Game News The Age of Decadence Released

[Jaesun]

Are you trying to goad Roxor into a teardown review of Fallout 1? I think he'd be up for that.

It would be interesting to finally have a FALLOUT IS FUCKING SHIT review on the site.

 

[Excidium II]

niceme.me

I don't think there's anything roxor regrets more than reviewing PoE. (Besides playing PoE)

 

[~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-AIN'T]

Asking "how could the raiders leader possibly walk past me while I was fighting when I didn't see him walking past me?" is kinds silly. No offense, Roxor. Sure, we could pause the fight, grey out the controls, and show him walking past you. Maybe it would make you happier but for me it's a waste of time to script it. (though I guess this could already be an option and I just didn't see it due to low sneak skill?)

For the record, I don't think the idea of the raiders leader holding back and then getting through the battlefield while you and the rest of his men are busy fighting is absolutely and utterly illogical and unbelievable.

The main reason it's designed this way is because the raiders leader won't let you loot it and leave, which could easily mean an impossible fight. So instead of them attacking you to take the spoils, you're simply told to fuck off, which makes fighting them your choice.

I think Roxor's wrong on this particular point, but some of his criticisms of that whole quest still makes sense. Why do you have to either help or attack the raiders to get into the monastery? If a couple raiders can hold back and sneak up during the fight, why can't you do the same? Could be an option to hide and wait until the raiders attack and then sneak into the monastery during the chaos.

The villagers seem a little too good with their bows for belief as well. I can buy that maybe they'd be a bit better than your average villager because they may have fought to protect the monastery more than once, but they're running around doing 15 damage aimed shots. It doesn't really matter, but when the villagers are hitting me more often than the crossbowman at the Aurelian outpost (despite me having much better dodge skill at the monastery), it bends the suspension of disbelief a bit.

And the whole raiders shooting through walls thing is dumb, though I assume that was unintentional.

(all that being said, I think the game is great overall, though it has seemed to inspire a certain fanboyism in people here who refuse to accept that there might be any flaws)

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Darth Roxor is just butthurt AoD stole the attention from his Ding Dong review

 

[Goral]

From the shoutbox:

Darth Roxor:
i think i should stop reading the aod threads

Darth Roxor:
the sect of aod is hurting my brian

I expect that you will make the difficult decision of dedicating your review to me. It's clear that you're starting to develop feelings for me. And I'm sorry I'm hurting your heart brian (in Polish we call hearts "Brians").

 

[Mustawd]

It would be interesting to finally have a FALLOUT IS FUCKING SHIT review on the site.

Shut yer damn mouth.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I think Roxor's wrong on this particular point, but some of his criticisms of that whole quest still makes sense. Why do you have to either help or attack the raiders to get into the monastery? If a couple raiders can hold back and sneak up during the fight, why can't you do the same? Could be an option to hide and wait until the raiders attack and then sneak into the monastery during the chaos.

The villagers seem a little too good with their bows for belief as well. I can buy that maybe they'd be a bit better than your average villager because they may have fought to protect the monastery more than once, but they're running around doing 15 damage aimed shots. It doesn't really matter, but when the villagers are hitting me more often than the crossbowman at the Aurelian outpost (despite me having much better dodge skill at the monastery), it bends the suspension of disbelief a bit.

And the whole raiders shooting through walls thing is dumb, though I assume that was unintentional.

(all that being said, I think the game is great overall, though it has seemed to inspire a certain fanboyism in people here who refuse to accept that there might be any flaws)

There are plenty of flaws, that's for sure. Shooting through walls is an oversight (I guess we forgot to change their passability. Why can't you sneak in during the fight? I'm not sure it would have worked well and made much sense as there's a huge difference between the raiders leader walking past his own men finishing up the villagers and you just running/sneaking past everyone.

 

[Excidium II]

I expect that you will make the difficult decision of dedicating your review to me. It's clear that you're starting to develop feelings for me. And I'm sorry I'm hurting your heart brian (in Polish we call hearts "Brians").

You and Lurker King deserve at least to have a shout out patched in the credits.

 

[Darth Roxor]

From the shoutbox:

help i'm being stalked by angry cultists

i better hire a bodyguard before it's too late

 

[hivemind]

help i'm being stalked by angry cultists

i better hire a bodyguard before it's too late

be glad that the hivemind is not upon you, yet

 

[epeli]

Goral and Darth Roxor should team up to write a cooperative AoD review where you take turns trash-talking analyzing the game.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Asking "how could the raiders leader possibly walk past me while I was fighting when I didn't see him walking past me?" is kinds silly. No offense, Roxor. Sure, we could pause the fight, grey out the controls, and show him walking past you. Maybe it would make you happier but for me it's a waste of time to script it.

Having the game make sense is a waste of time.

But after all, in Ancient Rome the game plays you.

 

[Aenra]

Roxor's not entirely off and you know it
I picked it up for what it was, and still stand by my statement, loved it! However, i loved it despite the following:

- The game has a few logical gaps one needs to "accept" and move on from. A logical gap is one we would be keen to highlight and less inclined to excuse, as it is just that, a logical gap. In a game almost 90% about story through choices given or taken away from you, logical gaps tend to stand out. When, the game being what it is, you can forgo scripts and mechanics, paste me a vignette and be done with it, i'd expect you to have it covered. This does not only apply to how the story evolves, but also to how important NPCs are being (or not) introduced to you. Many scenarios where an NPC introduction had been lacking or explanations appeared shallow as fuck because there had been no prior info presented to you. A sense of smooth transition -plot wise- is something this game could benefit from.

Since we're at it, i'd only add two more issues, i'm sticking to 'general' because i am not done with AoD yet:

- it's one more RPG where i feel we got too many classes for our own good. Would have been better served with a condensed version, where grifter was merged into assassin, drifter into merchant and praetor into loremaster. There are classes where the game encourages you (CYOA + logically thinking about how they'd play) to spread out your capabilities into both the social and combat factor, except oops, VD doesn't like spread out characters. Whatever allusions to a different gameplay are stopped short, and only at a point where you got to delete said char entirely and start over. In much, much stricter patterns.

Which leads me to the last point:

- Balance.
Design:
a) If you force me into very specific character builds (and do not forget the above, "drifter" my ass), i'd expect them to be more or less equally viable and/or capable of taking me through the whole story in a way that justifies a difference between say Assassin and Grifter. Currently? Come here and tell me where you skill your assassin, and how combat as an assassin differs from combat as a drifter. Or where.
b) Harsh world and harsh circumstances may or may not call for harsh combat, but when you do have it, you cannot have a loremaster creaming through everything. Way too antithetic. Especially when high Int/Cha playthroughs require the least amount of thinking. Am i being rewarded for taking the easy way out?
Iteration:
As if the above is not bad enough, the number crunching appears to have been stopped way short of its goal. Barring alchemy, i just don't see how they even think a Dex-based character can play through this game. I honestly don't. See above regarding spread-out skills and stats.

At the very least, they should consider changing the SPs gained from killing people. A patching on the problem, but still, could help a lot. Combat classes can develop a bit more.
i) Have given combat SPs be based on the number of people killed. I kill one NPC, i get one currently. I kill four, i take one still?
ii) Make combat SPs scale to Dex. Like proper SPs scale to Int?

The two together would at least provide a semblance of equal chances. Leaving us with the logical gaps
Vault Dweller Elhoim still a great game btw, am fucking loving it. All that misery, just warms my soul ^^

 

[Excidium II]

Having the game make sense is a waste of time.

But after all, in Ancient Rome the game plays you.

This is still the best justification for bad design I've seen to this date, could have just used it again.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

What fucking RPG allows you to ambush people from balconies or rooftops? Enlighten me.

What's with unrealistic expectations?

Hahaha, what the fuck

 

[Lurker King]

help i'm being stalked by angry cultists

You see, every edgy guy on the Codex complaints about everything. But in order for that humoristic style to work, we need to believe that he has an impeccable taste and a profound knowledge of things, because, you know, that is what is expected from such a loudmouth smartass dick. Hence, all you need to demoralize the smartass is a retarded fanboy completely indefensible slip, like this one:

I WON’T DENY THAT I WAS HYPED FOR HONG KONG. But even so, I think my expectations were not unrealistic enough to cloud my judgement. ALL I WANTED, BASICALLY, WAS ANOTHER DRAGONFALL.

And this pat on the back about the comment above:

Good review as usual.

Someone who enjoy Dragonfall have no right to complaint about AoD in anything.

GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!!

 

[Bubbles]

This really is PoE all over again. In the end, The Witcher 3 will stand tall as the Codex's favourite RPG of 2015.

 

[Excidium II]

Like clockwork. Always the usual suspects on AoD threads defending the master's honor and fisting each other furiously. Are ITS forums too slow or is it just easier to stand out on VD's attention here?

It's not even subtle, just click at post stats.

 

[Lurker King]

I've got the Steam update as well. Linkie for the laziest of the lot: http://steamcommunity.com/app/230070/discussions/0/490123197958379937/.

And the art

 

[Zeriel]

The Witcher 3 gets my worst score: I didn't finish it. That's not even to say that it is a bad game, only so uninteresting that I couldn't even be bothered to play through it. At least with my torrented copy of Inquisition I had my animating hatred to drive me forwards. With Witcher, I had nothing.

 

[t]

Guys, wtf really. So Roxor has some trolly comments, big fucking news. No reason to white knight the shit out of the game.

Btw. is Tommy Wiseau the LZD guy from steam forums? Both calling VD "Vinnie".

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

I call him Vinney.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Btw. is Tommy Wiseau the LZD guy from steam forums? Both calling VD "Vinnie".

Had forgotten about good old LZDK, he had a good innings predicting the game wouldn't be out before 2019

 

[Junmarko]

Haha. Loving the whole "Chariots of the Gods" inspired lore for this game. You guys should have put a Giorgio Tsoukalos parody character in for laughs, a recluse loremaster, have a little avatar with the crazy hair.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

help i'm being stalked by angry cultists