Sounds like someone ran into a group of bandits and got their shit kicked into a death spiral.
Nope, but that's because I already knew about this thanks to youtube videos.
even if they're put in a way that can be seen as "yet another person seething they got their ass kicked by not knowing how the game works
I can promise, this is not the case. Nothing in my post even alludes to the difficulty in the first place except the first sentence about bandit gang-rape, which isn't difficulty but the unavoidable outcome if you try to fight a band of roaming bandits early on. If anything made me rage, it's the camera controls going insane on the y axis when trying to maneuver it with my character inside a building, or the solid minute IRL I spent completely blocked in an outhouse in the Hub by just interacting with it normally (did anyone playtest this I have to wonder).
My truly biggest gripe with the game is that it gives you genuinely no reason to go explore or to even begin to think anything of any faction. In a sense, I genuinely believe that Fallout New Vegas is a better Kenshi on almost all aspects. Contrast the starting area, the factions, the paths a beginner will be given to choose. in FNV, you get NPCs with actual dialogue setting up the world and its factions, you get an immediate feel for the faction reputation system, you are given a clear choice between the dangerous road to the North or the beginner-friendly longer road to the South, and you can pick up quests. You are given information, a purpose, and choices. In Kenshi (and I know it's a sandbox but that doesn't excuse everything), NPCs tell you nothing, you don't glean information about the world, don't get to know the basics of some factions, have no purpose beyond not starving which is laughably easy by just mining right outside the gate, and are not confronted with any in-world issues to solve or care about. Again, in FNV, you can act immediately on the Powder Gang issue and are confronted with the much more overarching issue of warring factions for the Dam.
And all this sucks because from videos I know that there is at least a lot of varieties in landscapes and a good number of factions even if they're basic, but Kenshi doesn't want you to experience those. Kenshi doesn't give me a reason to care, doesn't confront me with any issues or even character writing or world-building, excepting bandits I maybe saw 40 NPCs and here are all of them: dialogue-deprived basic civilians, guards, shinobis, shopkeepers, one Shek who wants to travel with me for free (only character so far with a modicum of actual dialogue), mercenaries who cost way too much for early game.
And at least in a sanbox like Minecraft or Terraria you're meant to go explore just for the pretty sights in an easy game, but Kenshi will break your legs if you do that, so the game forces you to grind, contrary to a true sandbox, but it doesn't provide any incentive to do so. I am rambling a lot to say that Kenshi lacks structure and isn't really designed to stand on its own without structure, which imo is why every video on youtube desperately tries to create one out of very barebones elements.
