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.
The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic antiquity, depicting a world not all that different from how people of the Roman Empire probably used to perceive it in the days of the great Barbarian Invasions of IV-VI centuries. The setting is not strictly historical though, so expect partial "contaminations" and amalgamations of Roman era with Ancient Middle East and fantasy themes adapted to those two ingredients of the setting.
Whereas other games ask for fast reflexes or perseverance in mouse button clicking, good old-fashioned common sense will be the main requirement that AoD poses of you as a player. 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?
With realism being a chief design principle, building your character should be done with thought as to which skills will complement each other best. The two ends of the continuum are a pure fighter or a pure diplomat, but a player would rarely settle with a character concentrated solely on combat or on talking. In the majority of cases, your character will end up somewhere in between.
There is a lot of depth to AoD's combat, with weapons split into groups where increasing your skill with one weapon in a group provides synergic effect to your skill with other weapons of the same group. To add to that, the same weapons can execute different types of strikes, or be used to strike at different body parts, with varying action point cost and to-hit chance. The end result is that switching from one weapon to another, or from a single weapon to weapon and shield, coupled with changes to the types of strikes you will preform with that weapon, can dramatically alter the course of combat, without any changes to your skill levels with the given weapon.
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.
Age of Decadence is an RPG done right. The game combines great writing and storytelling with branching storylines more complex than anything you've seen in a computer game. It boasts a perfectly balanced turn-based combat system and deep classless skills-based character creation and development system. What makes the game stand out among the titles of recent years (and decades) is how the quality exectuion of its systems results in you playing an RPG in the way it's meant to be played - looking at the world through the eyes of your character, walking the dusty streets in your character's own sandals.
I can say without a doubt - AoD is a classic that just got released. I urge you to buy it and play it now, so that by the time the mainstream becomes alert and also proclaims it a classic, you will be ready to boast about how many times you finished it "before it was cool". And since the game is indie,it has the added benefit of being relatively cheap, so for the price of a triple-A game, you can buy two copies of AoD and gift one to a friend, who would later thank you for showing him the game.
With all this said, really, what could be better...? I'd say Age of Decadence II, hopefully.
