Age Of Fear 4: The Iron Killer

[Fluent]

Thanks for the key, Fluent. After 15 hours Im done. I agree with rashiakas this is hands down the weakest of the series.

I didnt like the 'upgrade your base' mechanic, as I felt I had to grind for random drops. Previous Age of Fear never felt grindy to me, even with the poorly implemented open world features. I could ignore it mostly, and play the 'original' way.

The UI (outside of combat) is really starting to piss me off. Its sucks in the last games and it sucks in this one. I didnt even bother crafting because if it.

Too much 'your small squad stuck large scale battles' -BORING WAIT TIMES

I still liked the time I spent with the game... but you gave it to me... so ...

Well, thanks for the honest feedback, Filthy! That's worth more than anything, so it's good you're honest and say how u really feel.

To address your points though. I never felt I had to grind for random drops, the diamonds to upgrade came easily enough after a certain main story battle anyway. To raise the gold I easily was able to sell all my gold bars and gems and have more than enough...

Not sure about your gripes with the UI, seems decent enough to me, although the Crafting menus could use a bit of work, I agree. I could see that being problematic for some players for sure, so I understand your frustrations there.

I think large scale battles are a sort of thing that some people hate, some people love. I really enjoyed all of them so far, I think they were cleverly executed. But if u don't like longer, larger scaled battles, yeah, u would have a complaint there, for sure, since larger scaled battles are pretty frequent in the game.

I'm glad u did like the time u spent with it, but sad to hear you won't be finishing it or continuing on. U might want to still leave a positive review on Steam to help progress along, it doesn't sound like either of u really sounded like a "u shouldn't play this game" type of way. But yeah, sorry to hear as I said a bunch of times already I'm really enjoying it, it's very challenging and tough to succeed on Hard for me, and I'm enjoying the story a lot.

Anyway, sorry for the ramble, thanks for playing it and giving your feedback. Hope some mods or the other games in the series can bring u back to a more positive feels about them. Take care! <3

 

[Fluent]

Well, I have good news! I'm giving away 5 copies of the Storm Mountain DLC! Starting tomorrow on my YouTube channel, the video posted at noon EST will tell u how u can win. Good luck to all and I'll post the video tomorrow! Cheers! <3

 

[A horse of course]

Well, I have good news! I'm giving away 5 copies of the Storm Mountain DLC! Starting tomorrow on my YouTube channel, the video posted at noon EST will tell u how u can win. Good luck to all and I'll post the video tomorrow! Cheers! <3

What happened to your ASMR channel?

 

[Fluent]

What happened to your ASMR channel?

never started an ASMR channel :D . Too lazy, really, and making gaming videos is a lot easier for me. But who knows, maybe someday that will change? Thanks for the comment, lol. Take care Eddy. <3

 

[Fluent]

Here's the video for the new giveaway! Details in the first few minutes.

 

[Fluent]

Playing the Storm Mountain DLC now and it's quite excellent! Giving away 4 more copies of it, too! Just watch the above video and get the details. See u on YouTube! <3

 

[BrotherFrank]

Speaking of DLCs, I reccomend to do Victors ASAP (no fights involved so you might aswell start it early) and mountain dlc mid game (the valkyrie units from the dlc are great in terms of skills so take a long while to develop BUT the fights to get to them are tough so you need to have a strong lineup).

Also for those like me who have Aof1 but not gold, Les is happy to upgrade you for free if you get in touch with him with a receipt for proof of purchase.

I didnt like the 'upgrade your base' mechanic, as I felt I had to grind for random drops. Previous Age of Fear never felt grindy to me, even with the poorly implemented open world features. I could ignore it mostly, and play the 'original' way.

Just to say you can disable the open world completely in the options , I certainly do agree with you open world massively changes the flow and difficulty of a campaign.

 

[Fluent]

nice Brother! thanks for the info! be careful with spoilers of DLC units! I know i was pleasantly surprised when i reached that area and wouldn't want to spoil it for someone else.

edit - Nice work with the DLC battles! I had to get Les to specially tune them in my game to be easier, lol. I was getting rocked! May I ask what team u went with for most of them and what strategies u used? Thanks!

 

[BrotherFrank]

Boo at asking Les to nerf a certain battle. Even if it was possibly a tad overtuned for being the middle mission of a dlc to the point it was arguably the 2nd hardest fight in the game.


Allright, team I had for that specific battle...

Spoiler

-angela, nazell as always
-2x kraken (had 1 of each type, forgot their names)
-mermaid
-2x ocean jellyfish
-naga archer
-crab god

Ocean jellyfish have greater magic resistance+elemental resistance so were great for tanking the initial fireballs on top of regen helping a tad, their stuns don't work against all units in this battle but can at least deal with the scorpions.Would rotate them as needed with the octupi to let them regen hp (1 mermaid healing every 2 turns simply isn't enough here, hence why took so many units with inbuilt regen so she can focus on topping up crab god exclusively).

Meanwhile Angela, the naga archer and nazell were able to take down 5-6 enemies a turn, here is where items might have played a big part: you get a gun from Viktor's experiment DLC that is great for this fight, combined with Angela wearing amulet of destruction meant my backline was killing 5-6 enemies a turn, it was only a question of mitigating incoming damage with my frontline to buy enough time. Without that gun the kill rate would have gone down to 3-4 enemies a turn which would have made a difference to say the least.

Deployed north and pushed north since really the enemy is divided into 2 forces and whilst the air elementals coming from the east will hit your rear fast enough on turn 2-3, this is convenient for Nazell to dominate and then use as kamikazes.

No other DLC battle is as tough as that one but if you are struggling with the following ones...

Spoiler

Sea witch's debuff song works great vs harpies, also mermaid song of heroism for that +1 defence. I also kept using crab god and krakens as my frontline because of their sheer mass letting you keep your backline units nice and safe so there are no holes for harpies to exploit so long as you're clumped up. The first time I did the dlc found fisher warriors effective vs harpies too, the combo of high defence+spikes shines through once again.

 

[Fluent]

hey Brother, thanks a lot for the suggestions! I gave up too early, true, but i also didn't understand how to properly choose my units against the enemy types present. Now that i know how to rotate my units accordingly i won't ask for help, i'll figure it out myself . But yeah, tough fights indeed and I was just trying to use a dream team rather than adapting to the enemy. Les let me know about some stuff and it helped tremendously. Thanks again for the info, much appreciated! <3

 

[[UCHIHA]XxDarkSasuke420xX]

why is this motherfucker updating his games like 4 times per day

 

[Fluent]

why is this motherfucker updating his games like 4 times per day

fixing bugs and making balancing tweaks based on my LP.

 

[rashiakas]

Meh, honestly it sounds like you are awful at this game, not sure if it's good if he balances it around your skill level.

 

[Fluent]

Meh, honestly it sounds like you are awful at this game, not sure if it's good if he balances it around your skill level.

He's not balancing around MY skill level, he's balancing it mathematically, but with cues based on what he sees in my videos. For example, he initially listed the Crab God to be worth 5000 gold in the accumulation of total party cost/power which is checked when doing side battles (a team of equal cost and strength will randomly be chosen). After he saw that it was spawning very, very hard groups against me, he went in and saw that his initial estimate was actually 2000 gold overpriced. So now the CG is worth 3000 gold after being mathetmatically balanced. He was going to do this stuff anyway but he gets a slight visual aid with my videos.

And yeah, he only tweaked battles for me to make them easier because I AM terrible, lol. But for everyone else, they will get the original, tough as nails battles that he designed. So don't worry.

 

[Fluent]

I still have 4 copies of Storm Mountain DLC to give away. Someone come claim one!

 

[zapotec]

Me me, i already won the base game and i need the dlcs!!

 

[Fluent]

Me me, i already won the base game and i need the dlcs!!

actually, since no one is really taking me up on that giveaway i'll just give u a copy. PM incoming shortly.

 

[visions]

I thought I don't want to grab all the giveaway stuff since I already won a copy of the base game from you. But if no one else is interested, I'll take one as well.

 

[Fluent]

once i'm at my PC i'll send the keys. so far that's 3 gone. 1 left!

 

[BrotherFrank]

So gave 1 of your vids a watch as was curious to see how you were handling things. (episode 32 to be precise).

I gotta say, I am genuinely disgusted at how some of the battles have been tuned to be downright trivial (and this ain't a go at you since clearly this was changed before you played the battle i'm about to cite as an example). That harpy cave fight? Used to have TWICE the amount of harpies with a good number of harpy leaders thrown in making for a relentless wave of fury crashing into your line. But sea witch's song among other abilities are just so good at neutering harpies whether it be 10 or 50 of them that it didn't matter, if your frontline was good, it could hold. But with the current number of harpies it's gone from potentially tough but trivial with the right abilities to downright easy.
For comparison when I played it, if I left anyone on the right, they would be instantly killed by a dozen harpies , so I had to form up 2 cohesive walls blocking off the north and east chokepoints and repulse frenzied assaults for multiple turns.
By contrast you left your neutral valkyrie out and left your backline completely exposed to harpies from the east approach (not that it mattered because due to the reduced spawns only 2 bothered to reach your backline which you easily dealt with) and she not only survived the 1st turn, she went on to survive the entire skirmish and win against the measly 2 harpies that started in that spawn. By turn 4 you had already killed mostly everything and were moving out to mop up the stragglers, ez win. What I played: badass steel wall defence against massive harpy horde that stood out to me as a fun battle due to the tense moments of harpies almost breaking through because there was just THAT many of them and if any of them made a hole you'd have a flood of them rushing through to tear apart your backline. What you played: a casual cave fight with a few harpies only barely outnumbering you if at all that was pretty forgettable.

Maybe the Djin fight was too rough, 2nd hardest or even hardest fight in the game and even with the nerf it should still be decently tough, but there was 0 reason to change that harpy fight.
The fight after it was similarly nerfed, I counted only 16 enemies vs your team of 15. As an aside I did like that little shield wall you did with the valkyries.

Otherwise regarding what you said at the start of the vid about how you're learning the game, etc.
Well thing is, you've only just started getting into the Age of Fear series like what..a month, 2 months ago? And you are immdiately playing a harder difficulty setting.
I just don't understand that, there is 0 shame in playing normal or even easy difficulty to learn things and then once you feel you know the game, put on hard and have it throw some real challenges at you. But no, you started playing hard immediately even though by your own admission you're figuring things out, and worst, have the dev using your experimental 1st playthrough to use as an indicator of how he should balance things on a difficulty setting meant for players who know what they are doing and want a challenge without going into DS.

That one doesn't sit well with me I admit. Especially because well, anecdotally I've had games I really liked have their mechanics completely reworked because of what some youtuber with a few thousand subs said (the game specifically being Iratus Lord of the Dead, I ain't exagerating when I say fucking youtubers ruined that game for me). So be mindful of your influence is what I'm asking and if a fight's giving you trouble, no shame in lowering the difficulty and saving beating it on hard for a future run. If you feel a fight is too rough on normal, fair enough, but hard should be hard.

Also it's worth repeating once again that open world has made the games a lot easier then they used to be, you have to remember you couldn't grind if you fell behind, you had to keep moving forwards with the story missions and at best do the occasional optional battle so there was always some pressure to keep up which is simply gone now. And then there's being able to recruit units outside of your faction in map shops which is still the single biggest game changer: in my recent reruns of aof games, I have been able to beat most of the supposedly "unwinnable" battles the game sometimes throws at you thanks to having a diversity of units I wouldn't normally have access to including them pseudo hero units you sometimes get from map events (that beastmistress gal you got being one such example, I got her in both my undead and demon army).

 

[Fluent]

dude, before i read this entire thing, the battles were tuned FOR ME ONLY, and reverted BACK TO ORIGINAL AFTER. sheesh.

 

[BrotherFrank]

Thank goodness...Though in that case I feel you are missing out and am again puzzled why you insist on playing on hard.

 

[Fluent]

Thank goodness...Though in that case I feel you are missing out and am again puzzled why you insist on playing on hard.

i always play on Hard. I beat The Forest Folk campaign on Hard without any help. I mistakenly thought the DLC battles were not properly balanced and asked Les to tune them a bit. he made them extremely easy, yes. so it's whatever. he reverted them back after i got thru. i mistakenly thought the battles were impossible which is why i asked for a look at it. i didn't know he'd make them super easy.

 

[Fluent]

had i known they were already properly balanced, i would have tried multiple times to beat them myself.

 

[BrotherFrank]

Allright fair enough, seems I misunderstood things. My vietnam flashbacks to the iratus incident didn't help, was all like no fluent don't make the game easier, noooo!