It’s a great game, and I’m eagerly looking forward to Kenshi 2.

Deliberately ugly. However, the open world actually does make sense here and RPG/RTS mechanics are very very good.

Kenshi is a remarkable game, but it is not one that reveals itself quickly. It took me about two weeks just to understand what was happening, a month to feel competent, and only after a seven-month hiatus did I begin to understand how to actually make a difference in its world. That delay is not a flaw. It is part of what makes Kenshi honest.

I like RPGs. I like science fiction, swords, crafting systems, and deep customization. Kenshi fits almost perfectly into that space, but it refuses to reward you for simply liking those things. My first playthrough began with a lone Scorchlander who just wanted to survive. Survival started with copper mining, which immediately forced me into contact with hungry bandits. I learned quickly that strength wasn’t required at first—positioning was. I would run to town, draw the bandits into the guards, and then hit them when they were already broken. That small lesson taught me more about Kenshi than any tutorial ever could.

With the money I scraped together, I recruited Logan, Winter, and a Shek warrior. We built our first base and began stockpiling copper ore, trying to carve out stability in a world that punishes permanence. That illusion collapsed the moment we refused to pray with the Holy Nation. We were beaten, enslaved, and taken to Rebirth. My Scorchlander managed to escape, breaking his chains and fleeing into the wilds, but the rest of my crew remained imprisoned. They eventually died in the mountains from starvation.

That loss defined everything that followed.

My main character fled deep into the Shek Kingdom and rebuilt himself around a warrior ethos. Slowly and painfully, he rebuilt his squad, his base, and his economy. He traveled the wasteland collecting ancient books, engineering research, and experience sharpened through repeated failure. Over time, that effort compounded. The squad grew into something formidable: ten Shek warriors; eight Scorchlanders split between fighters and miners/crafters; six hivers including warriors, a prince, and dedicated engineers and farmers; six Greenlanders; two Skeletons; and a pack bull. We captured the Flying Bull, fought hivers and Mistwalkers, and eventually killed the Dust Bandit King. The world no longer treated us as disposable.

Still, our gear lagged behind our ambition. That sent us as far as Flats Lagoon in search of higher-tier equipment. What I discovered there instead was a profitable hashish operation—another lesson Kenshi teaches quietly: power often comes from exploiting the cracks in broken systems, not confronting them head-on. Survival turned into leverage.

With a stable base near Squin, a diversified economy, and hardened fighters, I turned back toward the Holy Nation—not out of heroism, but out of memory. I systematically dismantled them by targeting infrastructure first. Stack burned. Bad Teeth fell. Rebirth was destroyed. Farms were erased. Only after weakening their foundation did I march on Blister Hill.

The first assault failed. Limbs were lost. Fighters barely escaped alive. But those losses hardened the squad. Stats climbed into the 60s. Cybernetic limbs replaced what the Holy Nation had taken. We returned again and again, applying pressure until the system broke. Eventually, we captured the Phoenix Lord.

I did not kill him.

Instead, I handed him over to the Shek Kingdom, honoring our alliance and turning personal revenge into a public reckoning. What began as a lone Scorchlander mining copper to survive ended with the deliberate collapse of a regime that enslaved and starved my first companions to death.

Kenshi does not give you meaning. It lets you construct it slowly, through suffering, memory, and consequence. That is what makes it extraordinary.

TLDR: this game is hella fun, brutally unforgiving, and gives you one of the few RPG spaces where role-play actually means something.