The best way I can describe Kenshi is as an unfinished masterpiece. Like, imagine if Leonardo just never got around to painting the Mona Lisa's eyes, or if Michelangelo left David's hands as slabs of uncut marble.
It's frustrating because you can see a great game is so close, almost right there in front of you. But there are just too many overlooked details that hold it back from achieving its full potential. I'm talking about basic, broken functionality that just can't be excused in a product that's marketed as being a complete and final release.
Things like being unable to keep attacking enemies unto death after you knock them down. And then being prevented from looting those downed enemies because they're only playing dead, and thus will catch you and call you out for trying to steal from them. But you're still not allowed to attack them at that point. I'm not kidding.
Or the broken pathfinding, which allows you to defeat attackers coming to your base by opening the gate at one end, and then when the enemy paths around to that open gate, you close it and open the gate at the other end. Rinse and repeat until a pack of wandering Beak Things comes along and eats them for lunch. That's assuming they don't just get lost and wander off on their own beforehand.
Or the goofy way buildings are constructed at angles matching the terrain instead of, you know, being levelled. Making the Tower of Pisa look like the rule rather than the exception. Apparently I've got renaissance Italy on my mind at the moment.
Head-scratching absurdities like these are made all the more frustrating by the fact that Kenshi does so many other things so well. The core mechanics of character progression and combat are mostly pretty good. The worldbuilding is great, and the visual and sound design support it perfectly. It could use a greater variety of music, and the graphics aren't the best, but those are minor considerations for me compared to the actual gameplay.
My advice is to wait to pick up Kenshi until there is a discount as steep as the slant of the watchtower in Squin (that's fairly steep). Or you could tray waiting for Kenshi 2, which I hear the developers abandoned this game to go create. But then you run of the risk of them abandoning that to start Kenshi 3 while it's similarly unfinished, so... maybe not.
