Age of Decadence Reviews

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

The animations are not weak at all. Compared to games like NWN2 that have no real dodge, miss or block(?) animation? Really?
Not sure what they mean about collision detection. Or the buildings thing.
I will say that there were very few interactive objects compared to Fallout which had a pickable lock etc in practically every location, but the interactive objects that were there make up for that. It's not a game with a lot of filler. From their perspective, that's a bad thing, but from the perspective of someone like me who hates filler, that's a very good thing.
Screw random events. Unless they moved along the story or were funny like in FO2, they are usually boring trash mobs. There were interrupts on travel, but only story based travel - like an ambush after leaving a location - and not random.

 

[naossano]

Easy mode mod incoming?

What about Iron Man ?

 

[Bubbles]

The animations are not weak at all. Compared to games like NWN2 that have no real dodge, miss or block(?) animation? Really?
Not sure what they mean about collision detection. Or the buildings thing.
I will say that there were very few interactive objects compared to Fallout which had a pickable lock etc in practically every location, but the interactive objects that were there make up for that. It's not a game with a lot of filler. From their perspective, that's a bad thing, but from the perspective of someone like me who hates filler, that's a very good thing.
Screw random events. Unless they moved along the story or were funny like in FO2, they are usually boring trash mobs. There were interrupts on travel, but only story based travel - like an ambush after leaving a location - and not random.

Yeah, none of these concerns really bother me much. The collision glitches are noticeable though, especially if you pull enemies away from their "expected" combat area; I've seen archers shoot through walls and enemies standing inside brick piles (and occasionally becoming untargetable) in the Slums.

Dead State had a worse variation of that issue, with masses of enemies standing stacked on top of each other in the same square or PCs spawning into a closed (and locked) door on area transitions. A Torque problem, I think.

If I had to pick one thing from that list to implement, it would be more interactions in taverns and public places, but that's not exactly a crippling flaw.

 

[Jarpie]

Found couple youtube videos:


Which is quite positive.

and:


I'm just watching this one and more mixed bag.

 

[Rivmusique]

Saw this when searching for the soundtrack on youtube. It's amazing, I'm not entirely sure it isn't parody, it's just too perfect.

 

[Bubbles]

I don't like how this is, like, "You see a man in his forties. At first glance,..." I mean, if I want to read a book, I'll read a book. You can either show me on the screen a man in his forties, like, emoting, or some voice over. Otherwise I'll just pick up a book.

*speed clicks through dialogue, then wanders aimlessly through city* There needs to be some kind of chat log.

*right after receiving the map* Where's the hook? Where's the "the stakes have never been higher"?

Needs a real map, not this... whatever this is. Where's North?

You gotta be into reading, hardcore reading.

You know, this is is all very old school. I'm pretty old school myself, and I've had enough of this "You see this and that..."

I don't know if I have the patience to read as much as that, especially in a desktop situation. It wouldn't mind if it was something I [could do] laying down, maybe playing on a tablet.

As far as first impressions go, this seems alright.

ITS should embed this review on their homepage.

 

[Zeriel]

I wonder if he takes the same approach to websites.

"You know, you can show me the news or have someone speak it. Otherwise I'll just pick up a newspaper."

Oh who am I kidding, of course he does.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I love these references to "old school" that every retarded reviewer seems to include these days.

'I'm pretty old school..... but I hate reading.... gimme more voice over.... I need Witcher 3 graphics for immershun....'

 

[Crooked Bee]

Gamebanshee review: http://www.gamebanshee.com/reviews/116308-age-of-decadence-review.html

An RPG Like No Other.. For Good and Ill

The Age of Decadence's biggest problem is its own structure. It's a very carefully crafted game with no fat whatsoever and precious few actual gameplay systems. It's a game that punishes players heavily as they are figuring out how the designers want them to play and gives little to no opportunity to remedy mistakes.

It's a game that kills as many characters as a roguelike but lacks the thrills of a new playthrough that are embedded in the very DNA of those games. Every single scenario, every single interaction was handcrafted by a developer. As a result, often the challenge lies not in understanding the gameplay systems but in learning the developers' logic and the content of the game. Making a new character just to have enough points to pass a skill check isn't really an interesting experience, just a tedious one.

The Age of Decadence is very obviously inspired by Fallout (it even borrows the game's poor inventory interface) and titles of its ilk and yet misses the freedom and system interactions that characterized them. In Fallout 2, it was possible to kill pivotal characters without alerting guards by applying super stimpaks to them in large numbers and waiting for the aftereffects to kick in. It was arguably an exploit, something the developers didn't intend, but it was also very clever.

The player almost never has a chance to be clever in The Age of Decadence. The designers had clearly a lot of fun coming up with interesting options, but there is no way to divine what they will be ahead of time, and they are always the only options available. The game has no core loop, because that requires unrealistic concessions to gameplay over gritty storytelling, and also lacks gameplay-driven systems outside of combat, which is completely optional.

As a result, The Age of Decadence feels like a Frankenstein game held together by duct tape. There is the Choose Your Own Adventure game with skill checks, the isometric RPG with empty maps and almost no interactive element, the turn-based combat simulator, and even the dungeon crawler, in a very limited number of locations, and none of them feel like part of the same game.

In fairness, there are wildly different gameplay systems and scenarios in most RPGs too, but most of them tie them together far more elegantly. Even uninspired RPGs can work simply because they mimic the same loop that was pioneered by far better titles. The Age of Decadence is a game that lacks many classic RPG staples like loot and random encounters by design but also lacks a clear idea of how to replace them. It removes and adds from a baseline, but the experience should have been rethought from the ground-up.

As a thought experiment, I tried to imagine how The Age of Decadence would look if it was presented mostly through text, and the battles were the only element to use the 3D isometric controls. It wouldn't need many changes at all. The game doesn't take advantage of the unique opportunities provided by an isometric camera and explorable 3D areas at all.

A lot of craft is on display in the game's minute details, and a lot of thought went into its system. That's exactly why it's so disappointing that the way the experience works as a whole didn't receive the same attention.

[...]

Conclusions

The Age of Decadence has value in a post-Kickstarter world because it does what no other crowdfunded RPG has done: it toys with the very structure of the genre. Sure, it wears its inspirations on its sleeve, but it's ultimately its own thing.

However, the problem with experiments is that they don't necessarily all give good results, and The Age of Decadence is very much a failed experiment.

Sure, it's a game that has much to offer. It includes a completely optional sidequest that can only be found by repeatedly perusing the services of a town healer and allows players to confuse stone demons by using the demon's own logic against it. It even offers an entire story path focused on the study of history and its practical applications.

But its praiseworthy elements don't quite work together in concert and the game ends up feeling schizophrenic as a result.

Unfortunately, it just doesn't quite work.

 

[Bubbles]

They gave AoD a worse review than Risen 2.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Judging merely by those snippets, because I obviously haven't read the entire review, I think the core of his complaints is that AoD is non-systemic, unlike Fallout. To me, that is indeed both AoD's weakness but also its major strength and the reason it can be so enjoyable (see my post here for my own rough and preliminary assessment of the same).

The reviewer does correctly see AoD as a unique and experimental kind of RPG; he simply fails to appreciate the things it does differently. Unlike him I wouldn't call it a "failed" experiment, since it does for the most part successfully achieve precisely the goals on which its design/structure is based in the first place.

 

[valcik]

'I'm pretty old school..... but I hate reading.... gimme more voice over.... I need Witcher 3 graphics for immershun....'

So true. You cannot please everyone, I guess. I've tried to criticise 3D graphics and free-form camera torturing my poor several decades old eyes, just to have a bunch of butthurted fanboys stomping on my balls in addition right here on 'dex. Oh well.

 

[Shadenuat]

Judging merely by those snippets, because I obviously haven't read the entire review, I think the core of his complaints is that AoD is non-systemic, unlike Fallout. To me, that is indeed both AoD's weakness but also its major strength and the reason it can be so enjoyable (see my post here for my own rough and preliminary assessment of the same).

I personally wouldn't argue against that AoD could have been a better game if it used better engine and become more mechanically advanced.

In truth doing everything through 1's and 0's, skill checks and hundreds of integers strains developer more than a better foundation.

It is an uphill battle kind of design, and anyone who worked on his own modules on engines like Aurora or DA:O knows that writer can't win it without a help of good coders and improved engine.
For example, implementing normal thieving instead of dialogue thieving already would remove a ton of pain from writer who has to supply Thief content all by his own otherwise, writing even more text.

And players always feel more freedom and believe more in systemic worlds.

 

[Bubbles]

More from the GameBanshee review.

The setting is dull and presented from a preachy, moralizing point of view. The writing has technical flaws:

The Age of Decadence is an RPG that embraces cynicism like no other. The game has a very dark view of humanity and tragedy. The first is fundamentally evil, while the latter removes all the shackles that make it possible to keep humanity's evil nature at bay.

The game also touches on the impossibility of accurately transcribing and conveying history, the use of religion as a tool, and the formation of social hierarchies. Unfortunately, the impression is that the developers were only interested in those subjects inasmuch as it allowed them to pontificate on the evils of mankind.

It's a pity, because the writing prowess on display here deserved more interesting material... The game paints vivid scenarios and characters with a few lines of dialogue, but they're rarely interesting ones. It pains me to say this, but I felt I'd seen most of what the game had to offer writing-wise in the very first hour or so of gameplay.

...I was also surprised by how often characters would be introduced with a clunky explanation of their past history and personality, information that my character couldn't realistically have known. Considering how long the game has been in development, I'd have expected an editing pass to iron that out.

...The game's prose stumbles when it attempts to gently prod the fourth wall and comment on RPG conventions. Sometimes it's just clumsy, while in others it reminded me of a frustrated and vindictive AD&D Dungeon Master.

The skill system is deeply flawed due to the strict limits on SP gains and the unreasonably harsh penalties for failure:

What feels like a real flaw, however, is the way the game encourages skill points hoarding. A couple of premises. The Age of Decadence is a hard game. It's also a very strict, structured game. There is a lot to say about the effects this has on the entire game and I'll get to it later, but for now I'll limit myself to the character progression system.

Because a skill check can make the difference between life and death in The Age of Decadence and because points can be saved until later, the game encourages a playstyle where points are spent to meet certain challenges rather than to naturally develop the character. It can be argued that a similar playstyle is encouraged by any game that uses skill checks, and to a degree that's true, but the vast majority of those games don't punish failure as harshly as The Age of Decadence and feature far more bountiful resources for character development. There are no random encounters or other systems that hand out experience in The Age of Decadence, for example, and there are very few optional side quests.

And, as mentioned earlier, figuring out how to allocate the initial points is also important. Extreme combat-focused or civic-focused builds tend to work really well and are straightforward enough to build, but more hybrid builds need some experimentation to be figured out. A bad build is punished very heavily by the game, though, and that experimentation will be punished with several deaths and unfinishable playthroughs.

Crafting materials are too scarce and crafting mechanics are too arcane, which makes the system feel overwhelming for new players:

To be fair, a lot of those flaws aren't really inherent to the systems design in a vacuum, but are due to how it interfaces with the game's content. This is also evident in the crafting and alchemy systems. They're very robust and in-depth by themselves. A crafter can craft various weapons based on schematics, and do so by choosing one of several different possible materials that will determine the final quality. It's also possible to apply different techniques to weapons and armors, further enhancing their properties.

But there is a limited amount of materials in the game and not a lot of room for experimentation. The developers were clearly aware of this problem, as evidenced by the option to dismantle existing armors and weapons into their basic components. Even with that additional option, though, there are only so many crafting materials available through the game and no real way to make up for choices that are bad only in hindsight.

In the end, whether it was intentional or not, the game punishes players that can't divine its rules right away.

The options offered by the combat system are overwhelming for new players. The tutorial is bad:

While understanding the nuances of the system takes some time, the basics are surprisingly simple. Everything, including the percentage chance to hit, AP costs, and the range of every attack, is displayed very clearly. And that's very good because the game's tutorial itself is poor. It explains the very basics with some painfully on the nose dialogue and then proceeds to give the player a large variety of tools and the chance to experiment with them in progressively harder battles.

It's very good for players who have already a decent understanding of the system and would like to experiment with new strategies but very poor for novices that are overwhelmed by the amount of tools available. The presence of tooltips that are accessible at any time does little to ameliorate these issues, though I appreciate the additional insight into the game's stats system.

The combat is dull and monotonous:

It's not, however, an outstanding system. Grounded, single-character turn-based combat has its limit as far as strategies and encounter variety is concerned. Sure, some weapons have special attacks and properties, and there are items like nets and liquid fire to break the monotony, but even that can only go so far. It can be a little dull, in other words.

In many ways, The Age of Decadence's combat system is the perfect fit for the kind of game it is. It's unapologetically hard, robust and deep but also not very exciting or interesting.

The two recurring keywords in the review are "flawed" and "dull."

I think this is the harshest post-release review yet. Roxor's will dethrone it, of course.

 

[Mozg]

I am pretty wut'd by the idea there aren't enough crafting materials in the game

 

[Mustawd]

Reviewers keep banging their head against the wall of "RPGs that came before AoD" expectations. Even after explicitly saying this isn't your typical RPG, reviewers keep treating it like one. Typical.

 

[Shadenuat]

Well, I agree that you should learn about NPCs by working with them, exploring dialogue trees and observing their actions, not by reading lore dumps at least.

As for monotonous combat, it's biggest single flaw and wasted opportunity, and reason why fights like mercenary clash in Maadoran between you and Hundred Swords and battle akin to it like 300 Ordu feel bad is because you only control 1 character.
If you could control NPCs at least *temporarily*, especially as, say, Legatus or high CHA guy, it would make those battles way, way more interesting.

As for now these battles often just play all by themselves and can even be won without you landing a single hit. Most you could do is collect Kill Points by applying poison ticks on everyone. Or mash "end turn".

 

[Lurker King]

I think this is the harshest post-release review yet. Roxor's will dethrone it, of course.

One thing is to make an edgy negative review that is substantiated by arguments. The reviewer will exaggerate in a shameless fashion, will pick on the flaws most of the time, etc. That is a partial review, but at least it has some arguments and stuff. Another thing entirely is to make a negative review because you are retarded. I mean, seriously. This review sounds like the type of ironic caricature that Bubbles would make just for the lulz.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Well, I agree that you should learn about NPCs by working with them, exploring dialogue trees and observing their actions, not by reading lore dumps at least.

You can learn more about them by talking and working with them, but I'm surprised that the 2-sentence intros bother some people. You hear about people, no? Or is that an alien concept? I've never met Toronto's mayors, industry captains, notable citizens, but I've heard about them. Same here.

You don't get an intro when you meet Esbenus or Iola because they are nobodies, but people like Feng, Antidas, Dellar are well known, hence the introductions.

 

[Shadenuat]

I'm surprised that the 2-sentence intros bother some people.

2-sentence is quite and understatement in quite a few cases. Some of them could probably be even merged with opening vignettes for classes. For example, you begin as Thief and read a bunch of text about world (1 vignette), city (2d vignette), 40 Thieves (3d vignette) and whom you work with, and then you read your boss backstory in his opening dialogue, while it would have been better maybe keep it for later for player to explore by himself instead.

You can learn more about them by talking and working with them

It's not very balanced tho, you often get their life stories if you have high CHA as (again) lore dumps and that's all. It doesn't have the structure and elegance of companions in RPGs like PST or KOTOR2, where your begin relations with characters knowing little, yet become more familiar with them over time. Which means you don't get attached to characters too much, enjoying sadistic plot twists starring them more than what these characters actually are.

No matter how logical these infodumps may be it's better to feed player information in smaller chunks - both making it easier to comprehend and making every chunk feel more important to pay attention to.

Your relations with characters are often of a minute or side value as you later go for next city and old characters have nothing to tell you or do with you anymore.

Some of it depends on the character you play though, as some Guild storylines are written better than others in that respect.

 

[Mozg]

I didn't take the narrator stuff about NPCs as "common knowledge". I thought it was a narrator talking to me, the player, about stuff the PC doesn't necessarily know. The effect is that AoD feels more like a story about the PC where you infer a lot rather than an Avellonian empathic psychojourney where you are there inside the PC's head

 

[Lurker King]

Reviewers keep banging their head against the wall of "RPGs that came before AoD" expectations. Even after explicitly saying this isn't your typical RPG, reviewers keep treating it like one. Typical.

Because they are assuming that your typical cRPG is the proper way to make cRPGs. If everyone does that, they must be right.

 

[Lurker King]

I didn't take the narrator stuff about NPCs as "common knowledge". I thought it was a narrator talking to me, the player, about stuff the PC doesn't necessarily know. The effect is that AoD feels more like a story about the PC where you infer a lot rather than an Avellonian empathic psychojourney where you are there inside the PC's head

Yep, me too, but it works fine. It is not a PoE lore dump.

 

[Shadenuat]

The effect is that AoD feels more like a story about the PC where you infer a lot rather than an Avellonian empathic psychojourney where you are there inside the PC's head

Even taking stylistic differences in writing aside, just information/text as a whole in the game could have used a bit of "spreading out" between quests, story moments, tavern rumors, books, found letters and such instead of dialogue dumps.

 

[Bubbles]

I didn't take the narrator stuff about NPCs as "common knowledge". I thought it was a narrator talking to me, the player, about stuff the PC doesn't necessarily know. The effect is that AoD feels more like a story about the PC where you infer a lot rather than an Avellonian empathic psychojourney where you are there inside the PC's head

Yes, that was also my assumption. Some of the things you learn just don't make any sense as "common knowledge", like the intro for Carrinas that quotes the exact orders he received from his superior. But imagining it as an omniscient narrator sharing information works perfectly fine for me.