The Age of Decadence

Age of Decadence has a lot going for it. The combat is quite realistic and absolutely brutal in a way you don't often see in fantasy RPGs - if you're going to pursue the violent resolution then you damn well better be a good fighter! If you enjoy collecting and crafting gear then there's plenty for you to do there too. Unfortunately, combat and crafting seem to be the only areas of the game allowing for any real player choice. When it comes to dialogue, your choices will often result in consequences that seem totally random and that you could not have predicted. I suppose this is pretty realistic - butterfly effect and all - but since combat and just fighting your way through a quest is rarely a viable option it means the game quickly becomes entirely about save scumming, optimizing your character build to pass skill checks, and grinding your way through dialogues until you've found the right set of "choices." It's a lot like playing DnD with a DM who can't handle players who won't play the campaign the way the DM intended. If it weren't for all the railroading, this would be a stellar RPG...everything else is there, but the lack of freedom in dialogues and scripted sequences really brings it down for me. The most fun I had in the game was in the arena, because like I said the combat is great (arguably the game's strongest feature).

The game advertises that it offers you choice and the ability to carve your own destiny out of it's crusty post-apocalyptic landscape. It also advertises itself as a wonderfully wrought tale. It lives up to neither claim. The writing is terrible. Perhaps if you've never opened a real book before and your only experience with story-telling has been Call of Duty and Halo you might find AoD's writing to be intriguing. However, Curious George trumps the dry, incapable pen of whatever monkey they got to write this steaming pile of garbage. The choice it offers is whether to hit the + button next to Strength or Persuade. No, don't touch the other! A successful character in AoD is very strictly relegated to doing one thing very well and nothing else. Difficult combat? Please. It's either impossible, if you chose to be persuasive, or it's simply dull, if you chose to be a scrapper. The dialogue choices during scenarios are incredibly limiting as well. There's no flexibility. In a world where everyone is trying to deceive you and take you for every penny you're worth, you, the player, aren't given the option to be deceitful. The writers obviously couldn't conceive of the possibility their players would want to keep their options open in a situation. I guess if I said I'd help this guy out I must accept the fact there's no option to back out of it, no matter how the situation changes during its course. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm throwing a tantrum because I couldn't make an intellectual, charismatic assassin who could play politics, which is all I really wanted to do in this trite, pointless waste of time.

This game plays like a 'read your own adventure' more than a CRPG. Being blindsided by ill-placed checkpoints that result in binary 'win' or 'lose' outcomes is not a fun mechanic for a game, yet this one has them in spades. Forget the pros and cons though, this game is just not worth the money. If it dropped down to $4 or $5 check it out but otherwise you're not going to get your money's worth here.

Playing as a strictly combat-heavy character is pretty fun in this game, since it grants you means to finish most of the side-quests, even if it doesn't grant you the best prizes. But it lets you play the game. The combat system, although pretty wonky and discriminating all ranged builds, is pretty smooth and understandable. The first playthrough concentrating on combat is an extremely entertaining experience. But beware trying to make a pacifist character without consulting walkthroughs on all skill checks throught the entire game. Dialogue design and skill checks are positioned throughout the game absolutely arbitrary and tend to actually railroad your character. You need to plan every sp spent, with knowing what exact skills you will need to pass their checks in your next main/guild quest, or else you will get stuck sooner or later with no money and no possibility to progress your guild. Some skills are absolute dumps (traps), others are used in a such arbitrary manner by writers, that a constant consulting wiki and save scumming will drive you insane. More often than not, the same quest chain will use different skill couple checks without a reason or context, that forces you to micromanaging every sp at your disposal. More often than not, choosing what seems a cautionary dialogue option to test your grounds will determine your choice 10 nodes later - only to see a skill check wall that you lack 1 point to pass. You can't play this game in a non-violent way if you don't know what the dev planned before actually playing it. Lack of quest information or any meaningful interactions (most NPCs are pure flavor, you can't even enquire innkeepers - you need to mouse check every single NPC to find the one) Couple that with a terrible engine and UI (HUD's ok, though), and you have an unbalanced mess. The game's decent only if you're playing a fighter. If you're looking for non-violent interactions and you're not its dev, don't bother. Just go back replay Fallout 1.

1) The game claims that: "Choices are what the game is all about - crafting your own narrative via a variety of choices that alter the story, playing field, and your options down the road." Yet, if you are anything but a pure melee character; the game mechanisms massively encourage you to NOT spend skill points. Strange design decision, right? You Lvl up, and then DON'T spend what you get! If you do not do this, you WILL be unable to proceed in the narrowly focused arch of your selected character, as your skills will be not be high enough to proceed in your selected quest line. And if you dare step outside your quest line, you will be squashed, as you will lack the skills to complete, or to even take part in other quest lines, and so will likely be only left with 1 melee heavy quest line to complete the game. Which is a catch-22 for you! 2) Hope you like save-scumming, because this game treats it like a core mechanism. The game screws you on rolls (which it hides from you by the way, more on that below). Sometimes, it takes only 1 hidden, bad roll, and well, be ready to reload the fight. The game even auto pre-saves before the battle; every battle. See, save-scumming as a CORE MECHANIC! And don't think for 1 moment this only effects melee. You want to progress as a non-melee? Be prepared to NEVER spend your skill points, as you must save them until you reach a point where a higher lvl skill is necessary, load the game to right before you make the check, (yay, more save-scumming!) then pump your skill, 1 lvl at a time, to where you can succeed. If you do not do this, you will likely not be able proceed in the quest line which your character was designed. 3) The game claims that: "The Age of Decadence is an experiment, an attempt to explore a different direction, taking you back to the PnP roots of the genre." Well, if thats the case, I'd hate to play D&D with this guy! He might be the type who always rolls behind the screen, and is ALL about screwing over their players any way they can. That the problem, the sneaky screwing. If your gonna screw me, at least look me in the eye when you're doing it! You see, it feels like the game is screwing you behind your back. VERY often, I will miss on a 60% chance to hit, 3-4 times in row. Maybe I was just VERY unlucky, but it just felt like the game decided to screw me, like it was assigning a different, hidden, value to different attacks depending on how often I did them, making the stated chance to hit false. I would be fine if that game did that; encouraging different kinds of attacks and making it more like a real fight, but TELL me you're doing that! Don't lie to me about my chances, and screw me over when I use the false info! Show me the numbers game! I could critique this game further, but I'm getting close to the character limit. I beat the game twice, mercenary and loremaster paths, same ending both time because of the above problems, and I'm done with this game. There may be a bit more to see, but my interest in it is completed extinguished.