Kenshi vs My Time at Portia
Kenshi
Kenshi is an open world, semi-sandbox, party-based RPG that offers players an completely open-ended gameplay rather than opting to force players to go through a storyline. You can be anyone you like in this game, be it an honest trader, an adventurer, a bandit or others. Scavenge important resources, including weapons and armor, from corpses and use them for your own. Recruit new companions from towns, build an outpost of your own, and grow it to accomodate more of your companions. Of course, as your little town thrives, bandits and jealous rivals will attack you and you'll need to make sure all your people have what they need to defend the town and repel the invaders.Sounds like fun? Well, it definitely is. However, Kenshi, being a pretty ambitious early access game, does have it fair share of flaws. The game still has plenty of glitches still and can be really hard to get into, especially at the beginning of the game where you literally have no idea what you need to do.
That said, the game is very unique because it has a pretty rare theme and its gameplay - a combination of party-based survival/ base building - is also oddly rare among the other games on the market. So, you might want to check this game out.
My Time at Portia
My Time at Portia is a charming fantasy-themed adventure RPG that is set on a gorgeous, revitalized world after a post-apocalyptic event wiped out the previous technologically-advanced civilization. In this game, you play as an up-and-coming Builder, a respected role in society, whose sole purpose is to help solve the town's problems by engineering a solution.With a gameplay which may fondly remind you of games like Harvest Moon, My Time at Portia may be grindy in an RPG sort of way (think repeated dungeon runs or resource-harvesting), but the game has a nice relaxing pace, where its quests (both main and side quests) are slowly revealed as you progress. Being a Builder, you can also complete a commission request daily to collect some cash. The game also features an elaborate gifting/relationship-building system, fun ruin-diving areas, tons of interesting characters to meet, and challenging dungeons. You can even romance and eventually marry an NPC (not all though) you like!
The best part of the game is definitely its in-depth crafting system. There are tons of machines you can build to help you generate a wide variety of materials to build other stuff. You can also unlock new machine technologies via the Research Center.
My Time at Portia feels a lot like an adorable MMORPG minus the MMO part. It has the grind, the dungeon runs... but of course, this game places a lot more emphasis on its resource-collecting, as well as crafting and building aspects. Sounds like a game you'd like to play? Well, despite still being in early access, the first chapter of the game is already ready and bugs-free, so if you do buy the game, know that you can at least get a good 40 hours or so out of it.