History VideoGame / Kenshi

* AuthorityGrantsAsskicking: Many faction leaders are very strong warriors in their own right.
** Esata the Stone Golem, queen of the Shek, in addition to her very high stats and skills, wields a legendary Meitou Fragment Axe and therefore hits like a truck.
** Tinfist, the infamous leader of the Anti-Slavers, is the strongest martial artist in the game.
** Cat-Lon, the [[spoiler:now insane]] leader of the Second Empire Exiles, is also extremely powerful and armed with a Meitou-grade Falling Sun.
** Don't let their gaudy and somewhat funny-looking outfits mislead you: the Noble Hunters of the Traders Guild usually found patrolling the United Cities territories, are pretty competent fighters. They usually carry very good grade weapons and possess stats and skills in the 50-70 range. And let's not forget about the entourage of elite samurai bodyguards that accompany them everywhere.

''Kenshi'' is a tactical [[GenreBusting RPG / RTS / Simulation]] from [[http://lofigames.com/ Lo-Fi Games]] based around a WideOpenSandbox, with emphasis on "sand." After 12 years in development and nearly five years in Early Access, the game was released on UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} and [[Website/{{GOGDotCom}} GOG]] on December 6th, 2018.

* TheEmpire: Depending on which [[FantasticRacism race you play as]], the Holy Nation is this, as it will attack anyone non-human on sight.

%%* EvilIsEasy: A skilled thief can effortlessly sneak around at night and rob an entire town blind with relative ease, and a well-coordinated, proper ambush set up by a strong enough group can destroy virtually any caravan and reap huge profits from the looted goods. And let's not even begin with the potential monetary rewards of the drug trade. It's perfectly possible to play the game as a highly successful, morally ambiguous (or corrupt) hustler... but a single mistake at the wrong time and/or place can mean incurring the wrath of one of the major factions. If that happens, you'd better be prepared for grave consequences. %%give details on why finding morally good success is harder

* ApocalypseHow: There have been at least two Class 2 events in the past, with one of them veering dangerously into Class 3a - in-game information suggests the human race was at one point on the verge of extinction.

* DropTheHammer: There is a whole category of Blunt weapons including all kinds of jittes, clubs and sticks. They cause little bleeding damage and as such are optimal for knocking out and capturing enemies without accidentally killing them, which makes them a favourite tool among slavers. The exception would be the Spiked Club, which actually provides a very high bleeding rate. Due to how the damage system works, Blunt weapons are (realistically) pretty effective against armor, and strong enemies wielding quality ones (like Skin Bandits) will remain a real threat even in the late game.

* ArmorIsUseless: Averted. A good set of protective gear is vital to ensure survival unless a character becomes an unbelievably agile LightningBruiser able to gracefully evade all attacks (which is a long, arduous, and painful development path). The game employs a fairly complicated system (explained [[http://kenshi.wikia.com/wiki/Resistances here]]) involving resistances against different kinds of damage, plus how much coverage each armor piece provides to each body part. Note that even the best armor alone won't instantly turn any character into a walking tank, as the Toughness stat also influences how much damage is suffered from each hit. Also, some enemies can cause tremendous damage, so developing your defensive (blocking) skills is essential for survival. In any case, a decent suit of armor will still be much appreciated in many situations, like when confronting hordes of weak enemies who will eventually land some hits through any character's defense.

* ContractualBossImmunity: Averted. Humanoid bosses can be silently KO'd, disarmed, kidnapped, put into cages or mutilated like every other humanoid [=NPC=] in the game. In combat, they can also be staggered like everyone else. The only things setting bosses apart from regular opponents are their high stats and the quality gear they usually wield and wear.

* FriendlyFireproof: Averted. The "Precision Shooting" skill actually regulates how likely any shooter is to accidentally incur into friendly fire when allies are in the way of their shots. For this reason, players are advised to refrain from giving high damage crossbows to low-skilled shooters. Since, as with any other skill in the game, Precision Shooting is levelled up from hitting your own allies, it's preferable to assign low-quality junkbows to your newbie shooters until they get said crucial skill up to an acceptable level.

* GameplayAllyImmortality: Averted. AnyoneCanDie is always in full effect, all the time. There is nothing stopping your first character from being killed in the first five minutes if they pick a fight way out of their league.

* InvulnerableKnuckles: [[AvertedTrope Nope.]] Unless you are playing as a Skeleton or otherwise have robotic limbs, you can injure yourself if you try to fight barehanded against armored foes. A good amount of conditioning is necessary to bypass this.

* KatanasAreJustBetter: Averted. As it happens with every other weapon in the game, katanas have a set of strengths and weaknesses. To be more specific, katanas tend to be considered a good choice for the early game due to their high attack speed and damage bonus against humans (+10%), since most players are likely to spend the first in-game days contending with scantly armored human opponents. However, the maluses to armor penetration (-30%) and versus robots (-39%) turn them into suboptimal options when tougher and better armored enemies begin to appear.

* OffWithHisHead: Surprisingly averted for a game where loss of limbs is quite commonplace. That said, if the damage meter of any "essential" part of the body (head, chest, stomach) reaches -100, it's instant death.

* OneSteveLimit: Averted due to the abundance of generic recruits (both available in taverns and as potential slave recruits) with randomly generated names. It is also possible to give party members the same name after paying one of the available surgeons a visit. Not even some of the unique recruits are safe from this.

* RagnarokProofing: Played straight with Edgewalker and Meitou-grade weapons, whose blades never rust nor need sharpening and are rumored to be unbreakable. The KLR Series robotic limbs are also famed for their extreme durability, and despite being employed in war frontlines some have survived (in perfect condition) to the present day. Averted with almost everything else, as the game world is littered with corroded and broken remains of the past eras, and the current civilizations have been forced to basically rebuild from scratch.

* ObviousBeta: Even after the official release and several subsequent patches, a plethora of bugs and performance issues remain. Some, like enemy limbs flying at extreme speeds when cut off could be considered GoodBadBugs. Others, like the rare case of every town in the world outside your starting location being devoid of life, or your own settlements disappearing if left alone for too long... not so much. Some of those bugs can be blamed on the game's outdated [=OGRE=] engine, which wasn't designed for multi-core processors.

* NoobCave: The Border Zone. The only dangers are Hungry Bandits (the weakest opponents in the game, and they can sometimes be talked down) and the Dust Bandits. None of them will eat you and both are easy to outrun as soon as you reach a somewhat decent level in Athletics. The bands of Slavers are a bigger threat for obvious reasons, but even slower due to their heavy gear, and will leave you alone as long as you don't get knocked out in their vicinity.

* DyingRace: The Skeletons appear doomed to become extinct in the long run. As mechanical beings, they cannot reproduce by themselves, and the means and infrastructure to create new ones were lost a long time ago.

* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: The Shek. See BloodKnight above.

%%* EvilIsEasy: A skilled thief can effortlessly sneak around at night and rob an entire town blind with relative ease, and a well-coordinated, proper ambush set up by a strong enough group can destroy virtually any caravan and reap huge profits from the looted goods. And let's not even begin with the potential monetary rewards of the drug trade. It's perfectly possible to play the game as a highly successful, morally ambiguous (or corrupt) hustler... but a single mistake at the wrong time and/or place can mean incurring the wrath of one of the major factions. If that happens, you'd better be prepared for qrave consequences. %%give details on why finding morally good success is harder

* EvilVsEvil: From the perspective of the Antislavers and other outcast groups like the Flotsam Ninjas, the war between the United Cities and the Holy Nation is this.
* FakingAmnesia: The Skeletons claim that they have no memory of the previous eras, due to their sanity-preserving and experience-erasing resets. A conversation between a player skeleton and Iyo reveals that this is all an act.

* SavedToEnslave: The first thing Slavers do when stumbling upon someone who has been beaten and left unconscious and bleeding on the ground is to patch them up. ¿The second? Put some shackles on their feet and haul them towards the nearest slave shop or camp.

* BonusBoss: Due to the non-linear, OffTheRails nature of Kenshi's gameplay, every single ''named'' antagonist in the game can be considered this. Powerful individuals tend to be the leaders of major and minor factions the player may opt to oppose and topple, and usually possess valuable and desirable items. However, in the end, going against them or not is entirely for the player to decide.

* TrainingFromHell: In order to get stronger, the characters must be thrown into potentially lethal fights and get constant beatings.

* AmazonianBeauty: Female characters can also get muscular as stats go up. If the player tinkers enough with the character creator, they might also give females prettier facial features.
* AmbiguousGender: Skeletons. While they lack physical genders, it is not entirely clear whether some (or perhaps all) skeletons individually consider themselves either male or female. [[spoiler:In a pretty hilarious party banter, [[TheIntelligible Agnu]] ''seems'' to imply she(?) identifies as female. However, it's ambiguous if said statement is for real or if Agnu is merely having some extra fun at poor, confused Beep's expense.]]

* BackStab: Not really a "stab" per se, but while on stealth mode, it's possible to approach unsuspecting victims from behind and silently knock them out. Characters with very high Stealth and Assassination can take down virtually anyone in such a manner. This comes in handy not only to prevent sleeping guards or store owners from waking up from suspicious noises (like someone trying to unlock their safes at night) but also for capturing powerful wanted individuals without needing a fight.

* BraveScot: Trepp, an infamous captain of the Tech Hunters. She speaks with a Scottish accent and her reaction after fighting her way through [[NoWomansLand the]] [[ChurchMilitant Holy Nation]] is laughing her ass off.
* BullyingADragon: Most bandits will assault anyone who pops up into their field of view, regardless of disparity in terms of numbers, skill and equipment. This can and will lead to situations in which a group of ten or twelve Dust Bandits or Grass Pirates eagerly charge against foes perfecly able to turn them into mincemeat. ''Some'' gangs are a bit smarter though: Holy Nation Outlaws will usually refrain from assaulting anyone whom they do not outnumber by some margin.
* CallASmeerpARabbit: Downplayed. Several animal types have names similar to Earth animals, but despite having some points of contact, they are often very dis-similar. At one end of the spectrum are Boneyard Wolves, Bonedogs, Bulls and Goats, which are all similar to their earth equivalents but grow to be very large and seem to have external bone plating. Somewhere in the middle are Land Bats, which do indeed look a lot like large, wingless bats, and Gorillos, which are somewhat gorilla-like but with disproportinately enormous faces and giant mouths with far too many teeth. At the other end of the spectrum are Blood Spiders and Skin Spiders, which although they move in a vaguely spider-like way, have only four limbs and very human-like faces, and Swamp Turtles, which are very large, elephantine creatures whose chief resemblance to a turtle is the shells on their backs.

* ClusterFBomb: Many characters tend to express themselves as crudely as one may expect from a post-apocalyptic CrapsackWorld setting. Most people won't be happy to have one of their limbs chopped off.

* CoolShades: The Ashlander Stormgoogles.
* CrapsaccharineWorld: The Holy Nation hearthland of Okran's Pride may seem nice at first glance to any male human player character: a green and fertile valley surrounding a non-contaminated river, with working farms and constantly watched by a steady amount of patrols who may even offer supplies to the wandering adventurer. However, by just digging a bit deeper it will become obvious how sexist, racist, totalitarian and technophobic the Holy Nation actually is.

* CrossingTheDesert: Considering how arid most of Kenshi's continent is (with entire regions consisting on endless [[SeaOfSand sandy seas]]), the average player and many [=NPC=]s will spend quite a good amount of time doing this.

* CyberneticsEatYourSoul: The Holy Nation's stance on [[ArtificialLimbs robotic limbs]] is pretty close to this. If you approach one of their settlements with a character sporting any artifical limbs, they react as if they're a skeleton; that is to say, they ''attack on sight.''

* DamageSpongeBoss: Leviathans, massive creatures indigenous to the aptly named Leviathan Coast. Ironically, in a world where almost everything will actively try to kill, enslave and/our devour the player's band, Leviathans are not aggresive and will usually cause no harm as long as they're left alone. The valuable, ten-kilo pearls that can be looted from their bodies makes them a pretty lucrative hunting target however.

* DeadlyDustStorm: Downplayed. Unlike [[DeadlyGas poison clouds]] or acid rain, dust storms in Kenshi are not "harmful" weather per se due to not affecting the health of characters directly. However, the reduced visibility effects mean crossbowmen will have a higher chance to incur into FriendlyFire, which can prove nasty to parties who heavily rely on their shooters. Not to mention that, being a pretty common occurrence in the more arid and desertic biomes, they also make spotting buried [[AntlionMonster skimmers]] more difficult.
* DeadlyGas: Some regions are plagued by toxic fumes which can be hazardous to organic characters not equipped with gas masks. The Black Desert still bears the marks of the pollution of the past, with frequent and dangerous black poison clouds which sometimes drift into nearby areas. [[spoiler:In the Ashlands, the continuous volcanic activity also produces poison clouds which do nothing to the resident Skeleton Legions but can be dangerous to unprepared "fleshy" visitors.]]

* DesertWarfare: To be expected aplenty, since a good chunk of the mostly arid continent is populated by a plethora of warring factions, outlaws, homicidal robots, insane cannibals and opportunistic slavers who prey on the weak.

** The unique companion Infinite Wingwang initially costs 100,000 c; depending on the barter dialogue you have with him, it's possible to eventually hire him for 5,000 c. With some patience and chance, it's possible to amass enough money (by scavenging weapons and amour pieces on battlefield) quite early in the game. Anyway, Infinite Wingwang starts with very high stats, and normally raising the own attributes and martial stats of your common average party members would be a lot longer than scrounging 5,000 c.
* DressingAsTheEnemy: If a player character gets their hands on some gear branded as belonging to a specific faction, it's possible to disguise oneself as a member of that faction. The more pieces of "branded" gear being worn at the same time, the more effective the disguise will be. Be warned that even with a full set, a high Stealth skill will be mandatory for successfully fooling anyone. And there is also the possibility that guards will become suspicious, so try not to get too close to them. In any case, whatever the reason you have for disguising yourself, don't hang around for too long or you'll eventually get caught. And be also careful not to casually stroll into a settlement while wearing the uniform of a faction that is not welcome there.

* TheEmpire: Depends on which [[FantasticRacism race you play as]], the Holy Nation is this and will attack anyone on sight who isn't a human.

* EnergyWeapon: Get near the region of Venge during daytime, and you'll be surprised to see large columns of light seemingly falling down from the Sky. Tip: without proper burn-resistent gear, said beams will give you something more than a sunburn. Except for Skeletons. Actually, having at least a Skeleton in the party will shed some light on the matter: [[spoiler:it's the work of a satellite weapon (a relic from ancient times) orbiting above the region. There used to be another one... before it fell amidst The Eye]].
* AnEntrepreneurIsYou: There are plenty different ways to earn [[GlobalCurrency cats]]. Some are quite common in the RPG genre: mining iron or copper nodes to get ore which can be sold to merchants, [[RobbingTheDead robbing the dead]] to sell the loot at the nearest town, etc. Other strategies involve [[BountyHunter bounty hunting]], becoming a proper highwayman, selling captives to slavers, caravaneering between settlements buying low and selling high... and to top it all, establishing your own stronghold with farms, factories, etc.

* EvilIsEasy: Played with, and depends on what one may consider "evil" in such a brutal, unforgiving setting where most factions are assholes one way or the other. A skilled thief can effortlessly sneak around at night and rob an entire town blind with relative ease, and a well-coordinated, proper ambush set up by a strong enough group can destroy virtually any caravan and reap huge profits from the looted goods. And let's not even begin with the potential monetary rewards of the drug trade. It's perfectly possible to play the game as a highly successful, morally ambiguous (or corrupt) hustler... but a single mistake at the wrong time and/or place can mean incurring the wrath of one of the major factions. If that happens, you'd better be prepared for qrave consequences.
* EvilLuddite: It seems the Holy Nation doesn't allow discovery of ancient science books or any significant progress of technology. Nor even let anyone to be at [[StrawHypocrite their technological level]]. Narko's Trap is proof of that, being a large military base built around an old science outpost.
* EvilTaintedThePlace: The Holy Nation believes [[FirstTown The Hub]] to be "cursed", thus they stay away from it. This has allowed the place to become a safe haven of sorts for drifters and criminals.
* EvilVsEvil: From the perspective of the Antislavers and other outcast groups like the Flotsam Ninjas, the ongoing war between the United Cities and the Holy Nation basically amounts to this, which might not be wrong. From a more balanced point of view, see GreyAndGrayMorality below.

* FantasyCounterpartCulture: The setting is a wide desert which human dwellers are Japanese-inspired people and factions.

* FateWorseThanDeath: Being captured by Fogmen or cannibals, and being unable to escape before you're EatenAlive by them. Beak Things may also start feasting on a character it manages to knock out.
** Falling into the hands of the Skin Bandits may perhaps be even worse. [[spoiler:They throw captives into a "Peeler Machine" which unceremoniously skins them alive.]] Players tend to face a serious dilemma after taking down their [[spoiler:actually human]] leader, Savant: turn him in for a very substantial reward or [[LaserGuidedKarma put him through his own invention,]] or do both.
* TheFederation: The United Cities would be an evil (and decadent) version.

* FirstTown: The Hub, a mostly ruined den of vagabonds and drifters, is where most players will begin their first playthrough. It is conveniently located right in the middle of the Border Zone, one of the safest areas in the continent due to the abscence of carnivorous predators and unhealthy weather conditions, and there are several iron and copper nodes nearby to earn some easy cash at the beginning of your adventure.

* FlunkyBoss: Many examples. Virtually every faction leader is wise enough to surround themselves with the strongest bodyguards available. Boss fights tend to be difficult as a result, as not only are most leaders [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking pretty powerful in their own right]], but they're also surrounded by strong retinues.

* HiveCasteSystem: The Hivers have a 4-class system, 3 of which are playable. They are Workers, Soldiers, Princes and finally, Queens. However how Kenshi utilises this trope is much more developed than most others in fiction, in Hiver society, it isn't the Queen who rules and leads the Hive but the Princes. The Queens are still important to the culture and continuation of the Hive, but for all intents and purposes they're essentially walking [[BabyFactory Baby Factories]]. Venerated like a Holy Mother more than anything; the Princes are the real figure heads within Hives. As the Queen's royal consort, their word is law and every Hiver under them must obey.

* HiveCasteSystem: The Hivers have a 4-class system, 3 of which are playable. They are Workers, Soldiers, Princes and finally, Queens. However how Kenshi utilises this trope is much more developed than most others in fiction, in Hiver society, it isn't the Queen who rules and leads the Hive but the Princes. The Queens are still important to the culture and continuation of the Hive, but for all intents and purposes they're essentially walking [[BabyFactory Baby Factories]]. Venerated like a Holy Mother more than anything. The Princes are the real central power within Hives. As the Queen's royal consort, their word is law and every Hiver under them must obey.