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Kenshi is ugly, opaque, confusing, buggy, and unwelcoming. It demands patience and persistence with no immediate rewards. It makes no allowances for the inexperienced, the inept, or the videogame-illiterate. It actively defies you to give up and uninstall within the first 10 minutes of play. It also happens to be a little bit brilliant.

Having vaguely followed Kenshi's development for years, and having bounced hard off the free demo released a few years ago, I finally picked it up on sale, confident that I would probably Steam refund it after my second try. One week later and I've hardly played anything else.

It's quite likely you're suffering a little cognitive dissonance as your eyes drift from the rather unpromising screenshots and trailers - packed with outdated graphics, an ugly UI, and vague, overambitious-sounding statements - to the Steam reviews, which are currently 87% positive. You may be worried that Kenshi is one of those games that is really enjoyable for hardcore, min-maxing basement dwellers but totally inaccessible to anyone else - and that's a legitimate concern. Kenshi does ask you to invest time and patience to get the most out of it; I want to convince you that the investment is worthwhile.

As the trailers suggest, you start off as a nobody in a harsh, post-apocalyptic world filled with people (and monsters) that comprehensively outnumber, outgun, and outclass you. And that's it. There's not a main quest that doles out steadily-improving powers and gear, there's not a friendly NPC who gives you some cash and directions to an easy fight with decent loot. You exist in a hostile world that can and will kill you moments after leaving the starter town - it's how you bounce back and start making that world your own that makes Kenshi stand out.

There's a moment of existential dread that sets in when you look out over the scorched wasteland, with nothing more than some rags, a rusty iron stick, and half a day's food in your pack, wondering what the hell to do next and if it's even worth it. Fight through that dread. That feeling of aimlessness and hopelessness is just mainstream-videogames leaving your system; you get so used to a smooth tutorial and a clear path ahead that all the freedom in front of you is straight-up daunting. What should you do? Just start walking.

The world of Kenshi is huge, and contains rather more colour and diversity than the trailers make out. There are roaming bands of marauders, mutants, cannibals and religious zealots, there are fortified cities, hardscrabble farmsteads, and infested ruins, there are foetid swamps, blasted deserts, and weird, fungal valleys just as peculiar and intriguing as anything out of Morrowind. When you start out, this world is going to reject you: there's nothing you can face in a straight fight and nowhere safe to lay down roots. To get anywhere, you'll have to sneak, steal, starve, and - yes - get the ♥♥♥♥ kicked out of you every now and then.

Life at the bottom of the food chain is tough, and it can feel like you're not making progress, but in reality everything you do is making you tougher. Getting walloped makes your character hardier, losing fights improves your combat skills, and the scraps you pick from the aftermath of procedural battles between NPCs can provide some much-needed gear. In my first few days, I scrounged up enough money for the materials to put up a small shack. I built it away from civilisation, tucked into the crevices of a mountain by the swamp, hoping maybe to scratch out a living by farming before venturing out and doing some walloping of my own.

Bandits came and beat me up. Raptors ate my first crop, then my second crop - then every harvest after that for a week. Desperate, I wandered deeper into the swamp, looting the remains of swamp bandits who had been eaten by blood spiders (blood spiders?!) as I went. I found a settlement, pawned my paltry pickings, and signed on a couple of outcasts willing to join me for free. Back to the shack we went, where once again the raptors ate our crops and the bandits doled out humiliating beatings. The next time they came back there was a wall, and a big gate. They just knocked down the gate. The time after that, there were crossbows mounted on the walls and a few more drifters on our side. They got through the gate, but no farther. We do the walloping now.

Kenshi erects some fairly high barriers around itself, and a lot of the best fights and features are locked behind those barriers. This starts out feeling like a problem, but you come to realise that overcoming those barriers make every success, no matter how minor, seem immensely important. The struggle to survive never stops being real, and no threats ever become so trivial that they can be safely dismissed. This means you are invested in your characters and in the world in a way you rarely feel in other games; by the time you get a handle on things, you've come so far and have so much to lose that the drama of the game world is always gripping. How many times in other games have you been warned by some Cortana knockoff "Oh no, a wave of dangerous and battle-hardened foes is approaching, try not to poop your pants!" only to be faced by more of the same goons you've been absent-mindedly mowing down for hours? This never happens in Kenshi. Kenshi never has to artificially inflate the stakes, because the stakes are always real. Kenshi never has to script its drama, because its drama is generated automatically by your interactions with the world.

Once you've got past the rocky start, the dodgy presentation, the occasional wonkiness of the AI, and the overall hostility of the world, the freedom the developers promise really is there. You choose your own adventures and your own goals; there are fights to be had, rivals to be made, bounties to be collected, factions to befriend or destroy, and a surprisingly deep city-building element you can pick up or ignore completely as you see fit. Kenshi will reward all the time, imagination, and obsession you pour into it - just give it a chance!

If you still haven't bought Total War Warhammer and you can't seem to find any consensus on whether or not it's any good, let me lay it out for you: Total War Warhammer is the perfect game, and that's why it's never going to be good enough. The Total War and Warhammer franchises form the ultimate chocolate-n'-peanut-butter combination, a fusion so obvious as to seem more or less predestined - and indeed, it's the game I've been dreaming about since I first played Medieval Total War way back in 2002.

When Creative Assembly finally got the keys to the Warhammer franchise, it was just as much a curse as a blessing; it gave them the chance to make the game their fans (not to mention many of their staff) had been dreaming of, but it also meant the final product would be held to an impossibly high standard. Ultimately, I don't think any studio could make the perfect Warhammer Total War - nothing could ever live up to people's expectations, no matter how good - so I think it is only fair to judge CA's current effort on the basis of how good it is in and of itself. That's not to say people shouldn't push CA to do better, but I think many of the reviews here do not give CA due credit for what they have done. Likewise, a lot of the reviews here give CA flak for their pricing and DLC practices; this is fair enough (although I think the Warhammer DLC has actually been much better value for money than their previous stuff, much of which was pretty poor) but again it does not answer the key question: is the game any good?

The short answer is yes. I don't think any game thus far has successfully realised the fantasy offered up by the Warhammer universe; if the tabletop game depended on imagination and willing suspension of disbelief to translate your 12 plastic orcs into a full-blown horde, CA's version renders that mental image into a convincing reality. Every unit bristles with visual detail and incidental animation, and there is the right balance between faithfulness to the originals and artistic freedom for each model to translate successfully over to the videogame world. The giants have lovingly-detailed paunch-physics, the beastmen stomp and twitch their ears with an immediately discernible impatience, the gyrocopters wobble and sputter in a believably steampunk way.

The visual distinctiveness of each unit is matched by an increased distinctiveness on the field of battle too; the rock-paper-scissors / infantry-cavalry-ranged simplicity of previous Total War games is now much more varied, with many units playing much more specific or situational roles. The deep and weird unit rosters available will be a relief to anyone who got tired of Rome's interchangeable glut of spear-bros, and even the "vanilla" human faction offers such goodies as the tank-like demigryph knights, the hellstorm rocket battery, and an actual tank. Most importantly, each unit has a definite sense of heft and weight on the field, and you can usually tell at a glance how much power and impact a unit will have - a troop of heavily armoured dwarves will break an oncoming charge through sheer resilience, while a horde of boar boys will topple over and send flying entire ranks of lighter units by pure momentum. Add to this the spectacle of artillery, magic, and enormous monstrous units, and the battles achieve a Lord-of-the-Rings level of satisfying spectacle.

Outside the battles, the game stumbles a little, and we are inevitably reminded that we are still playing a Total War game. The thrills agonies of playing Benny Hill with a fleeing enemy army remains, the diplomacy can be obscure, the AI can be funny at times, and the actual city-building component has been stripped down somewhat to accomodate the game's greater focus on war (because, well, it's got war in the name twice). Even within the battles, the AI can pull some odd moves, and unfortunately it remains entirely possible to cheese battles with computer opponents in certain circumstances. The actual flow of the campaign, however, is a little perkier than in the past, with hero-specific quests goading you on and increasing Chaos incursions from the north often prompting massive power shifts in the mid-to-late game. Magic, likewise, is a mixed bag, and the visual spectacle of the spells does not always match their actual efficacy; CA have clearly ♥♥♥♥♥-footed a little bit with magic out of fear of making it overpowered, and while it definitely does add an extra tactical layer to battles there are certain schools of magic which currently feel a little ineffectual.

These gripes aren't enough to destabilise the main experience, however, and the sheer hugeness of the game and the sheer number of diverse elements it includes is enough to make it a considerable accomplishment; you can definitely tell in some places that it has been a bit of a squeeze to fit all the elements of a Warhammer game into a Total War one, but nevertheless they have managed it. Each of the factions is asymetrical and hugely distinct, and I have happily played through each one without feeling like I was retreading old ground. The addition of RPG-style elements to generals and agents (now heroes) manages to be both onobtrusive and compelling, intensifying the bond you form with those generals who just keep pulling it out of the bag (RIP Lord Reginald Flusshammer). The world map is fantastically detailed, too, and sets up a number of choke-points and barriers that greatly impact strategic planning.

If you've never played a Total War game before, this may be a more overwhelming point of entry than Shogun 2, but it is enough of a visual and kinaesthetic treat that experience isn't necessary to derive a lot of enjoyment from it. If you have played a Total War game before, this will mark a dramatic improvement over Rome and Attila (indeed, I even prefer it to Shogun 2), and will form a pretty-much bottomless timesink once you get stuck into it. All in all, I think a paraphrase/reversal of Batman might be best here: it may not be the Total War Warhammer we deserve, but it's the one we need right now.

To anyone reading these reviews who is confused by the massive swings between positive and negative, you need to know one thing: Darkest Dungeon is an emotional game. To people just starting out, it can seem baffling, unfair, and deliberately obscure. To people who have been playing since Early Access, and who have seen favourite party compositions and strategies rendered obsolete, the Steam reviews page is more of an extension of Reddit than anything else - a place to air grievances (legitimate or otherwise) over a game that they have dedicated a lot of time to.

What a lot of these reviews miss out is... y'know... the actual review part. On that front, I would say the following: the core gameplay is rock solid. At its heart, Darkest Dungeon has taken a minimalist, turn-based, four-man combat system and imbued it with massive potential for tactical thought and personal flair. Figuring out the best role for each of your heroes (chosen from a fairly generous pool of classes) and suddenly realising a unique way of getting them to synergise is immensely gratifying. Unlike a lot of games, it doesn't feel like there is a a ring-fenced area of "correct", vanilla play that only the very high-level players can get past; instead, you are encouraged and rewarded for coming up with your own strategies from the get go. The central combat system is smart, it pushes you to experiment, and there is a lot of room to come up with a playstyle that feels like your own, unique creation.

HOWEVER! If that's all Darkest Dungeon was, it would be a neat tablet-based distraction, but ultimately sterile. It is the stuff that comes layered on top of it that is the source of its intrigue - and also the source of a lot of the frustration you'll see directed at it. As a typical RPG player, you naturally do everything you can to guarantee the safety and efficacy of your character(s), and it feels inherently uncomfortable to work in a game environment that leaves you perpetually on your toes and at risk of failure. DD refuses to let you settle into a comfortable routine, and a massive enemy critical attack, an ambush in pitch-dark while camping, or a series of misses on your part can topple you from a seemingly-unassailable position to a very desperate one. The potential for a fail-cascade is what turns off many new players, and even drives experienced ones to the occasional rage-review, but it is also vital to the fundamental risk-reward balance of the game, which is designed to punish complacency and encourage the utmost thought on your part.

As you progress through a dungeon, you constantly need to balance a dwindling supply of light, food, sanity and health (although they can be restored in some ways), while also trying to complete objectives and collect much-needed loot with limited backpack space. Usually, this is the sort of gameplay I dislike; feeling that there is a time-limit, that I can't plough through something at my own speed in relative safety, is an uncomfortable experience after most games. However, the actual result is some very effective tension. In a normal RPG (say... Diablo), the steady drip of ever-increasing numbers is satisfying in a functional sort of way, but in DD the stakes are so high that getting a critical hit or dodging a huge attack always feels like a moment rather than just a nice bonus.

It can initially feel punishing and unfair, since most gamers are hard-wired to see a hero death (which is permanent), a catastrophic turn-around, or a "tactical retreat" as a failure. Likewise, the element of randomness can make it feel like your hard work and smart play has not been rewarded, like you're just a random collection of atoms buzzing around in a meaningless void where there is no God or higher authority to dispense justice or distinguish right or wrong.... It takes time to realise that you were never meant to have it easy, that it's always been a gamble, and you can't expect a perfect S ranking - all you can do is make the best play you can with the information you have. It takes time to realise that the game is pushing you to accept loss and difficulty as part of the game, rather than a failure.

Even I rage quit every now and then - but I always come back, because, as I said, Darkest Dungeon is an emotional game. You invest (real) time and (fake) money in your group of heroes, the odds are massively stacked in the House's favour, none of your guys is going to come out unscarred, you are going to face some serious setbacks, but you return because actually making it, actually landing that last hit at the last possible moment, realising you've scraped through again, is always a surprise, and an amazing one at that.