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Ever since the devs wrecked their own in-game economy, the game has fundamentally changed into a space fantasy-themed sandbox, and it killed the magic for me. Everything is free now, no need to "explore" or "survive". Every level of play exists on the same server, so people who set everything to easy love to spawn super rare/expensive items and force-gift tons of them to people still stupidly trying to play the old way (i.e. exploring and surviving).

Thing is, I even liked the idea that the grind could be reduced through settings, but the devs went way too far and took anything out that resembles stakes. There was never much of a skill curve, and now there is no longer any progression or even a shared experience as a community. There's no tension or immersion, it's a sandbox tech demo, not a game. That is plenty for some, but a rug pull for others who started playing by the old rules long ago.

I came back in the last couple weeks to try out the new stuff. It was interesting at first, but you eventually see everyone is running around in endgame gear and throwing resources at each other. I wondered why I was investing any time at all, so I got all the stuff myself and was done. I guess that's not "the right way to play", but I prefer to use my precious time on something more challenging than space-themed photo booth. I suppose I got my money's worth over the years, but I cannot recommend this to anyone who wants to play an actual space exploration/survival game that is emotionally and mentally engaging. (Don't let my total hours played fool you, I idle my games a ton).

Buy it on super sale to take a few nice screenshots and get ~1hr of "Neat!" reactions, just know there is not much below that shiny surface. Every game system is pretty superficial, and had only really mattered because you could show off some unique thing you found and worked on. Without that dynamic, there is no sense of wonder or appreciation at the time someone put in, nothing that really outlasts the novelty.

Lots of people think if you get hundreds of hours in a game, that makes it automatically worth it. That is not true. The relatively short time I have in PZ is worth much more than what I paid.

PZ is a way better "story generator" than other games I have played that call themselves this. Those games just use RNG and tell you to use your imagination. Guy loses leg in one hit? Story! Guy randomly dies to much weaker enemy? Story! Guy dies through no action of your own? Story!

There is some RNG (which needs some polish, for sure), but for the most part you can plan and prepare for everything that comes your way. My deaths never felt cheap, they always felt like I took a calculated risk that failed because I overlooked something or got greedy - and will be more careful next time. It felt more like a narrative because there were real choices to make.

Game's got a nice message for our times, too. You might not have much hope, but how you go down is up to you.

This is a tough thumbs down, but it will not hurt the game in any way, and I do not intend to.

The concept is outstanding and I enjoyed the opening grind. But once you start managing a squad and building a base, all the cracks start to show, and I started to feel like I got something unfinished. The other negative reviews cover it all very well and are very accurate, even though some are many years old. Positive reviews largely focus on the opening difficulty, meme-able bugs (a.k.a. "features"), meme-able cruelty, and like to attach their own imaginative narrative, but I think someone looking for a solid gameplay experience from start to finish (and does not want to make excuses for the game constantly), may end up disappointed after putting significant time into the game.

You spend the first LONG 10% of the experience prepping for the rest, just to discover that that part of the game is buggy, unfinished, and will never be improved. It takes a long time to figure out that global events are not "emergent", they are entirely scripted to respond purely to player actions. Inter-faction relations are static unless you do something to change them. There is no trade "system", shops are just time and resource sinks that magically refresh money and items every day.

Many of my logged hours were spent with the game minimized while I tried to find a mod to fix a problem (there are plenty of mods, but most are old and outdated), minimized while I ran web searches to fix a problem, hunting around the terrible UI to fix a problem, reloading to fix a problem, importing to fix a problem, or restarting the game entirely to fix a problem. Often, I lost interest and the game idled in my taskbar for many hours. Gamers have to learn to tell the difference between time spent and QUALITY time spent.

Here is Kenshi's gamplay loop:
1. Finish a starting 100 hour grind to get decent stats, characters, and resources - very tedious for many of the stats, but tolerable because you think you are building up to something big. Start a base. Squad's pathing is screwed up in base, nobody is doing their jobs, some characters get stuck in doorways and starve. Check reddit/steam/other forums.
2. Kenshi fan: "OMG you have no idea how to play PC games, do you? All you gotta do is reload, key combo to open dev tools, click some poorly labeled buttons, import, restart, reload. What an idiot!"
3. New Player: "That did not work, and now my base gets no raids."
4. Kenshi fan: "Ugh, what a hater. All you had to do was exit Kenshi, open the mod editing tool, open the correct file out of your save folder (which I will not tell you the location of), find the data entry among hundreds of data entries (which I will not tell you the location of), edit that entry, save, restart, reload, import, reload! Duh!"
5. New Player: "It got fixed after all that, and not the way you told me. I had to restart, reload, save, import, reload, reload, save, restart. But for some reason I draw random aggro from allied factions."
6. Kenshi fan: "You know this is an indie dev, right? Just make up a story in your head about how your squad insulted some guy. It's a STORY ENGINE! I can't believe you need this much hand holding."
7. New Player: "... Uh, okay. But now dozens of cannibals are just gathering in one spot and standing there causing massive lag..." etc. etc.

I exaggerate a bit - a BIT - here, but fans being fans should not be surprising to any Steam user. The game really is that busted, and players are expected to make up for the dev's shortcomings.

Did I get my money's worth? Eh, I can honestly say... maybe. I would take 2 fun hours for $30 over 200 hours of working to make the game fun for $30 - and there are 2 hours of fun in there... somewhere. Would I recommend this game? I can definitely say no, there are many great alternatives now - not exactly the same, but at least they deliver what they promise.

I think it is fine if you want to buy this at full price, or whatever, for the novelty of its vision. Just know you are getting something pretty broken in the end, even if you can find the fun in it.

EDIT: Thanks for the points!

Thanks, Epic! People forget everyone hated Steam back in the day. Valve has botched every new thing they tried in the last 10 years, but now they are suddenly angels because people lack the mental capacity to use more than one game launcher.

Thumbs up to all the modders who actually make this game worth playing.

Otherwise it is an unforgiving micromanagement nightmare sprinkled with Tynan's weird prejudices: "Creepy Breathing"? Strict Sexual Orientations/Gender Roles? Disabilities and injuries causing permanent reduction in social relations? Yeesh, get out more, Tynan.

Be prepared to choose and configure dozens of mods just to make the game playable. Which means I give you, the players, a thumbs up for making a great game!

Sad

All this nerd rage is delicious. It's not like you have to buy a whole new console to play games on EGS.

Help, I'm being oppressed!.

TL;DR: Solid piece of hardware held back by lack of integrations. If you are aching to play games that do not support controllers by default this is a must-buy. If you play lots of games that already support controllers you might be disappointed.

Best used on games that do not natively support controllers (such as strategy or sim games), but a huge revelation was No Man's Sky. That game shows what is possible with the Steam Controller and it is sad more games did not jump on board with such deep integrations. The touchpads are inferior to sticks only because most games support controllers natively in very specific ways, and using the touchpad successfully can be a crapshoot (for example, mouse and joystick inputs are not simultaneously supported in GTA5, so you are stuck with crappy joy-look+joy-steering when mouse-look+joy-steering is ideal, for me anyway).

I can see the shape of the controller being unformfortable for some, but I have not noticed it.

Overall happy with the investment and hope Valve keeps on supporting it, but TBH I am not optimistic since Valve has seemed to fumble on basically everything they have been up to since HL2.

Muh historical accuracy