Age Of Fear 4: The Iron Killer

[Fluent]

Sign me up!

thanks for the interest! you're in! good luck.

 

[Fluent]

I'm going to end the drawing at midnight EST tonight. So you'll have your keys shortly after. Anyone who wants in should join now before it's too late!

 

[BrotherFrank]

Note about Aof1, they did rerelease it as Aof1 gold, costs an extra 5 bucks compared to the original version.
So if anyone wants aof1 reworked with the changes and additions made by later titles, that's the one you want.

 

[Fluent]

Note about Aof1, they did rerelease it as Aof1 gold, costs an extra 5 bucks compared to the original version.
So if anyone wants aof1 reworked with the changes and additions made by later titles, that's the one you want.

ah, good to know, thanks! I own all of them but have only played AoF3 thus far, and a bit of 4. And of course each game offers 2 unique factions and full campaigns, so i've only seen the Nature campaign of 3.

 

[Filthy Sauce]

ah, good to know, thanks! I own all of them but have only played AoF3 thus far, and a bit of 4. And of course each game offers 2 unique factions and full campaigns, so i've only seen the Nature campaign of 3.

From what I've read on the steam forums, It sort of looks like he's ditched the 2 factions/story thing and is focusing on 1 overall plot for #4 & 5. Is that correct? Do you just recruit anyone?

 

[Fluent]

From what I've read on the steam forums, It sort of looks like he's ditched the 2 factions/story thing and is focusing on 1 overall plot for #4 & 5. Is that correct? Do you just recruit anyone?

It looks like the Sea People are the new faction of 4. I don't know anything about 5. However, the 2 new heroes - Angela and Nazell - are a vampire huntress and scholar, respectively. I don't know how much I can say but the focus thus far of 4 is the Sea People faction along with the new heroes. U can still recruit other characters though, depending on which town u visit.

Edit - There is a 2nd "story" u can play, but I didn't check it out yet. Apparently, it's an open world of some sort, also featuring the Sea faction. I could be wrong, I didn't pay it much attention and instead jumped into the main story. Hope that helps!

 

[Fluent]

Guys who love this series - What are some cool features you'd like to see added? I am loving talking to Les because he's very open to all new, cool features. I suggested Weapon Proficiencies, each with their own small skill tree list. So we could train Nairi the Dryad in use of the bow, or greatsword, or one handed sword, or axe, each having their own abilities that go with the weapon. Would that be cool? Please tell me some awesome features you'd love to see in the series so I can pass them on! Thanks!! <3

Edit - And still 3 hours 20 minutes to get into the drawing!

 

[Baptismbyfire]

Count me in!

 

[Fluent]

Count me in!

you're in, baptism! just in time! 2 hours 40 minutes left to get in on it! <3

I'll also be sending your keys via a conversation here on the Codex shortly after midnight! U can be playing tonight!

 

[Fluent]

I hope I can stay awake til then. O_O

 

[Fluent]

It's midnight somewhere, so I'm gonna go ahead and pull the winners now...

 

[Fluent]

*drumroll, please*...

*dududududududududududududdddddddd*...

and the winners are..

1. BrotherFrank
2. Smerlus
3. Baptismbyfire
4. Filthy Sauce
5. Behelit

Congratulations! U guys are getting an awesome, amazing, absolutely a(i)ncline game! I truly hope u enjoy. And please, come back here and post your thoughts about the game and let's talk about the series a bit, too! All of u have to talk Age Of Fear with me now, mwahaha! :D just kidding! I will send the keys through now...

Thanks for playing, all! <3

 

[BrotherFrank]

I was about to collapse to sleep but sod it, sleep is for the weak. Cheers, giving this a go now.

 

[Fluent]

I was about to collapse to sleep but sod it, sleep is for the weak. Cheers, giving this a go now.

Hey Brother! Same here, too tired, but I might get a few battles in before I crash. Truly hope u enjoy it, man! This series is just the bees knees to me. Thanks again!

 

[Fluent]

can i just say a few words about the EXCELLENT tuned combat encounters in these games? i don't know how Les does it, but even 20 hours deep into AOF3 I still come up against daunting, tricky and very challenging encounters. And this is mid to lategame stuff.

the last session i had, i was surrounded by corrupted forest dwellers. i had no chance to arrange my units pre-battle (which is usually what u do), so i had to quickly scramble. i had 1 turn basically to do as the lead character suggested in dialogue - place the archers in the middle and form a circle with my melee guys around them. problem was i didn't have a lot of melee guys, but i did form a circle and await the onslaught.

the AI is challenging on Hard (one off from the Master or hardest difficulty level). they will target weaker characters (makes my fairy Luna hard to use with only 3 HP, and in this battle my human mage Ykrox was killed and he had only 2 HP), they will jam up your spellcasters and so on. This can make a battle much harder, when they jam u up. they do that to archers, too, move their melee units directly in the face of a ranged/magic user and negate their ranged ability (it's a feature).

and sometimes u get enemies who have the PHASING ability. this means they have no movement restrictions at all (except distance is based on their SPEED stat), and can easily teleport all over the place. so if u leave space for one of them to do so, they'll teleport directly next to your ranged units and jam them up.

then u have creatures who are resistant to damage types. earth elementals, for example. and skeletons. yes, simple skeletons can only be hit by a ranged attack if it rolls a critical. generally speaking u have a 10% chance to hit a skelly with a bow, which makes sense. this just makes it a bit trickier to track down their ranged units, and the AI does a great job of utilizing their archers and mages.

liches will resurrect undead companions. plague zombies will sacrifice themselves to throw essentially a poison bomb in a group of your melee units. enemy casters will hit several of your units with a fireball if u bunch up. there's so many cool details. and somehow, someway, each battle is a unique, perfectly tuned challenge. even in late game i'm thrown into these scenarios that make me hesitate, and i can't tell u how many units i've lost to permadeath so far (as well as straight deaths to units that happened to regrow = a feature for plant units and such - after the battle.)

shoutout to Les for making this all work. i know i'm rambling a bit but i'm so impressed by this game and series. so much love, so much detail put into it. it stands with the best of the best as far as tacticool RPGs go. so if u play, enjoy! if u read this, thanks! much love guys, and long. Live. AGE OF FEAR!! :D <3

 

[BrotherFrank]

Played a few hours so mostly first impressions so far: Age of fear is still as fun as ever, and the world map stuff has expanded a lot since it started being introduced when I first played Aof3.

Ain't unlocked many units but whilst basic sea divers ain't too impressive they become amazing when upgraded into warriors. Defensive trait+parry+spikes means they are tanky af.
From what I can remember of previous racial campaigns only dwarfs have basic units that hardy and even then, I think I'd still prefer sea diver warriors simply because of spikes.
Of course the big drawback of sea faction seems the utter lack of ranged, probably why you're given 2 ranged heroes.

Speaking of which, was a really pleasant surprise to see the vampire hunter is the werewolf protag's daughter (blood and moon dlc for aof3).

Otherwise can confirm the 2nd campaign seems to just be an endless mode where map keeps spawning events. It's fun I guess if one is into that, and certainly explains why dev has been putting so much effort into the openworld stuff but without a clear end goal and a storyline it isn't for me. So yeah that's my only minor gripe so far, only 1 racial campaign when previous games traditionally had 2 so there was always 1 race you can play if you didn't like the other for whatever reason. I didn't care much for the orc campaign in aof2 for example, but the demon campaign is one of my favorite in the series story wise.

Actually the ending to that would probably make quite a few codexers laugh:

major story spoilers for aof2

Chad knight making an honest woman out of the stubborn succubi protag who resists at first but embraces her place as a tradwife.
On and this is after spending most of the game thinking she had him dominated under her spell, but then he reveals he is immune to thot magic and had been outsmarting her the entire time.
Depending on which route you take, your haughty succubi protag goes back to hell (oh yeah, story is she is fleeing hell because of demon politics) and fights an endless wave of enemies and as the succubi accepts her inevitable defeat, chad knight just strolls in and is like "ok woman you've had your fun, let's go home now." "but-but-but i want to die and be eternally tormented by demons!" "The man has spoken, we are going home." The achievement you get for this ending is the "taming of the shrew" complete with picture of succubi leashed by knight.

 

[Fluent]

awesome to hear Brother! glad you're enjoying it even if it is only one faction this time. i haven't upgraded any classes yet but my current team is small, but i like it:

angela
nazell
sea snake
naga
mermaid
goblin archer

i don't want to get into too many specifics to spoil things for potential first time players so i'll leave it at that. enjoy, Brother man. <3

 

[Baptismbyfire]

Thanks man! I'll be sure to leave a feedback!

 

[Fluent]

Thanks man! I'll be sure to leave a feedback!

Awesome! Enjoy, Bapt! <3

 

[Fluent]

the key so far, to me, in aof4 is to get yourself some frontline units, so Nazell and Angela can sit back a bit and pick them off as they come towards your front line. early on Angela was getting jammed up in my game, and then resorting to melee attacks (which she can also train in, which is cool!) so it was getting a little hectic. i got a naga and a sea snake now to place angela slightly behind so she can freely fire her gun at incoming enemies. and it's helped a lot. Nazell is a beast too, with his ranged magic. i'm enjoying the new duo immensely so far, great stuff!

 

[BrotherFrank]

Between the map events, easy access to both bribe and dominate elementals, having an easier time then game intended I imagine.

Roster BEFORE upgrading the base and fighting an early boss:

angela+nazell
3x sea diver warriors
1x sea diver fisher
1x stone elemental (dominated)
1x fire elemental (dominated)
2x priests (event)
1x wizard (event)
3x warg (event, 2 of them started out as werewolves)
1x sea snake
1x dwarf flamer (bribed)
1x dwarf rifleman (bribed)

Can't evolve the wizards or priests yet and don't know if will be able to in this campaign since they aren't affected by base progress but they still made the game a lot easier as priests are better healers out of the box then the mermaids you get later on. I was able to evolve wolves into wargs though so maybe it's just a question of fighting those evolved unit types first? Will see.

I maintain sea diver warriors are still amazing units for their tier and on paper average stats, have been up against big monster creatures who attack multiple times across a large area and it would lose lots of life from triggering multiple spike procs from my sea divers just standing there passively (to trigger defensive). This also works fine vs tough constructs who normally only take damage on a crit hit, that rule doesn't apply to spikes reflecting damage, though of course you shouldn't rely on this as your primary construct slaying doctrine but is a nice extra. Poison resistance, elemental resistance, stealth, friggin shield breaker, Fluent you are shooting yourself in the foot by not using these turtle ubermensch.

Also I take back Sea Faction sucking at ranged, dunno why I assumed that, they get great archer options eventually.

 

[Fluent]

cool, Brother! thanks for sharing. i've been more focused on Age Of Fear 3, my Dryad campaign, so I've only played a few hours of 4. I'm at the end battle in 3 but I'm exploring a lot of the dungeon and exploration content, and so far it's been a lot of fun! I'll get to 4 soon, though, whenever I wrap up the Dryads in 3, 4 will be my next move. I'm saving the Dwarven campaign in 3 for a later time, as I also want to explore Age Of Fear 1 & 2. We'll see. If all goes well I will have Let's Plays for all the campaigns on my YT channel. Pretty fun stuff. thanks again for sharing your progress. Please make sure to keep it spoiler-free, thanks! <3

 

[Fluent]

first expansion is unlocked! Storm Mountain.

 

[Fluent]

thing i just realized - the game world itself is turn-based, and time moves when u accept an option. so the side battles (like side quests) also move the time forward, and things happen at different times in the game. it's very cool and unique, i dig it once i figured out how it works.

so, here's my age of fear 3 lineup, if anyone is interested:

Spoiler

nairi - nature sorceress
balvar - drider/evil
lexa - mage
gunther - werewolf
iron bark - ent
igelia - dryad (huntress)
teri - dryad (huntress)
miles - high priest/holy
brutoid - insectoid brute
sevilish - insectoid brute
matthew - alpha werewolf
ted - dire bear

backups:
dirt mcgirt - earth elemental
djinn - djinn
the rumbler - earth elemental
splashy - water elemental
ulbrooke - dwarven rogue

and others...

the top 13 are pretty deadly and i don't see myself replacing any unless we really find the right units. most of my units are maxed out (i offered a lot at the moon well). we're currently on the last stage called "The End" but i'm exploring the world more.

really having a blast! playing on Hard and it's quite challenging, i've lost a lot of units over time but this team i have is pretty strong.

but yeah, the timed world element is super cool, as new stuff opens up over time. what. a. game!

hope u all are doing well. God bless. <3

edit - i have a quick question. without spoilers, can someone tell me if u can continue playing the game of age of fear 3 after you've beaten the last battle? thanks!

 

[BrotherFrank]

edit - i have a quick question. without spoilers, can someone tell me if u can continue playing the game of age of fear 3 after you've beaten the last battle? thanks!

Been a while since beat Aof3 but my instinctive reaction would be to say no, I recall in Aof1+2 at least the final battle being the end of the campaign and I'd be inclined to say Aof3 follows suit.