Kenshi

1. Summary

Kenshi's players love it for the freedom it gives them and for how little it cares about them. There are no quests and no chosen one: you start weak and broke in a hostile desert, get beaten, robbed, enslaved or eaten, and slowly grow stronger by surviving it. The praise players give most is for writing your own story, as a trader, slaver, farmer, thief or warlord, while the world carries on with or without you, and the modding scene comes up about as often. Reviewers also like the strange post-apocalyptic lore and atmosphere, and say nothing else plays quite like it. Plenty of fans call the game janky and ugly, and mean it fondly.

Most of the frustrations are technical, and reviewers say they are old. Bugs and broken pathfinding come up in 17% of the longer reviews, and 46% of the negative longer reviews raise at least one technical problem: characters stuck on terrain, hauling and job AI that stops working, constant region loading, swamp lag, crashes. Newcomers trip over a steep learning curve with almost no tutorial, a camera and interface many call clumsy, and a slow early grind of mining copper and training stats. A smaller group says the large world turns empty and shallow once you are strong. Most reviewers recommend the game anyway, and they disagree mainly on whether the jank, the grind and the harsh opening are part of the charm or reasons to walk away.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

Freedom to write your own storyHigh

Reviewers list the lives they have led: trader, smuggler, bounty hunter, slaver, abolitionist, farmer, shopkeeper, base builder, lone thief, or the leader of an army that topples a faction. Praise for this sandbox freedom appears in 24% of the longer reviews. There is no main quest, and some find that liberating; one wrote: "There's an almost radical lack of FOMO in it." Long reviews often retell a single run (an escape from slavery, a squad member lost to cannibals, a revenge campaign against the Holy Nation) and stress that the game produced it without a script. Some negative reviewers dislike the same freedom because there is little to anchor it. One put it as "the game expects the player to invent all the fun themselves."

A brutal world where losing makes you strongerHigh

Skills rise by doing: toughness from being beaten, strength from hauling heavy loads, lockpicking from picking your own shackles. Fans describe this loop, where each defeat trains you, as the core of the game. 17% of the longer reviews call the world brutal, harsh, unforgiving or uncaring, and 10% stress that you start as a nobody and stay one until you earn otherwise. "In Kenshi, every loss is a long-term victory," one reviewer wrote, and another: "Initially losing a limb is a death sentence. Later losing a limb is an upgrade." Prosthetic limbs, recovery comas and slavery are setbacks you play through, and even a wiped-out squad brings no game-over screen. A few veterans say the reputation is overhyped and the game is only hard until you understand it. At the other end, a minority of negative reviewers find the combat outright unfair, describing well-equipped characters losing to starving bandits with sticks. One wrote: "It rewards hard-won successes with just more punishment."

Mods and the built-in editorHigh

Mods come up in 25% of the longer reviews, mostly in praise of a large Workshop, overhauls and quality-of-life packs, custom starts, and an official construction set that makes modding approachable. Some advise a vanilla run first, with mods afterwards to keep the game fresh for hundreds more hours. Mods also appear in 24% of the negative longer reviews, usually to argue that the base game leans on them; that complaint is covered under the frustrations below.

Nothing else plays like itMedium

Reviewers reach for comparisons (Rimworld in 3D, Mount & Blade, Fallout 1 and 2, Runescape, The Sims, an RTS) and then say none of them fit. In all, 13% of the longer reviews call Kenshi unique or say there is nothing else like it, and several mention they looked for a similar game afterwards and found none.

Lore, atmosphere and musicMedium

Players like that the history of the world is never explained outright and has to be pieced together from ruins, books and overheard conversations: "The lore is subtle but rich, hidden in books and rumors." The lore, worldbuilding, atmosphere or soundtrack get praise in 13% of the longer reviews, which mention the melancholy mood and the alien landscapes, and a couple single out the main menu music. A few reviewers want more dialogue and more direct storytelling, and one complains about a nighttime music cue that plays far too loud.

Value for moneyLow

Price comes up in 5% of the longer reviews, and most of them call the game worth it, especially on sale. A few negative reviewers say to buy it only on a deep discount.

Where players are split

The learning curve and the missing tutorialMedium

Newcomers describe not knowing how to eat, fight or make money. One who gave up within the hour wrote: "I had a bunch of rocks I could do nothing with, and no clue what the heck to do." The learning curve, the lack of a tutorial or the need for outside guides come up in 14% of the longer reviews and 17% of the negative ones. A fan who stuck with it summed up the opening as "An impenetrable first few hours. Confusing and borderline unplayable," before saying it clicked. Several fans admit they bought and refunded the game once or twice before that happened. Players disagree on the cure: some insist you should watch YouTube guides or keep the wiki open, while others say guides spoil the discovery and you should go in blind.

Grind and a slow paceMedium

The grind complaints are concrete: mining copper and walking it to a shop for hours to afford food, carrying iron around to train strength, long progress bars for crafting and building, and slow travel across a huge map. 9% of the longer reviews call the game grindy, tedious or slow, rising to 20% of the negative ones. One reviewer who still recommends it wrote that "the early game disrespects your personal time so much in a genuinely unfun way," while a negative review called the journey "such an industrial slog." Fans answer that the slow climb is what makes progress feel earned, and some recommend experience-multiplier mods for players with less time.

Dated graphicsMedium

Most of the 11% of longer reviews that comment on the visuals wave the issue away: the game looks old, the art direction still works, and the systems matter more. "It's a beautiful, ugly, unique mess," as one fan put it. Graphics come up more in negative longer reviews (16%), often alongside the interface.

Base building and constant raidsMedium

Building a town anywhere on the map is a highlight for many of the 15% of longer reviews that discuss bases, outposts and raids, and some say it is where the game opens up. Others find it tedious and fragile: raiders arrive constantly, enemies glitch through walls, there is little warning when an attack starts, and building is where pathfinding breaks most often. One reviewer compared starting a base to "cutting yourself in the finger in a shark tank." A few veterans suggest settling in a house in a guarded town first.

A huge world that can feel emptyLow

Only 5% of the longer reviews call the world empty, barren or shallow, but among negative longer reviews the figure is 17%. They describe copy-and-paste ruins, near-identical towns, factions that barely react even when their cities fall, and nothing left to do once your squad is strong. One positive reviewer still wrote: "The game is as wide as the ocean, and deep as a puddle." Fans reply that the emptiness suits a dying world and that the player supplies the goals.

Cheese, exploits and an easy late gameLow

Cheesing and exploits come up in 4% of the longer reviews: stealth and thievery that are too strong, armour crafting that makes money trivial, and ways to farm toughness. Some enjoy this as half the fun; others say the late game stops being a challenge once you know the tricks.

What frustrates players

Bugs, jank and broken pathfindingHigh

This is the complaint raised most: 17% of the longer reviews bring up bugs, glitches, jank or pathfinding, and 46% of the negative longer reviews raise at least one technical problem (bugs, pathfinding, crashes, performance or lost saves). The same details recur: characters stuck on rocks or inside buildings, hotkeys you must press to rebuild the navmesh, workers who stop doing their jobs, haulers who ignore storage, builders who will not pull materials from a full chest, doors that stop working, and recruits who wander off. "The UI can fight you harder than some of the enemies. Pathfinding occasionally becomes its own boss battle," wrote one fan. A negative reviewer said "the hauling AI has reached the point where it has killed my enjoyment of the game." Many positive reviewers list the same bugs and shrug them off as charm, though one of them wrote: "This game is fun when it's working, but it's never working."

Loading, lag and crashesMedium

Loading, lag, poor optimization or crashes come up in 11% of the longer reviews. Reviewers describe regions loading and unloading as squads travel, a swamp area that slows everything down, frequent crashes to desktop, video memory errors, and slowdown with big squads. Even powerful machines are affected: "I have 64gb of ram and 75% of it is free and yet the game keeps unloading regions which I JUST stepped out of." Players trade fixes such as running on an SSD, changing the launcher settings, raising process priority and installing performance mods.

Clunky camera, interface and controlsMedium

The camera, interface or controls draw criticism in 7% of the longer reviews and 18% of the negative ones, many of them from players who quit early. They name a camera that is hard to steer or keep on your character, no WASD or controller option, stretched images on ultrawide screens, enemies that are hard to spot against the terrain, no automatic slowdown when combat starts at high game speed, and no alert when raiders reach your gates. "The camera controls are simply awful, among the lower end of any game I've played," wrote a reviewer who still recommends it.

Leaning on mods to fix the base gameLow

Mods come up in 24% of the negative longer reviews, and several of those argue the game should not need them. One wrote that "the vanilla game is held together by mods," and another: "We're the players; it should not fall to us to fix what we buy." Even fans who recommend it list bug-fix mods as essential.

Old bugs that were never fixedLow

A small group of reviewers say the same bugs have been there for years and expect no more fixes while the developer works on Kenshi 2. One called the game "the pre-Alpha for a game rather than an actual full release."

Lost savesLow

A few reviewers lost long runs to corrupted saves, including one whose save files all vanished after the game crashed during an autosave. Veterans advise frequent manual saves and backups.

No co-opLow

A few reviewers want multiplayer or co-op, mostly as a wish for the sequel.

3. The player conversation

The tone is celebratory and full of in-jokes. Short reviews retell disasters ("I lost both my legs and never felt better."), and the recurring characters are Beep the hiver, the beak things, the cannibals and the Holy Nation. Longer reviews tend to be either run diaries or carefully balanced lists of praise and complaints. The same flaws (bugs, pathfinding, the interface) show up in thumbs-up and thumbs-down reviews alike, and what separates them is whether the reviewer forgives those flaws.

What people write about depends on how far they got. Among longer reviews from players with under five hours, 22% talk about the learning curve, 18% about the camera, interface or controls, and 11% about refunds. Among those with 200 or more hours, mods (32%), bugs and pathfinding (19%) and the hope for Kenshi 2 (17%) come up most, usually from people who know the jank well and play around it.

The sequel turns up in 12% of the longer reviews, almost always with excitement and a wish list (fewer bugs, a modern engine, co-op, a more reactive world). Most of this slice was written in 2025 and 2026, alongside a few old Early Access reviews that their authors updated, so it says little about how opinion has moved over time.

4. What the developers could do

1. Fix pathfinding, the navmesh and the job and hauling AI. Stuck characters, workers who abandon tasks and builders who ignore storage are the most repeated technical complaint, and they hit base builders hardest.
2. Stop the constant region loading and the crashes. Reviewers on high-end PCs still watch towns unload seconds after leaving them, the swamp lags, and crashes cost people their runs.
3. Add an optional tutorial or guided first start. Players with under five hours most often cite confusion, and several fans admit they refunded once before the game clicked.
4. Modernize the camera and controls. A follow camera, WASD or controller support, proper ultrawide handling, enemy highlighting, automatic slowdown when combat starts and raid alerts are all named directly in reviews.
5. Build the essential community fixes into the base game. Several negative reviewers say the game only works properly with bug-fix and quality-of-life mods.
6. Shorten the slowest early grind. Faster crafting, building and mining bars and a quicker early income would answer the copper-hauling complaints without removing the slow climb fans value.
7. Make factions react to big player actions. Critics of the empty late game describe cities falling with no response from their nation and nothing left to do once the squad is strong.
8. Protect saves from autosave crashes. Only a few reviewers lost long runs this way, and at least one of them switched to a negative review over it.