Like I said in a previous post, I like Kenshi a lot more than Rimworld. The two aren’t actually that comparable, the title is just a dig at a friend of mine who called Rimworld “a better Kenshi.”

Kenshi is a brilliant mix of fantasy RPG, post-apocalyptic survival, and real time strategy. The game is also dipped in a more fantastical flavor that makes it a lot more novel than the scores of Fallout-lite clones where we fight through ruined 1st world cities. Instead, this is a world where wandering ronin have sword battles with skeletal robots, where 20-foot-tall “beak things” fight giant gorillas, and where a death-cult race of Foglanders capture and eat anyone who wanders into their domain. There’s a lot to love here and I’m glad the setting isn’t generic like so many others.

As an aside, I love the implication that this world has had multiple apocolypses. Nobody knows who built the skeletons or where they came from, as well as a number of other giant mechanical monstrosities that litter the world (like an orbital death-laser). In turn there are a number of libraries scattered throughout the world. They apparently come from the “second empire” and post-date the skeletons, but by game start they have all been abandoned and mostly destroyed. What few that remain are poured over by wandering tech hunters to regain their lost knowledge. This wasn’t a simple apocolypse that destroyed this world, it was a long-multistage affair, and it gives you a lot to think about as you wander across the wastelands.

And wander you shall because that’s the primary gameplay loop of Kenshi: running around and trying to not die. But the game lets you keep and train up a party of a few dozen dudes to do that with, and it can all get really fun. Putting your guys on different jobs, sneaking around if necessary, building up a team, this is where the fun of Kenshi is. And the part where it gets a bit Rimworldy is that you can eventually create a base of operations and have all your murder-hobos do manual labor like they were Rimworlders. Unlike Rimworld, the game doesn’t give you progressively harder challenges but gives you the hardest possible challenges pretty much all at once. If you want to settle down anywhere you’d best be ready for a war.

But having a war is also fun because the gameplay isn’t about numbers. You can have 100 guys, and you’ll still get wrecked by a single gate guard. That’s because during combat, the game takes a martial-arts movie approach of having all allies and enemies pair up for one-on-one combat. And if there’s 100 guys and 1 master, the 100 guys will patiently wait for their turn to attack, while the master will have such powerful swings that he can destroy 5 enemies with a single slice.

So the game is still enticing you to build up a squad and survive, but it’s not about tricking the AI into giving you easier challenges, but rather about building up the skills of your group until you can take on any challenge. When you finally train up some random schmuck to the point that they can solo and entire squad of Paladins, you really feel a sense of accomplishment.

Sorry, this post was a bit scatterbrained, but I really just wanted to gush about Kenshi. I hope there’s a sequel some time soon.