) At the same time you must research and dedicate certain squadmates to certain jobs where they will become more proficient as such. Efficiency is key in Kenshi especially when you just start your outpost.
Base building is relatively smooth with only minor bugs which can be avoided by a quick save and reload (applies to entire gameplay as well), and although there aren't uses for many of the items currently ingame besides monetary value there is much promise for the future. The core buildings on the other hand are useful and there are many of them with industry like processes to advance your small faction as such.

As far as skills go Kenshi has many of the same skills you find in any other RPG game out there, the difference is that these skills actually have a real-time effect in gameplay. What i mean by that is that if you have low strength, good luck carrying that backpack full of steel, wearing durable heavy armors, and larger weapons all while slowing you down becoming cannibal food in the process......AND making your Attack say (-14) because you dont know what you're doing with said weapon......fool.
So the game hits on the saying "practice makes perfect." in a nutshell in all skill-like aspects. The unfortunate side is that there are still a considerable amount of skills "greyed" out not finished yet (awesome when finished) but do not let that take away from this light of a game in this dark re-hashed titled clone world of ours. It's EA and for as imperative as the devs made the skills (not just stat raises) is something fresh, oh what else is fresh that i forgot..LOCATIONAL DAMAGE! wut, indie game? Naw that's unheard of...WRONG. You get your leg beaten to a pulp? Well I hope you can afford a walking stick Mr. Gimpy until you treat it medically. The best part is that you don't die instantly, you bleed, you fight, pass out to wake and fight again! then pass out! and die. Game over unless you have meds.
Visually, the game remains desolate yet somehow pleasing. It actually feels like a post-apocalyptic world that you were just thrown into with the sole goal to survive however you see fit. Some of the structures do look a little edgy at times, and not everything lines up 100% but the end result is fair enough. Things look as they should....

In conclusion, because I'm mediocre at reviews, I find Kenshi very immersive, well thought and executed, and a challenging game considering the dev's choice of realism. That's saying a lot for those indie's and with this one you'll dump hours into it without even realizing once you understand the concepts. Honestly, I can't wait to play this thing once it's finished....seriously. There's nothing else like it right now. For how much this game costs and for how much content you get it's a decently fair price, try to get it on sale if you can. Plus, I totally believe in supporting devs that change the industry with great ideas like this. Keep it up!


Gameplay: 8/10
Visuals: 7/10
Updates: 6/10 (steadily increasing)

Overall quality: 7/10

Progress? I'd say it's around 60% done overall (don't murder me it's an educated guess)

P.S. The bugs (not crashes) i've personally found to be more amusing than not most of the time. Watching bandits and sometimes fellow squadmates violently ragdoll into the sky for a brief moment when are knocken unconcious can somewhat take me by surprise. Or when the ai gets stupid and bunches up for a massive aoe 1 hitter with a frag axe. KO mother*****

Every time I take a break and come back to this game it is always better. Simply no other game is like Kenshi.