- Usually if a game is
visually unappealing it is already starting
off on the wrong foot. Game developers these days
spend a lot of their time just worrying about
that the game looks good and they don't really put
a lot of time or energy into actually making it fun. Then of course, there are games on the opposite end of the spectrum, which have thousands of hours of content, systems that take a decade
to fully understand, and so much complexity that "No Man's Sky"
seems like "Candy Land." I'm re
ferring to you "Dwarf
Fortress," who by the way, didn't even have graphics
at all until this year. These two things are opposite
ends of the spectrum, but what if I told you
about another option that somehow missed both the graphics and the gameplay target,
but somehow became one of the most fun games that I've played in a very long time? It has graphics that reminds
me of old school "RuneScape," if it was made in the "Roblox" engine, controls that make "Dungeons
& Dragons" seem user-friendly, a
nd systems that are pretty complex but somewhat predictable
after a period of time. I'm talking about "Kenshi,"
and let me tell you, this game is absolutely awesome. So to start, what is all this? The UI in this game is absolutely aids, and you probably need
a bit of an explanation as to what's going on here, because I know I did when
I first downloaded it. So let me give you the rundown. "Kenshi" is a thief simulator RPG, where you live in in a
post-post-post-apocalyptic world, that somehow has
ended multiple times, probably because an army
of goats killed humanity. For real, if you don't have
the combat capabilities of Leonidas in "300," these
%SSholes are way stronger than you think and they'll decapitate you even if you look at them the wrong way. You start out your
journey as a weak, naked, starving normie, and
your goal is to evolve into the gigachad warlord
of the Wild, Wild Desert. You're basically the
main character in "Dune," but instead of starting
out with a royal family wh
o's about to take over a planet, you start out with no clothes, a stick, and the mental IQ of a snail. The world is not on your
side, and as you evolve, get stronger and make money,
you can eventually build a thriving outpost and recruit an army of cult-like followers
to help make your journey a bit easier. While the world may have
crumbled multiple times, capitalism has survived, and you'll need to increase your revenue to form a monopoly on every
good that you can produce, to buy more follower
s, grow stronger and eventually take over the world. But see, that's just one of
the ways to play "Kenshi". This game doesn't have a set path and that's the beauty of it. You can go the expected route and try to become as strong
and powerful as possible, or you can play as a solo rogue assassin who travels around as a
nomad, hunts bounties, and survives off of what he can steal. You can be a Traitor who finds
the most sustainable routes around the world and
capitalizes on selling booze to lonely
desert alcoholics,
it doesn't matter. "Kenshi" is an RPG and it
gives you the foundation to build whatever you wanna build, and that's part of why it's so beautiful, even though it's so ugly.
I know that was a weird way to introduce a game that I love, but that's the beauty of "Kenshi". I need to spend some time to
dive into all of the nuances because it may take you a
little while to understand, considering that every time you try, you're gonna get jumped
by a band of bandits and get injured i
n the process. And injuries are expensive, which is why I'm excited
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for sponsoring this video. Now you understand the gist
of what "Kenshi" has to offer, but this is just a small fraction of what makes this game
succeed while many others fail. Just because a game offers freedom doesn't mean it's gonna drag you in and keep you playing for hours. So what exactly does
"Kenshi" bring to the table? Well, the beauty in this game
is the fact
that your guy is absolutely garbage. See, when you spawn, you
have no skills whatsoever. You can't fight, you can't be sneaky, you can't defend yourself, and you can't even pick up an
item off the goddamn ground without the local town guard catching you from 10 buildings over. The fact that you even
managed to exist is beyond me but that's the beauty. Starting out at the very bottom means that the only way to go is up, so you have to spend time and strategize about what you wanna
do in your pla
ythrough and then train to make that happen. With my current playthrough I decided that I wanted
to train a crossbowman to become the best shooter in the desert. My main focus was training my aim and becoming a sort of hawk-eye that all the locals would fear. So in order to do this I spent nearly two hours
finding bandits and running away while picking them off one by one. I bought more bolts,
attracted these enemies and continued to shoot at them
until my aim became better and my confidence wen
t through the roof. Then I took all of their gear and sold it to the
local shop to make money to buy better gear and increase
my combat capabilities. As I gained money and notoriety I recruited new members to the team and spent time building
out their skills as well. Now I have a well-trained
researcher, a few workers, a brute that's in charge
of carrying things, and some other characters that are tasked with killing any enemy
that gets in my way. I became attached to these
stupid-%SS characters
because I spent so much time and energy building them into what
I wanted them to be. I understand the appeal of
a bad%SS, enemy killing, testosterone-producing, NOS
Energy drinking warlord, but I kind of like the
fact that in "Kenshi," your character is normal and
you have to put in the work to evolve him into who you want him to be. It's a true role-playing
experience and it's brutal, which makes the whole
thing much more satisfying when you do manage to succeed. Because trust me, it is
going
to be a challenge. This game is extremely unforgiving and the brutal environment makes the satisfaction of
building out your characters so much greater. I told you about my good start and how my guy became the
Daryl Dixon of Saudi Arabia, but I didn't tell you about
my failed experiments. And this game has a lot of them. If you want a good glimpse into the typical "Kenshi" experience, let me tell you a story. One time I spent hours mining iron with a group of five
pretty solid characters, just f
or one of them to
get kidnapped by a cult that lived in a local village. So with four characters to
sparr, I continued mining until I saved up enough money to recruit an army of mercenaries to help me take him back and set him free. As I got to the town, the
mercenaries started wreaking havoc on the entire cult village. It looked like the scene
in "Game of Thrones" where Jon Snow almost
gets trampled to death and these mercs were bad%SS. They mowed through these
enemies like they were nothing an
d when the dust cleared, it
was time to free our prisoner. But that didn't happen because he died of
starvation during the battle. It's okay though. I just have to loot this
village and sell the items and I'll have enough money
to recruit a new team member. Or so I thought. See, the chaos actually
attracted another group of much more powerful enemies who wanted to claim the spoils. So they came in, killed
all of the mercenaries and my two remaining guys, making the two that survived into slaves
that would later die
while trying to escape. That is "Kenshi". And if you've played this game, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So if you did, feel free
to drop a comment below and tell me your favorite "Kenshi" story. I'm sure other people
would love to see them. This ugly little game isn't
a linear, predetermined path. It's a story generator that,
based on how things unfold, can lead to a crazy
experience unlike no other. Every single playthrough is different and the circumstances of
t
he insanely difficult and unforgiving world keeps it interesting every single time. Your character's never gonna
be the best guy on the planet and you will always face
some sort of challenge one way or another. If one region of the map becomes too easy the next one will put you in check and the cycle continues until
eventually you either die or become the guy you want to be. And then you have the urge to restart, change your path and try again. I love the process and
every single experience crea
tes a new story that you can craft into the novel that you want it to be. And the cool thing about these stories is that they're made even better by the scale of what
this game has to offer. Now for context, this game is set in apocalyptic desert wasteland,
so a lot of it is the same and is fairly uninteresting visually, but that's not where the beauty lies. This world is unique because the beauty is in the differences in each region of the world. A lot of games just make each region a reskin ve
rsion of the previous, but in "Kenshi", each area of the map will bring different
adventures and challenges. I was gonna count the number
of factions to prove my point but there're so goddamn many of them that I'm just gonna show
you this map instead. This is a map of the
world with every region and the major factions
that control these regions. As you can see, there are a lot of them and they'll often have battles and skirmishes between each other, losing many lives in the process and having a
random group
of RoboKast-led peasants to steal their stuff and
sell it back to them. These different factions make
up a huge part of the world and you'll always be
running into different ones around every corner, and
you better be careful, because 99% of them will wanna kill you. Unlike many other games these factions aren't just
reskins of each other. Each factions have different
beliefs and behaviors that really influence
the world as a whole. For example, the Holy Nation will attack a member
of any of
the non-human races on sight, unless that member is joined by a human. The Shek Kingdom is
destroyed after a long war with the Holy Nation, but
they're barbaric warlords who have beef with all of
the more peaceful factions. The Empire is the biggest faction that only cares about money
and is ruled by a ruthless, arrogant emperor who calls
all of your characters "Scum," and will attack you if
you don't bow down to him when he sees you. There's Outlaws and Cannibals and Slavers, and the
Hive and all
sorts of other factions that have different
behaviors and tolerances for you and your crew. Each of their villages have
different types of buildings, different shops, aesthetics,
people, animals and culture and you can really feel these differences as you move along throughout
the massive world of "Kenshi." While a lot of these
characters are generic warriors or nameless tribe members,
there are over 150 unique named characters
spread throughout as well. And just like the factions,
each of these characters
are entirely different. On my last playthrough,
I met a guy named Chad and recruited him into my squad because he claimed that he
crossed the desert unarmed and survived some of the
toughest monsters in the world. But he quickly died because he
was actually kind of useless. And then there's Beep who is a Jim. He's everyone's favorite character that follows you around like a puppy, has no concept of money and
makes random beeping sounds for no reason whatsoever. Beep must
be protected at all costs. These are just two of the mini characters, all of which have different
culture, traits, dialogue, actions and behaviors that influence them, and once again, make the world
feel very unique and alive. And all of these characters can
be recruited into your squad for the right price. The thing that makes this
world, these factions, and the mini characters interesting is a concept in "Kenshi"
called World States. See, there's not just
a bunch of characters sitting around
and waiting on you to be their knight in shining armor, like in every other game. These characters and their
positions and their behaviors are all determined by the decisions that you make in the world. Meaning if you kill or
kidnap a faction leader, a new one can come into
power, but who that is varies on what you did with
the other factions beforehand. So if one guy's alive but another's dead, it creates a power vacuum causing guy number three to take power. But if you killed guy number three
in an earlier interaction,
then a different faction can come in and take the
previous faction's place. It's super complex and there are hundreds
of possible combination of world states that could lead to thousands of possibilities for where these characters
are at any given time. Instead of the world existing
solely for your sake, the developers made it
feel like this world will exist without you
and it doesn't give a %$@# what you're doing, it's gonna
continue to live its life. But if you wanna
interfere, you have the ability to do that too, as long as your squad is strong enough. You may start out as a
useless, sand dune redneck, but you can recruit your own group of useless, sand dune
rednecks to join you. So as your character gets stronger and you improve your skills, you have to manage the
strengths and the weaknesses of the other people that you
recruited to create the squad that will most easily help
you accomplish your goals. You can recruit the numbers
and have an NPC army tha
t rivals that of the Twitter community, or you can have a handful
of high-level guards that help protect your convoy of animals that you overwork and
underfeed for financial gain. You can recruit these new
members at the local bar or by randomly interacting with them while you're traveling
across the wasteland. And by paying them you
can add them to your team. Just like prostitutes, the
more expensive ones are better, but even if you spend a
bunch of money on them, you're probably still gonna en
d up dying because of your other bad decisions. Because the thing is, most
of them, just like you, are average Joes with
no skills whatsoever. So you don't only have to manage
who you want in your squad but you also have to manage
their strengths and weaknesses and assign them tasks based on these. And believe it or not, there
are actually more things to do than just kill people. You don't have to be a desert John Wick if you don't want to. You see, another big part
of the "Kenshi" experience an
d another path that most
people end up going down is to set up a base of operations. "Kenshi" has an in-depth base
building and research system that can help you
establish a desert outpost that makes "Goodsprings"
look like the Taj Mahal. In the initial phases you
gotta buy these big %SS bundles of building materials to
set up a tiny little shack and some storage, and
your goal is to research as many new technologies
as possible to level up, make your base stronger
and make more money. This is w
here those tasks come in. Some of your guys will be
miners, some will be errand boys running to and from the
cities to buy what you need, some will be guards, some will farm, some will produce goods,
and some will do research. Your ragtag team of brain-dead adventurers are how you accomplish your
goals and as your base levels up your guys will get stronger and you'll start to make
a dent in the world. You can automate all of these jobs where you don't have to
micromanage a bunch of boring %$@#,
which is definitely nice, because watching someone
mine rocks for hours on end isn't the most entertaining
thing in the world. The base building is fun
and challenging enough to make it my standard approach for how I wanna play the game. It's extremely time-intensive
and extremely risky because just like everything
else in this game, it isn't going to be easy. Depending on where you build your base you're gonna have to deal
with those different factions that I mentioned earlier. If you're in She
k territory,
they will challenge you and force you to attack them
to prove that you're worthy. If you settle in Empire territory they'll demand that you pay taxes, and if you settle in the Holy Nation, they want you to always carry
a copy of their sacred book and they want you to participate in their weekly prayer days. Where your base is has a huge impact on how you play the game, and it needs to be a part of your strategy for your best odds at survival. And the way that it ties you down and ma
kes you feel
connected with the world is another thing that really helps to make "Kenshi" so
immersive and so awesome. Now, protecting this base is gonna be hard so you can actually hire
mercenaries and bodyguards that will keep you alive,
because even with these factions, there are also bandits and hostile mobs that you have to worry about as well. You don't wanna beat things and %$@#, even goats are a risk
if you're stupid like me and try to attack them with a stick. So take my warning,
train
your combat skills, build defenses and don't attack goats. They actually wiped out my entire squad. And if somehow all of these
stories and adventures get boring to you,
there's an entire workshop with thousands of
additional mods and changes that can make "Kenshi" into
the game you want it to be. To be honest, you probably
wanna use some of them like the one that changes
the UI to a dark mode like you probably noticed
in some of the footage, and one that makes loading screens a little bit less
intensive, because loading screens in this
game are absolutely brutal. But in short, these mods add
thousands of new things to do and thousands of new stories to tell and it makes the entire
experience infinitely replayable. I've touched on a lot of the points that make "Kenshi" as good as it is, but that doesn't mean that
the game is without flaws. In fact, there are quite a few flaws and some of them are very frustrating.. Like I said before, the
first one is the fact that loading times are in
sane. Whenever you have a pretty big squad and you have different guys spread out around different areas of the map, sometimes it takes a good 45 seconds to maybe even two minutes to load into where that new character is. And again, once you have a big squad it becomes extremely annoying. Also, there needs to be a faster way to travel around the map. I'm not saying it needs to
be fast travel, but I mean, you're in a world with
tone of different animals and all sorts of unique
things that could b
e added as a way to travel, whether
that's riding a horse or some other animal,
something more creative, like a sand board that you
could like ride down the hills, or you know, a hot air balloon maybe. That could be kind of cool.
A bird you could fly on. Or even like in "Avatar
the Last Airbender," when they have the Sandbenders
who are pushing the sails on like the sand ships. Think about it. Could be kinda cool. The map is absolutely huge
and I don't have eight hours to constantly travel acros
s the map just to get killed by Fogmen. I think there needs to
be a more efficient way to do stuff like that. And if you have any, I'd love to hear your
suggestions in the comments. Also, I think there needs to be more late to end game content. Once you become successful and have money and have followers, I feel like you should
be able to raid towns and turn them into your own. If you go into the town
and kill everybody in it, not saying I would ever
do something like that, but if you did, you s
hould
be able to claim the town as your own and make
it your faction outpost that rival factions will want to attack. It just seems like it's a big possibility that could improve the game a lot and it kinda sucks that it's missing. But outside of these minor problems, "Kenshi" is an outstanding title and if you like games like this, I definitely recommend
it 10 out of 10 times. It's a game that you'll
always come back to and always have a new story. And those story generation games like "RimWorl
d" and "Kenshi,"
they just don't get old. They're so much fun and it's
just so much more relaxing when compared to something
competitive like "Apex," or "CoD," or all the usuals. That's gonna be it for today's video, so I hope you guys enjoyed. I'm sure you've noticed
this is my first ever video where I introduced my face
into it, so kind of exciting. Let me know your thoughts on the format. I'd love to hear about it. Shoot me a DM over on
Instagram at RoboKast and tell me what your thoughts are
. What could I improve,
what could I do better? Do you like it better
without the face cam? Let me know in the
comments or on Instagram. But that's it for the video. I'll see you guys next time. And peace.
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