The Age of Decadence

It's a short game by many people's standards. That seems so till you realise that each faction has it own story & agenda, and it's not just like choosing the flavour for an ice-cream (that is, the cases when it doesn't matter what guild's tattoo you are wearing, you are expected to do the exact same things anyway), here even when going trough the same faction's story again with a differently built char you will find out, much too your own disbelief, that you missed out quite a few more alternative progression paths... and just when you think you've got a good grasp on the workings of politics & intrigues of the world you are visiting you get slammed by bits of 'in-game mythology' telling of demons, angels and the great magic of ages past... yet not all men are created equal, where one sees magic and all powerfull creatures other sees but applied knowledge and a firm grasp of advanced technology... all the while most people around them neither see nor question anything and just choose to 'blindly believe', after all faith is all that's needed for their salvation... Then come the superb graphics and attention to details along with amazing rendering of armours & weapons; fluid combat animations, not to mention the surprisingly well done rendering of roman & eastern architecture you will often encounter... Oh, have I mentioned the awesome TBS combat mechanics - if you don't know what that means then perhaps you aren't the target audience for this game... (take no offence 'if we all liked the same things this world would be a really small place and the 2 of us would be 2 very busy people'), along with the possibility of crafting your own weapons & armours (yeah, that's way more then just cosmetic and generic choices) and alchemy (of course there are even shroom based mixtures alongside poisons, liquid fire & black powder goodies)... Long story short, you need to see it all to believe it.

A lot of game lack of Identity, we know that, everyone gets inspired by someone else and sometimes is hard to be creative, there are, of course, some exceptions, AoD is a strategy/story driven CRPG and it does not pretend to be anything else, and that simple fact makes it unique, the game have both cool combat system and a well written story. Now I want to talk about the obvious here, difficulty (combat build only): This game is balanced, nor hard or easy, balanced. A balanced game is one that have a lot of options and, when you know how it works, it invites to play as you like, this is AoD, the moment you get a feeling of it, you set your own limits, and not a lot of games achieved this and when they do is just *chef kiss*. You'll need to search things up tho there's a video on how to "get op", or you can do like me, and test a lot of build until you find something you enjoy playing.

I love strategy games, RPGS, and games that combine the concepts. Black Isle Studios has produced some of my favorite works. And I adore the older Fallout games. This is similar to those types of works in style, but the execution is somewhat different. It's brutal and unforgiving and you have no warning of what you'll need to deal with what's coming up. It's a good game, but I could never finish it because after a while it just starts to feel like work, rather than recreation.

Age of Decadence (AoD) is the first creation of Iron Tower Studios and a bold attempt in a superficial game industry dominated by gratuitous ego stroking. The game has various sources of inspiration, from PnP RPGs and the tough love design of “Gothic 2”, “Prelude to Darkness”, “Darklands”, to the reactivity of “Fallout”, “Fallout 2”, “Arcanum”, and the literary vibe of “Planescape: Torment”. Set in a brutal Romanesque post-apocalyptic world divided by factions fighting for power, AoD is a tour de force composed of excellent writing, amazing reactivity and a challenging combat system that rewards experimentation and thought. I’m pretty sure that the best and the brightest who know that cRPGs are more than FPs will acknowledge this game as new classic.

Age of Decadence, by Iron Tower Studios is an RPG which sets the standard against which RPG connoisseurs will measure future role-playing games for years to come. The game has a number of features which set it apart from most RPG releases in recent years. To name a few such traits, I must refer to the realistic attitudes, motivations and interactions shown by its character cast and in its worldbuilding, the turn-based combat system with a heavy emphasis on tactics, which yet remains surprisingly intuitive, or to the mind-boggling variety of outcomes of its main story and secondary quests. AoD is truly an exceptional occurrence in the recent history of role-playing games. This may seem like it goes without mention, but really, in this game "think before you act" is your guiding principle, along with "save your game often". Whether it's about an ingame decision - like fighting a group of six armed-to-the-teeth thugs - or about your long term strategy in character-building - like spreading his character's skillpoints too thin over too many unrelated skills, being realistic about your character's capabilities is what will keep you alive. Putting yourself in your character's shoes, circumventing his limitations instead of playing superman - isn't this what role-playing is fundamentally about? Age of Decadence is unlike any other RPG you've played in that it will play out differently every time you replay it, depending on your character's background and skills distribution. The developers at Iron Tower Studios have spent a stupefying 10 years in mostly filling up the game with branches of the main and secondary quests, and with branches of the branches. Reactivity in an RPG can never be too much, and in AoD it reaches a point where the world begins to feel more real and alive than you are used to, especially if you have an affinity for its down-to-earth hardboiled novel-like writing style.