The Age of Decadence

It's impossible to write a review which does the game justice with only 2000 characters so I'll try to do my laconic best. Most importantly, why 5 stars? Because as a RPG, the game is unique. It does not give you the regular formula or main quest to explain why you're doing stuff + side quests to increase game time and maybe improve immersion, it rather gives you a rather vague main goal and throws you into a world of mystery where there is no "correct" path to follow if you want to find out what's going on. You will not have the answer when you complete the game for the first time or at best you will only have a clue - so you need to replay it at least 2-3 more times, with different characters builds, following different problem-solving approaches and interracting with different characters (which you can't do in a single run) to get a better picture, which may yet be incomplete. And trust me, in this game the lore is not just a clumsy padding written to excuse the world's existence, it's deep and complex and you WILL want to learn more of it. There's just no other game that presents its universe in such an interesting way and that alone makes it deserve the score. Then, the actual game. Apart from the excellent writing which is enough to keep you interested, you have quite some game in there. Your character can be of the violent or talkative type but he/she can't be both. You can go through the game without fighting once but do yourself a favour and make your first character a competent fighter so you can find out how the game works and what it wants from you if you decide to go the silver tongue route - because most problems can be resolved with killing people but if you fail the peaceful solution you usually have to fight anyway. The game is designed in such a way that even with a competent fighter you may have to restart quite a few battles numerous times and if you get your poorly trained and equipped merchant into a fight, well... Try AoD. At least try it.

In any game with many branching paths and means to progress the plot, a gamer should expect hiccups and moments where immersion is chipped at, like an NPC referencing events the PC allegedly had a hand in but never actually happened. This game has such events aplenty. What shouldn't be expected is a railroading of the plot so illogical and forced that it shatters all immersion, forcing the player to wonder, "How on earth did any of this happen?" After 3 hours spent completely outside combat (because this PC has a 100% fatality rate in fights, forcing frequent F9 presses), progressing purely on skill checks as a Loremaster with some skill at fancy talk, my PC: +changed factions after being railroaded to the next plot point because of a single successful Lore skill check ten minutes into the game +doomed two city-states to despotic tyranny because of successful Lore and Persuasion skill checks that shuttered me out of cities toward the next event, triggering the story to charge on and the cities to suffer without my guidance (I think?) +started a war between three factions because assassination, negotiations, and scouting are the job Lords give their fledgeling loremasters with questionable Loyalty and no combat skills I won't say the game is broken, but depending on how you play it, the game might not work as intended. Combat can be a blast, the world and lore are interesting for fantasy and history nerds alike, and dialogue is not overly florid but has abundant character and charm ----- but by the long-absent-Gods is progressing through the game a bugged mess.

AoD is a difficult and demanding game, the world it takes us is interesting, mysterious an has the "Falloutish" taste sometimes. It's a real pity it's such a short journey thou. There are many ways of exploring the fantasy antique wasteland. The fights are demanding and usually you will get killed if unprepared or if you're stupid enough to rush into combat as a talker without battle stats. At the beginning I was frustrated many times, but almost every time there is a way of beating the odds. A player must think and of course save game a lot. Im in love witch AoD world, the narrative is great! And just like in real life you cant satisfy everybody. Alas, there are some drawbacks, a couple of "inconsequences" and less than a few disappointing surprises in quests lacking thrilling endings. There could also be some more exploration, things to read about. To cut a long story short, If you love text narrative, games with a world you would like to explore more and more and with a nice hard difficulty level its one for you. Its a very good game but It has the potential of being a great one. I hope there will be some patches or AoD II

I bought the game because of all the user reviews comparing it to old school Fallout. The game is nothing like Fallout or Fallout 2. The best way to sum up the game is that it's basically a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book in game form. Almost every quest/mission is a text based interface with a couple of choices like "Go left" or "Go back". Occasionally you'll come upon a choice that requires a "Skill Test" but in actuality it's not really a test in a way that gamers are used to in that the game uses an RNG and then compares the result to a skill+difficulty modifier. No, basically if you don't have at least the necessary skill level there's no way to pass the skill test. This results in players hording skill points, go on a mission, see what tasks are involved, fail, reload the game and then dump skill points into the necessary skills in order to complete the mission. And sometimes you have to do this multiple times since each mission will have several skill tests. And combat is brutal. I played as a non-combative character but the handful of fights I got in were over before they started and required a reload in order to figure out how to avoid them. And that's pretty much the defining character of this games mechanics: Fail and Reload. There is absolutely no "Fail and move on and deal with the consequences of that failure". That doesn't happen in this game. If you fail you reload, dump skill points until you figure out how to succeed and then continue.

Age of Decadence is a low-fantasy grimdark western RPG set in the rotting cadaver of what was once a steampunk version of the roman empire, prior to its destruction by some unknown catastrophe. Though the lackluster graphics are nothing to write home about, this intriguing and original setting is still nicely brought to live by the fine, though by no means outstanding writing. All these fine creative efforts are, however, marred by the fact that there is often no reasonable way to foresee many consequences of your choices in dialogue trees or in creating your character. Perhaps this was intended to make the game feel realistic but in practice it just feels like arbitrary railroading. The apex of arbitrariness in this game lies in how easily the final quest can become outright unwinnable for you (as it did for me on my playthrough) if you don't a) have sky high lore+crafting b) sky-high intelligence+crafting + an obscure item you can only buy from Feng right at the start of the game with zero foreshadowing that this gem will ver be of any importance c) skyhigh lockpicking+crafting d) are enough of a beast in combat that you can take like 12 giant scorpions in a row while being poisoned by the air in the dead river. The combat system is deep and interesting but is subject to an insance difficulty curve that ensures this facet of the game becomes rapidly inaccessible if you are not playing a combat specialist. I feel that many defects here could have been solved by allowing the player to take on additional partymembers or hire mercercenaries. Ultimatly, this is an interesting but deeply flawed game. I recommend buying Age of Decadence, not because the game itself is really worth your time-- it is not-- but because the developer shows a great deal of promise and I hope they will be able to better execute their unique vision next time around.