The world of Kenshi takes place in a massive post-apocalyptic world. It is a hybrid mix of a sandbox, crafting, hardcore survival, and RPG. The game itself is bustling with diversity with its huge map stretching over 870 Kilometers. The map is filled with fortified cities, barren farmsteads, and infested ruins. Also, there are swamps, a desert with acid rains, weird fungal valleys, and much more. Kenshi is a game where you can be whoever you want and there is no actual story. You are free to choose a path that you want to take, Kenshi took the roleplaying genre to another level as you can be a farmer, a slave, adventurer, a dangerous warlord, a thief, or just a limbless guy rotting in the middle of the desert. There is a lot of things to do in this game such as; Build a base where you can turn it into a crowded city full of shady individuals. You can also research new technologies and items such as armor, weapons, robotic limbs, buildings, and much more inside the base. You can cook your food as you go hungry, gather your materials, you can do or be forced to do some labor like mining and processing, craft your weapons and armor, Hunt some bandits and warlords with a hefty bounty or some huge monsters in a specific area and much more.
The Gameplay
Kenshi has an MMORPG Game style but with no restriction on the play style. To be specific, role-playing is the only way to play the game since Kenshi has no quests, no narrative, no-one tells you what to do or where to travel, you are the creator of your own story. There is no specific class but there is a skill system. There are 6 melee weapon skills, 3 range weapon skills, combat skills such as; melee attack, defense, dodge, and martial arts. Thievery skills like stealth, thievery, etc. And each of these stats raises your core stats like strength and dexterity. You can also recruit up to 29 people to your squad to fight for you. You can equip each individual with better gear and Each of them is unique in terms of looks and skills, they will grow and become stronger with experience. Kenshi is not a Level-scaling game. The world does not level up along with you, and the shops don’t change their inventory to only items matching your level.
First Objective: Survive!
Kenshi is a harsh game and it is packed with strong roaming bands of marauders, mutants, cannibals, and religious zealots. In the beginning, the game will make you feel like you’re just another face in the crowd or another meat bag in the grinder. You’re not a hero in this world. You are basically at the bottom of the food chain and everything you want to achieve even if it’s just gathering some food is somehow going to be a challenge. You can’t win most of the fights and you might lose a limb in the beginning and the brutal reality will remind you that you’re; not stronger than anyone else, not stronger than a band of twenty bandits, not stronger than a city guard, and especially not stronger than a pack of wild hungry huge spider-like desert monsters.
Not a Perfect Game
Kenshi, like every other game, does have its flaws. For a game that is being developed for 12 years, it is still filled with bugs and crashes. Your characters sometimes get stuck in walls, NPC De-spawning around the map, Visual Glitches, and you get this “ran out of ram” Crashes. This game is also simply hard and somehow unwelcoming. But you also have to understand that this game’s development is only being led by a single person. Kenshi demands a lot of patience and perseverance with no immediate rewards. It does not accommodate the inexperienced. To attain something, you have to steal, starve, sneak, get beaten up, and experience almost every horror or mischief that the game has to offer. but unlike most games that suffer from similar issues, what Kenshi gets right sets it above the rest. Kenshi may very well be the best game I’ve ever played. If you’re a person that loves an incredibly immersive, challenging game that doesn’t hold your hand, this game is for you. And Finally, Kenshi proved itself as an absolute masterpiece that can be both frustrating but enjoyable at the same time.