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Review The Age of Decadence Impressions on HeroicFantasyGames

VentilatorOfDoom

VentilatorOfDoom

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Tags: Age of Decadence; Iron Tower

The Age of Decadence, Irontower Studio's indie cRPG project, gets another newspost. As you probably know, Magnificient Chris Avellone himself "checked it out" at some point, sharing his impressions of the beta-build. Chris Avellone is one of the men behind Planescape: Torment and co-founder of Obsidian Entertainment, the makers of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2 and... uh other awesome games. One day later MCA spoke to living legend Tim Cain about it, maker of the original Fallout, co-founder of our beloved Troika, who brought us gems like Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines and The Temple of Elemental Evil, and whatever he told him, Tim nodded in agreement.

But I digress. Pierre Begue (a.k.a. "The Knights of the Chalice guy") has played the Age of Decadence beta and posted a review on his page. Here's a snippet:
The reason for this was that every obvious quest accessible in the beginning of the game led my character to a horrendous fight, and a premature death. You can assault a fortified mining outpost, assault the camp of a group of raiders, or assault a guarded merchant caravan (1st quest with the imperial guards).

I realised later that there are a few easier fights you can do prior to attempting those quests. Early on I missed the easier fights because it seemed that all locations of interest were accessible from the local map. Actually, if you move through the city only by clicking locations on the local map, you're going to miss some important content and fights. You have to make your character walk through the various streets to trigger this content.

Another thing I realised was that the 'Block' skill is better than the 'Dodge' skill if you want to take advantage of heavy armour. So I made another character, this time specialising in Swords, and Block. And this character had a good time. It seemed like he would master every encounter, crushing all his enemies under his blade.

Which brings me to another thought: when playing Age of Decadence, you have to leave all moral concerns aside. In this game, fighters must take every opportunity to kill a character, in order to gain skill points and treasure. It doesn't matter if the victims are completely innocent.

So how far did my Sword character go? Very far. He became a friend of the imperial guard commander and overthrew the city's king. But then he was captured and caged. Then he was given a chance to escape. But before he could escape he had to kill two guards, while being completely naked except for a dagger. Since the character had put all his skill points into Block and not Dodge, he had approximately zero chance to survive. You need a shield in order to block attacks.

So I made a new character, this time specialised in Axes and Dodge. His weapon was the two-handed axe. Again, this character was very successful. He even managed to defeat the group of seven raiders. But he completely failed to defeat the mining outpost, even after poisoning the food of its occupants. Next, he joined the imperial guards. But then he completely failed in the mission to overthrow the king. At first I thought that he failed because 'Dodge' is inferior to 'Block' but that was not the real reason.
Click to expand...
 
mondblut

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VentilatorOfDoom said:
In this game, fighters must take every opportunity to kill a character, in order to gain skill points and treasure. It doesn't matter if the victims are completely innocent.
Click to expand...

Hahaha, I hope all the storyfags obsessed with this game are cutting their wrists right now.

Sounds like it won't be bad, after all.
 
kentable

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So... that describes pretty much every adventurer/tomb raider in most every PnP campaign? I mean they're not doing it for the good of the realm right? And we all know post-apoc settings are relatively amoral. Hell, if I had wagons/mules in AoD I'd cart around the dead bodies of my enemies to sell for a quick dinar. Or if there was non-lethal combat, I'd KO and enslave them all and sell them to salt mines.
 

John Yossarian

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Oh ffs, since when is lack of resources a design decision? If you kill a random citizen and nothing happens, it's because they haven't put it on the "kick player out of town if he kils me list". Yes fighter, plz kill anyone you meet, and then face off against the guards and see how that goes.

And I love how people treating you according to their needs, instead of your char gen decisions, makes the world incoherent. Next time you go to a job interview, if you don't fit the profile, tell them to make profiles that fit you.
 
kaizoku

kaizoku

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mondblut said:
VentilatorOfDoom said:
In this game, fighters must take every opportunity to kill a character, in order to gain skill points and treasure. It doesn't matter if the victims are completely innocent.
Click to expand...

Hahaha, I hope all the storyfags obsessed with this game are cutting their wrists right now.

Sounds like it won't be bad, after all.
Click to expand...

AFAIK Vince will no longer be giving XP for killing random characters.

U mad? :smug:
 
FeelTheRads

FeelTheRads

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Come on VD, admit you regret not going for real-time F2P. Not too late to change it now, though.
 
CappenVarra

CappenVarra

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Pierre said:
Actually, if you move through the city only by clicking locations on the local map, you're going to miss some important content and fights. You have to make your character walk through the various streets to trigger this content.
Click to expand...
And here I thought characters only move by getting teleported around at the cruel whim of quest givers...
 
tuluse

tuluse

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Archlich Oct 16, 2012 @ 8:04pm
I like the premise, but this game screams stat-based combat and bloated conversation graphs.
Click to expand...
wtf does this even mean?
 
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