izigame.me

I actually like Kenshi's ambition with the amount of things you can do and I enjoyed about half of my 100 hours. I do like this game. HOWEVER, Kenshi's features are all shallow, the game runs horribly due to the awful engine, and the game is generally unfinished.
Kenshi touts itself as an open-ended sandbox where you can take on a myriad of roles, and this is partially true. However, you'll find these roles to be skin-deep in features and you'll get frustrated by how little you're able to do in your role.
Want to be a shopkeeper? Sure, except this game doesn't have a proper economy and the npcs have no way to regain money apart from the initial currency they'll spawn with; you'll make initial sales with the shop counter but that will all stop soon. Essentially, you'll end up producing goods that no one will buy. You also can't franchise or automate shipments of goods and products.
Want to be a thief? You can except stealth is meaningless and there aren't any actual challenges or meaningful things to do as a thief apart from stealing metal sheets or stealing food from safes; no one possesses anything cool or interesting to warrant stealing it. Even when you sell fenced goods, there is nothing really interesting that money can buy you.
Want to be a warlord? You can rapidly recruit people up and get them to fight but its pointless as there's no way for you to takeover cities, you can't establish territory and expand your influence, you can't fully destroy major factions, and no one actually acknowledges your established presence. You have little to no effect on the world state. You cripple a major faction by destroying their capital but so what? All you accomplished was losing access to certain merchants and feeling no effects or advantages from their downfall.
This game's endgame sucks because there is no endgame. There is no content or reward at the end of the journey. And for a game that constantly pushes that you must struggle to "win", that's frustrating to say the least. You become powerful but for what? There is nothing you can do with it, rendering your efforts meaningless.
You'll also constantly be annoyed by things you can't do for some arbitrary reason. You can't be a cannibal despite being capable of kidnapping people and holding them prisoner. Despite there being slavers in the game and you being able to be enslaved, you can't actually keep slaves for yourself. You can brutally beat people unconscious but there's no way to finish them off which makes warfare frustrating as you're essentially dealing with resurrecting enemies that will wittle you down despite you being magnitudes stronger than them. You can keep animals but they can't be used as livestock, they don't generate animal products, they can't breed, and do nothing that a normal recruit can't do. There's just so much that you CANNOT do which frustrates you as it doesn't mirror the promise of open-ended gameplay.
Kenshi's open-world is also not really a selling point. It falls into the same pitfall that most open-world game fall in, rather the world being mostly made up of dead empty space with no activities, interesting landmarks, npcs, unique and notable enemies, and barely any cool loot. Only certain parts of the map are filled with points of interest, however the majortiy of the map is sprinkled with tiny bits of content. Kenshi does not properly make use of its large map, which makes the technical problems that this brings even more frustrating.
This game runs terribly. The game's engine is so poorly optimized and cannot handle loading in different areas of the map. You can wait for minutes for certain parts to load in and you'll constantly be waiting when traveling. This game is also a buggy mess with crashes and the occasional broken save.
I CAN'T recommend Kenshi because it doesn't properly live up to what it sells itself as. Mods attempt to alleviate this but engine limitations will always keep mods from ever reaching their true potential which will forever anchor this game down. Keep an eye on the sequel and buy Rimworld in this game's place for the time being. Rimworld also possesses open-ended gameplay but with more features that are more in-depth and includes proper mod support that allows mods to further bolster the game in functionality and fun.