Kenshi - A Fine Mess (Review)

recently a lot of you guys have been telling me Dave you should review Kenji and I mean if you look at my old 2013 we bars channel URL it's got kimchi in it so I mean of course I'm gonna review this game so what is kimchi well it's a bit of a mess but it's also a pretty goddamn good game kenchi is a sandbox RPG developed by lo-fi games that drops you off in the map that had fit right in a battle royale if it weren't so massive it then gives you a kick up the arse and lets you figure out what the hell it is you meant to do next but that's the thing there isn't anything you're meant to do the game doesn't force a narrative upon you and lets you know that you're not special you're free to go out and do whatever the hell you want you're stuck in this apocalyptic weeaboo Mad Max world and it's up to you how you want to go about it you can be a trader or a farmer a bounty hunter pretty much anything you want to be within the limitations of the game engine it's kind of like mountain blade and also kind of like rim world but what can she does best is give you a nice big open and accessible world to plane as well as plenty of opportunity and freedom to play how you want and while the game might struggle in some aspects it stays true to its concept and it pays off sometimes you'll be able to settle down and build a thriving settlement to others you will go off on a grand adventure only to be eaten alive by giant monsters but I guess that's all just part of can cheese charm probably the biggest thing overshadowing this game is it's jang kyung-soo graphics and just ugly look in general but if you're able to power through the first impressions and being dropped into the thick of it there's a pretty goddamn good sandbox RPG to be found in kaanchi [Music] now if you've seen my Starbound video you'd know how I handed it for being a horrid mix of his sandbox in an RPG so that it make kenchi a sandbox RPG a bad game right not at all Starbound is just bad on its own firstly a sandbox RPG can definitely work and for me there's one massive criteria to ensure that it does don't shoehorn a dumbass linear storyline into the game kenchi is a perfect example of how to be a great sandbox and also incorporate many RPG aspects and allow plenty of room for well role-playing this game has no specific goal or path that you must follow you're not the chosen one and in fact the game goes out of its way to tell you that you're not special you can do whatever the hell you like within the limitations of the game engine which is exactly what a sandbox should allow you to do it also incorporates many RPG aspects such as skills that can be trained gear and equipment with different stats and bonuses squads and character management and so forth and these aspects do not detract or distract you from the sandbox nature of the game but rather embellish it so [ __ ] you Starbound literally any excuse to rant on you and I'll take it anyway back to kenchi when I first started playing the game I had little idea what to do or where to go I figured that was kind of the point so I read some of the tutorials it just nonchalantly throws at you and went from there the game suggested to go mining to gather some materials and maybe sell them for money so I went mining I waited for a moment watching my guide just slapped the rock with his janky-ass animation waiting to the ore to be mined so I turned the speed up waited a little longer then I was subsequently mobbed and beaten half to death by bandits then my guide decided to just shove his fist through his own face they didn't even take any of my stuff but the worst part of all I still didn't get anything from all that mining the next time I went out the mine I was a little more careful actually zooming out and being ready to pause if I saw any more random angry mobs heading my way I guess the game makes you think more like that especially early on what can she does best is give you the option to do and be whatever the hell you want in this hellhole of a place you dropped into you can be a trader a farmer a bounty hunter pretty much anything you want to be you can even just be a slave if you really want to depends on how int the role-playing you are a true sandbox the game doesn't rely on a preset narrative to tell a story like rim world like Dwarf Fortress the stories that come about in Kanchi are organic they're generated as you go by the game in its mechanics which is fantastic these factors in my opinion are the hallmark of a sandbox game this game also has multiple different starting scenarios which complement different play styles which certainly helps with the game's replay value the gameplay itself is quite fun and rewarding but like of a lot of other RPGs kenchi is quite a serious grind especially if you're doing a fair bit of Base building like I did you'll be getting that bread the hard way whether the remaining hunting trading or farming be prepared for a bit of a grind fest there's also a fair bit of travel time which is lessened by the ability to change the game speed though it's not always wise to be sitting on max speed as he might get harassed by bandits or an angry faction should you not be careful the map itself is really goddamn big which I guess could be a good thing but it is just filled with a lot of emptiness I get that it's a post-apocalyptic Mad Max world just without the big arse cars but a lot of the map just wasn't worth anyone's time with the big map came some pretty long load times and the game kind of freaked out a little bit when switching between squads that were separated over a distance so the game didn't really seem all that well optimised in that regard one mechanic I liked quite a lot was the base building again it could be a little grindy without just spending all your money on materials but the research progression was nice and it was cool to be able to carve out my little settlement and have the world interact with it depending on where you settled different events would happen like when I settled me at the holy boys they always came down to make me say your prayer with them and the one time I didn't because I was busy being raided by bandits they came down and beat the [ __ ] out of all of my hired mercenaries the combat is pretty decent though a little RNG based it certainly fleshed out once you had a bigger squad but early game you just spent a lot of time running from your problems rather than facing them some of the other mechanics appeared to be kind of broken I think was partially down to the AI the first time I settlement is raided all of the Raiders just crammed into my Shack and stayed there for ages I even sent one of my guys up right behind them and walked into them and nothing seemed to happen eventually after quite a long time they just kind of wandered off they didn't take anything because gang told me they were coming so I just emptied my chest and went back into the nearby town before they got there overall while I thought that the AI was pretty decent I did find it to be quite exploitable as such with the previous example they did have a knack of getting stuck behind stuff too which was also quite interesting what I would have liked to see from this game is more fleshed out characters perhaps grimwald style with personal traits and such that affected how they performed in certain scenarios or perhaps how they got along with one another because all of the different characters in units were pretty one-dimensional other than the actual stats speaking of characters the character creator is an absolute mean it looks like it was just partially stolen from mountain blade and the other part stolen from oblivion Jesus Christ you can make some abominations in this game honestly I'd probably just spend a quarter of my time in Kanchi just messing around in the character creator it was probably the best part of the game altogether you could also edit each new squad member when you hide them so naturally I distorted most of them and called them Jeff and while I purposefully distorted my characters models they didn't look particularly great to begin with now that I mentioned it not a whole lot of this game looks good when you think about it certainly the most lacking part of kenchi would be its visuals from the texturing and models that make up the map to the janky arse player and character models to the clunky and ugly UI there's not a lot to love about how this game looks and look I understand that the visuals are the most crucial part of a game like this and there was a very limited development team that worked on the game but that doesn't make the visuals any better they were still bad enough to be a pretty big talking point about it and certainly a bit of a deterrent when you first started up I did say that this game is kind of like mountain blade right well it also looks a fair bit like it and that's not a compliment for a game that officially came out at the end of 2018 while I think that the map in Howard is sectioned is fine the texturing and model work really don't do it justice it's low res and lacking polygons a lot of the time it genuinely looks like a mod for a Source engine game I also found that in certain areas of the map that can was obscured and blocked by stuff and it got a little funky when going over steep elevation which certainly didn't help anything the character animations were all pretty choppy from the running animations to the combat animations I think that goofing around in the character creator made this even worse and while I love goofing around with the character creator I won't lie and say that the player models look good because they don't they look pretty average maybe a little nicer than Mountain blade but still not great you remember when I talked about how I didn't like the UI in rim world well when I was greeted by this absolute gem of a main menu screen rim well didn't seem quite as bad Jesus Christ it's like UI development has just devolved back several years it took quite a while to get used to it but it still hurts my eyes very janky not very intuitive the game could have done with some more hotkeys or perhaps an idle squad member button as I was also constantly pressing one two and three to change the game speed to no avail I just assumed that that was pretty standard in games that allow you to change the game speed but can she subvert admire on smore the game in general is just not very nice to look at the visuals are all very very rough around the edges and is certainly one of the biggest downsides of kenchi like Mountain Blade the visuals are bad enough that it's almost endearing I did find that I was just making characters look ridiculous or being silly in general because of it so in a way it's kind of a bonus the music was pretty non-existent outside of the main menu it barely came up in game and when it did it wasn't particularly memorable there wasn't a whole lot of notable sound in general to be honest so in the end can she ends up being a bit of a mess I'm also visually as gameplay wise I found it to be pretty damn entertaining but certainly the visuals and optimisation leave a lot to be desired and look you can say but ACLU's only most burst mode team have endangered orangutans in a garage in Mexico so that's why dividuals are bad but while the small dev team might explain the reason for the game having bad graphics it does not excuse it the team could have gone for a more achievable stylistic choice rather than the half-hour source engine mod design they went for take a classic example minecraft initially developed by one lonely Swedish man doesn't have cutting-edge graphics but it's fitting for the world its stylized these days its iconic the looks of kenji however will never be iconic it will forever be the game that looks even worse than mountain blade did when it came out almost 10 years prior and even it looked kind of bad for its time but while the visuals might be lacking the gameplay isn't kenji does a great job at sticking to its concept of being a brutal yet rewarding RPG experience while also being a great sandbox and giving the player plenty of freedom to tackle the world however the hell they want to there's no one true way to play Kenji and you can have a totally different experience every time you play there's plenty of replayability in this game and it can tell the totally different story on each playthrough some of the mechanics are still a little bit iffy and the AI could do with a bit of a polish but the core of the gameplay is solid and it gives you all the tools you need to get it done plus these guys either look kind of like whoopers so I mean that's also pretty good it's not very cheap in fact it's not very cheap at all especially in comparison to other games in this genre but there's still there's a lot of good things about kenji if you're not convinced I'd consider buying it should it go on sale you might have to power through it a bit at the start as you wrap your head around the horrid UI you've just had to put up with and the fact that the game kind of just throws you in the deep end but stick with this game and it will reward you for your efforts because under the initial impression of a janky mess that the game gives off there's surprising depth plenty of freedom and a lot to like about catchy you

Channel: davo_

Views: 116,571

Rating: 4.3421946 out of 5

Keywords: Kenshi, Lo-Fi Studios, Sandbox, RPG, Post-Apocalyptic, Review, Critique, Shitpost, Meme, Dave, Davidson

Id: 7J-K0Tg6dFs

Length: 12min 15sec (735 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2019