Patient Gamers

on some of the later pokemon games i was mostly farming berries, quite obsessively, and the semi fun end game "avenue. rather than battling online.

any rpg I can just grind the starting are y to max level, I do. otherwise I grind to max-reasonable level in each area before progressing.

I don't like to lose.

Deus Ex, I play as a superpowered & auhmented supersoldier

Fallout 4

I've got a lot of mods installed (200-ish). The commonwealth in my version of the game is absolute hellscape with radioactive storms that kill visibility, pitch black nights, hoards of feral ghouls, and upgunned raiders. What it means is that I actually invest in building proper settlements now. I console command for all the resources because I can't be bothered picking through trashpiles. With all the mods, I have huge concrete walls surrounding my settlements which have comfortable bars and hangout areas. It can be very comfortable just chilling in a settlement while a storm rages outside.

When I do go outside I'm playing additional mod loaded content most of the time and doing my best to ignore that default story.

Honestly, any “hard game”. I really love hard and challenging games but time isn’t in my favor (work, commuting and other responsibilities). So when I play a hard game (example Silksong) and I’m genuinely stuck, I’ll just use a Trainer or WeMod to get past it and after that stop using it and continue the game normally.

Well, given that a lot of people in this thread are basically just saying " go sight seeing / abandon storyline and embrace roleplaying "...

I'm gonna go with basically "do anything" in Kenshi.

There is no thing you are supposed to be doing, beyond possibly 'don't die'.

There is no main storyline to follow.

You... just exist.

You can sure find a lot of things to do, places to see, and people to meet, basically quests to undertake... but that is all entirely up to you.

So there is no wrong, or right way to play Kenshi.

The world just kind of... happens to you, and then you react.

Or, maybe you have some notion of what you want to do, and then you try to do, and then the world happens to you during that.

Imagine either a single player MMO, or an immersive sim that focuses on an immerisive world of factions and individuals, which can play out many possible ways, which you can guide and steer those outcomes... but nothing 'has' to happen, there are no threads of prophecy that cannot be severed.

Theoretically, you could kill basically everyone... maybe?

You could build a city, run some kind of farm or mining operation, become a warlord, raise and command an army, wander as a trader or trading caravan, hunt for lore and artefacts, become the strongest warrior, best thief or assassin...

... or be eaten by cannibals or beak things, experience robot racism, be taken captive and forced into literal slavery at a prison camp, have your limbs peeled off, replace them with robot limbs, get incinerated by a misfiring orbital laser platform... or befriend a mentally challenged ... sort of bugmanthing who has been outcast from his hive, but is very endearing...

Or just be friends with a bonedog.

I have actually seen one Japanese youtuber basically just turn their playthrough of Kenshi into a kind of semi-improvised anime.

They'll have 15 to 30 minute episodes and write in some dialogue for their 2 person party, and then have a vocaloid type thing speak it, and they'll do like ren py visual novel framing / blocking, overlaid on top of the game, with more detailed drawn art of the characters.

Unexpected shit happens fairly frequently, and they just roll their characterization along with it, into a semi ad libbed plot/narrative.

That... is a 'way' to play Kenshi.