Kenshi 1.0 Review

kaanchi is a sandbox survival simulator that offers a huge amount of freedom and depth and when it might be rough around the edges it's also one of the most fun and addictive games released last year it's a game about starting with nothing in a harsh and unforgiving world and then learning how to survive there's an open endedness about how you do this you have different options even from the very beginning you can find all to mine and just labor away try your luck as a thief or just get out there and see what you can scavenge there regardless of how you try to make your way in the world you can't escape the unquestionable reality that you are weak very weak and this is a world that doesn't care about you at all in country you are not the main character of an RPG there are no easily achievable quests no simple progression path to pull you along and no rats in basements waiting to be killed there is an in-game tutorial that teaches you the basics of the UI and controls but even the tutorial goes out of its way to tell you that there's no set objectives for you to do and that you need to find your way yourself and once you do that once you leave the safety of the city walls you soon find out just how hostile this world really is alone and vulnerable you'll be attacked by starving bandits who robbed you of your possessions you'll get chased by aggressive wildlife that can rip you to shreds if they catch up with you and if you're really unlucky you'll come across some slavers who will put you in Chains and sell you for a few coins all this can make starting out in country very daunting the world is cruel and saying that the game doesn't hold your hand is an understatement but while Ken she's world is very harsh it's game design is actually very forgiving death is rare you might get knocked out and robbed but it's not like you'll have much worth taking early on anyway slavery might not be a pleasant experience but it's a great way to train your body and there'll be an opportunity to escape sooner or later cannibals might take you back to their base tie you to a stick and slowly eat you alive limb by limb but he might still get rescued and later down the line losing a limb has its advantages still its house that progression works that you really need to understand there are many skills but they're all leveled in same way by doing related activities a bit like in the elder scrolls are insert an old-school RPGs so whatever you do you'll be making some kind of progress even if only slowly you can run around the world getting lost and achieving absolutely nothing but in doing so you'll at least be leveling up your athletics you can mine iron ore and carry it back to a city to sell and only make enough money to cover your food costs but you'll also be leveling your labor and strength skills you can lose every fight you encounter and be beaten to near death over and over but in doing so you'll be raising your toughness and so in Kanchi what doesn't kill you really does make you stronger and strength is everything and really that's what kenshi is all about starting weak and becoming strong combat itself is simple and resembles a real-time strategy game more than anything else you right-click to attack and then sit back and watch the carnage there are a few small things you can do to micromanage your squad to try to get an edge like utilizing options to block or taunt positioning range characters or kiting but combat is usually just decided by stats as opposed to skill and if you're looking for deep tactical combats you won't find it here fights at least look pretty good though thanks to well-made animations and it's always good to see limb damaged systems as a feature but can she isn't really about the combat it's about the feeling of progression you're always getting more money better gear and seeing your stats slowly rise higher and higher while at the same time you'll learn more and more about how to survive in this world initially you'll be too weak to fight anything yourself but that doesn't mean you can't scavenge you can wait for others to fight each other and loot the corpses while they're still busy beating each other to death and if you do attract unwanted attention you can run in there a settlement and that the guards do the work for you once you have a bit of money you'll have the option to start recruiting others to help you and suddenly the amount you can mine or loot will go up you start equipping the gear you scavenge and with your newfound numbers you might even start to win fights against the weakest of a poner and so your money and stats will keep rising little by little probably the most common thing to do next would be to buy a cheap house in a settlement where you can research basic things within the safety of the city walls while at the same time traveling around to all nearby cities scavenging as you go and using your money to hire more recruits once you've raised your squad numbers combat stats and technology a bit you can head on out into the world and find a place to call your own where you can start building an actual base but while this is what most players will do you don't have to follow this route you can play solo and still be an effective King machine thanks to how the game handles combat you can keep your squad small and specialized and just travel the world exploring you can buy bigger houses and cities to keep researching more things and then start leveling weapon or armor craft and still within the safe confines of a city and just get by through buying unneeded materials or you can hire a bigger squad but stick to the nomadic life maybe buy some pack animals and go from city to city trading fighting and exploring as you wish so there's lots of ways to play each with their own advantages and each of which can be rewarding in their own way but most people will be drawn to base building sooner or later and that's where can she really sinks its hooks into you by building a base you can start up your own industry by assigning jobs the characters survey can farm mine and craft without any supervision from the player this can lead to easy money foods and eventually high-quality armor and weapons however building a base will also draw attention to yourself where you choose to settle will determine what challenges you face fertile areas will provide better food but also have wildlife that wants to eat your crops settling near civilization will offer some protection and trade options but those same civilizations would expect something in return like taxes food tributes or adherence to their strict and oppressive religious codes remote locations might bring less attention that might also make you isolated when you're most in need of help but everywhere will have some dangers and there'll always be at least some bandits who look to you as weak and an easy target to raid and so the base building side of the game is a bit like rumba build a base set automated jobs tweak small problems to keep production going and defend against raids but unlike grim worlds the game doesn't deliberately scale all rates down to the players level to make them manageable in fact Kanchi is a game where nothing is scaled and so getting a working defensible base up and running is not an easy task raiding bandits can easily kick your ass wildlife can be a constant cause of problems and taxation and food tributes can rob you of what little profit you might be able to make but there are ways to survive and every time you get beaten down or believed by bigger factions it gives you one more piece of motivation to keep training and keep improving and that's why can she work so well it's not just that the world is harsh and makes the player feel weak and insignificant it's by doing this the game gives you constant motivation to want to get stronger at its core kenchi is a huge grind raising your stats takes large amounts of time even getting a base up and running which is in some ways where the game really begins what happened in two hours into most players play freeze and if you don't want a game that takes a long time to get anywhere then can she is likely not for you but for others the grind feels rewarding because you're aware of how much you've had to work for your progress and in the end it feels worth it if you stick at it so there will come a day when a bandit faction that gave you trouble early on will turn up at your gates making threats and demanding money and you won't be the same weak band of survivors that can be pushed around anymore who are you talking to you right now you think you see and when you laugh in their face and then proceed to crush them it will feel good and you don't have to stop there every faction has their own base with their own leader it's not only can you defend yourself you can also head out to their base to make sure they really understand how things are now there's no way to demand tribute yourself but bandit leaders will usually have a bounty and their base will have good loot and so just as once you were the weak being raided by the strong now your positions who have reversed but there are away stronger opponents out there can she isn't a game with an ending but it's definitely still a long game and there's a surprising amount of endgame content if you want to keep playing there always seems to be more things to do more places to go and more deadly opponents to defeat it's partly because the game world is so big which it really is it completely Dwarfs most modern open-world games in terms of scale but Ken cheese world has more going for it than just size can she's setting is really good it's like a mix between dune Mara winds and fallout with extra samurai swords thrown into the mix it's interesting and unique but what's most impressive is how well realised their films can she doesn't have a story in the traditional sense but the world-building is fantastic from the realistic topography of its diverse landscapes to the imposing sense of scale of the game world to the law behind each faction and the mystery behind how the world got to be as [ __ ] up as it is there's a believability to the details of this world as if everything has been forced out and designed with realism in mind there are farms to support the in-game populations military bases along the edges of factions lands and ruins marking previous faction borders when you're told about two factions being at war with one another you can go to where their lands border and watch them fight when you over here about legendary criminals or formidable generals you know that these are real people they exist in this world and you can go and find them fight them to see if they live up to their reputation and when you're told about a location so dangerous that no one who goes there returns you know there's going to be a real reason why that is and you have a strong desire to find it out for yourself you might not even notice it at first but it's hard not to be drawn into this world as you spend time trying to survive here you become curious you want to know more but just as the world doesn't care about you as an individual it also doesn't care about giving you answers to your questions the storytelling feels similar to Dark Souls but with less item descriptions details are placed about like breadcrumbs but there's never any guarantee you'll find what you're looking for at the end that betrayal you can speak to some NPCs but this isn't the game with much dialogue and no one really wants to talk to you you can find a few in-game books but what they offer is more propaganda than actual history companions might provide comments on places you go to but it's nearly always in the form of warnings rather than explanations and yet somehow this just makes you more interested and despite the lack of an actual storyline discovering the law is a fun part of the game and one of the big motivations to keep playing and exploring at endgame and you can also change the world despite there being no real quests in-game NPCs do occasionally have requests and your actions can have real impacts you can help a few factions take over other factions leading the cities changing ownership and even cosmetic changes like statues being torn down these consequences can be quite shallow and there's no way to formally wage war or conquer cities yourself but it's still great that at least some things you do have world-changing impacts and seeing that one big faction you really hate to get conquered thanks to you makes for a nice endgame goal to set yourself so the journey can he provides really is great once the game also has a lot of problems and there's a distinct lack of polish for a game that has just been officially released some of the biggest issues are poor camera control that creates a lot of trouble when coupled with tight spaces and varied topographies performance and optimization issues that lead to a lower overall framerate than you'd expect for a game that looks like this as well as a regular loading as you travel around and also passing issues that sometimes cause one party member to be left behind stuck in a building or a rock and which also affects enemy rates and travelers sometimes leading to other results there's other problems that are less impactful but can still be annoying the old key highlights items and building signs but there's no way to highlight corpses or NPCs you can talk to or lootable containers and sometimes these things can be very hard to see particularly in the case of corpses in certain biomes which can be a pain to loot on the subject of loots inventory management can also feel clunky and overly time consuming when you consider how much of it there is the UI itself can be quite practical in that it has a lot of information on the screen and so you can often see what you need to if you clicks but this also has the disadvantage of making the you I feel quite cluttered there are also some features you'd expect to be in the game which aren't like having the ability to kill down enemies to stop them waking up later on or having an official Ironman mode the removes the ability to manually save and load and then there are balance issues or small annoyances that exist like not having the option to recruit more than 30 characters not being able to remove limbs through simple methods or the too weak dates that can be destroyed easily by any large group of weak foes and so on however can she does have an active modding scene and certain mods can go a long way at fixing smaller issues players might have with the game and allowing you to customize your experience to your liking and finally there's the obvious issue that can she looks a little dated of course it still has a great aesthetic and there can be a real beauty to his empty and alien looking landscapes but it still looks a bit like a game that was made quite a few years ago which makes a lot of sense because this game has been in development for 12 years and its graphics haven't seen much improvement in that time but what can she may lack in graphics and polish it makes up for by offering an experience that feels unlike anything else out there with one of the best worlds I've ever seen in the game and an incredibly addicting an enjoyable progression loop kaanchi is a great game that deserves more attention and if you can look past the dated visuals put up with its performance issues and aren't put off by a game that takes a large amount of time to make any progress in then can she offers one of the best sandbox open-world gaming experiences out there and I'd strongly recommend it to anyone interested [Music]

Channel: NeverKnowsBest

Views: 140,103

Rating: 4.9203229 out of 5

Keywords: Kenshi, Kenshi review, kenshi review 2018, kenshi 1.0 review, kenshi gameplay, kenshi tips, kenshi guide, kenshi review 2019, kenshi critique, kenshi pc, kenshi 1.0

Id: E5dVC15H4R0

Length: 14min 57sec (897 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/SwashBlade]

The "world doesn't care about you" point gets made a lot, but it's not entirely true. A world that doesn't care won't react and this game reacts in some rather obvious ways. As soon as you build an outpost, for example, you'll start getting visited by trade caravans and raiding parties, largely without regard of how well hidden the outpost is and certainly long before you've announced your presence. Likewise, accrue a bounty and you'll certainly garner a reaction. Late game political bounty hunting will also get people to take notice.

A world that doesn't care won't have special rules just for you. Hunger doesn't affect anybody but the people under your control. You can't starve out a city by ensuring they can't bring in food because they literally don't need it.

On the topic of food, though, I will say the the world building is quite good with relation to it. It's generally clear where the cities get their food (disregarding their lack of need) - the larger cities have farming outposts dotted about, the Shek raid for what they need, smaller cities have farms within their borders.

Back to my original point, though - it's not that the world doesn't care. It's just that your character is no more powerful than anyone else and doesn't have special privileges or abilities (beyond those offered by being controlled by the player of a game with an untethered camera and the ability to pause time while planning and with access to a wiki)

[u/Sieg_1]

How moddable is this? It looks like the kind of game that can become really awesome with good mods.

[u/SovereignZuul]

Love this game.

[u/vessel_for_the_soul]

soemthing about it reminds me of Mount and blade warband, Ark, and rts-ness. It looks really interesting.

[u/WeaponLord]

It's one of the best games ever made that barely anyone talks about, it should be on the level of rimworld, i hope to god the devs take a year off and come back refreshed and build some sort of game that equals the level of kenshi,

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perhaps a dark fantasy open world game....Gothic/Vagabond bushido....I don't know but whatever it is, it'll be on my radar.

[u/DaHedgehog27]

This was rushed to a 1.0 release.. It's a great premise but their are still combat bugs which can brick your entire run.