Game News Age of Decadence Demo Released

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Think I ran into a missing or incomplete thing.

Yeah. the demo only covers Teron, the mining outpost and the raider camp. Just enough to give us a good taste of the full game while tantalizing us with the promise of awesome.

This game is really not made for combat characters. I made a mercenary, tried to attack the assassin early and.. failed horribly. Even when all stats were dumped in combat stats I failed horribly. Of course, if you dump all your stats in combat stats there really isn't a lot stuff you *can* do in game either...

Also the action point system is kinda problematic. Choosing between fast/normal attacks are 90% of the time a matter of finding the combination in which you manage to spend all your APs, which also heavily encourages metagaming. I would propose that up to two APs should be able to be saved from the previous rounds, so that for example a swordsman (4AP base speed) with 10 AP could do something other than two fast - one normal attack without paying a heavy toll in wasted AP.

Really agree with us. It is my one main gripe about the game, which is fairly awesome so far. Note that the dialogue box is also far too long. Might be okay on a 15 inch laptop screen, but on a large monitor it is extremely irritating to drag your eyes back and forth, back and forth. Hinders reading. Easily fixed, though ... I hope.

Not again...

- You failed because combat is hard and even the very first opponent is challenging.
- You didn't use all options at your disposal.
- Stats matter but they don't determine your success or failure, which is why even putting all stats in combat didn't result in sweet victary!
- You can easily beat the assassin with 6-7 in physical stats.

Here are two guides, one written by a tester, another by a new player:
http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,2497.0.html
http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,2506.0.html

Hope that helps.

For a purely combat dedicated character focused on melee, having more than 8 APs might not be the wisest choice because the increased survivability of the best bronze armor(Legio Ferrata's armor or something) with hardened technique(9 DR), which requires just >= 30 craft, something assured if you build a high INT fighter, more than makes up for the reduced APs and without enough steel to craft a lightweight version of it in the demo so that having 9 APs would be justified the utility of a lightly armored but fast melee combat character is at best limited to 1 vs 1 duels and at worst void.

Well, and if I had the better luck of having killed just one more enemy to get enough XP to raise craft to 50, I could end with a 10 DR armor instead as I had decomposed enough iron for it.

I mean, the best armors allowing for 10 APs provide 6 DR with hardened. The extra 3 DR more than makes up the lower AP IMO, to the point I actually equipped a combat-focused character with 10 AP with one, and I managed to beat one of the toughest Imperial Guard battles with him, while trying the same battle with an armor that gave him all his 10 APs led him to a quick death.

One more thing probably already mentioned: nets are very useful, specially in battles against large numbers of enemies. Something to remember before thinking of using perception as a dump stat.

Anyone complaining about combat difficulty...someone posted this on ITS and so far I've had the exact same experience:

Try it out. It's not an "I win" mode by any means, but it should get you past those first few 'HOW THE FUCK DO I DO THIS' encounters. If it doesn't, well, try another game, I guess?

This game is crap. It is utter shit. I knew there would be no magic, but at least we could have had unique battlestyles/battle disciplines to make up for it. Nada. To make things worse, this is a single pc turnbased game...WTF? Why no party members?

Anyhow, I hope it sells well and VD is inspired to make a REAL rpg (aka fantasy rpg with magic spells and stuff and party members that you preferably generate yourself)

Hmm, good question though - do you ever get Fallout 1-style non-controllable party members in AoD? Temporary ones, at least, for major battles?

Yes. Quite a few times.

I've always preferred RPGs where most of the gameplay is oriented around YOUR character. The Fallout, Gothic, Witcher and Elder Scrolls games all spring immediately to mind. You can get temporary companions in them but there's no 4-person parties forced on the player.

Just thinking about old-school RPGs, the ones I've really disliked had large parties forced on the player nearly for all the game. I'm thinking BG/IWD/Wizardry etc.

Don't forget using a shield for cover while popping the moles with the hammer.

I hope you haven't been voting on Wasteland 2 polls lately, then.

I haven't played Wasteland, can't get the Abandonia version to work on my PC and the rights seem to be in limbo (so GOG.com aren't selling it). Having said that, people I respect including the great MCA have said positive things about the game, and Brian Fargo was involved in Fallout and Fallout 2. So I did donate to the Kickstarter campaign.

Uh what? You can't get Wasteland to work on dosbox?

I played it yesterday for 40 minutes or so, I haven't even had a combat encounter. So these are just very basic first impressions:

I like it! It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but that's not a bad thing at all. It feels very refreshing. I really like the writing style by which I mean the "pre-text" descriptions of characters and events that nicely gets around the "why the fuck doesn't my character know anything about the world" problem (no amnesia required!). The teleporting to locations is ... cool, I guess. What I've mostly noticed is that there's very little if any filler content, which is quite impressive. You can even fast travel in the town, so no time even spent walking from location to location, so I'm assuming there's a shitload of content if the game is intending to be 20+ hours long (I'm not sure if it is, I have a vague recollection of someone saying this somewhere on the internet once).

I do agree that 3D gameworld is rendered slightly redundant by the gameplay. I do wonder if the money spent there could've been better spent on detailed town drawings + moar music instead. The gameworld is nicely detailed, though. You can tell that the game hasn't had a big budget, but it's doing what it can very professionally. Fallout 3 had a gigantic budget but the animations still sucked, while here the animations were from my recollection pretty well done (again, considering the general graphical quality of the game). The new interface looks nice.

I can't seem to "roleplay", as in choose to say things in a nice or assholey way. The lack of this is not a good thing, but it is not a terrible loss either. Like I said, the game is definitely different and I'm open to see how well all these decisions work out in the game. Based on the 40 minutes I'd definitely buy the game and probably shall. I'll get back to playing the demo when I have time and hopefully I'll be able to give better feedback then.

All in all: a nice surprise.

One thing which is offered by the fact that you can walk around the city, for which a graphical engine is needed, is that in a few streets you can have interesting encounters. That's of course a minor thing, but I'm wondering how many people are missing out on this because they just fast-travel in the city.

You could of course emulate this using a purely textual interface, it would require options like "take the left street" etc.... anyway, some kind of engine is needed for combat too. I'm wondering whether a purely 2D engine would work, given the towers, walls etc.

I've been playing this a lot over the past few days. I can appreciate why you didn't want to go the 'Jack of all trades' route. Having said that, there's no way to be a 'good fighter who's also quite good with words' route, whereas you could in games like Fallout. That kind of disappoints me. I don't want to be a guy who's sole use is fighting and keeps getting taken advantage of in terms of conversations.

I found a bug where the weapon you have equipped gets replaced by a crossbow as soon as you enter combat. This happened when I was doing the mission for Feng, where you take the other loremaster out. As soon as you enter into combat with him, you've got a crossbow equipped, regardless of what you had before. The only way to fix this is to drop ALL weapons except the one you want to use. It is annoying.

I've had a few crashes, usually after saving, so they didn't cause me any real problems. Besides that, the game runs fine. Really the only things I'd like changed are a better camera, bigger fonts, and a more forgiving combat system. But maybe it'll be different with the full release. That way I can put more points into the dialogue skills and not feel like a moron every time I speak to someone.

Darklands had a rather good balance between the text interface parts and the isometric world parts (of course there was also the map and such). Adding more randomization (and/or handmade quests), skill checks and complex dialogues to that basic system would've been pretty decent as a start. I don't understand why it's so impossible to just look at things that worked in specific games, analyze why, and incorporate that into your design, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel (and removing just enough spokes in the process that it doesn't become a proper spokeless wheel but simply collapses instead).

I would like to second all the complaints about combat difficulty that have been made. After rerolling a characters dozens of times and trying all sorts of extreme builds I have the impression that too much depends on luck. If I minimize all non-combat skills my character cannot even severely wound the bodyguard in the opening assassin battle. Different tactics, different attacks, ranged attacks, etc. I've been trying everything for the last hour. After putting 10 in dexterity my character gets hit almost every time by the bodyguard, and the most damage I can do is 2 hp.

I disagree that the first encounter should be very challenging, because that is a good opportunity to teach the player the game, which I think the game should teach the player by letting him progress though it, not by making him restart endlessly. As it stands my impression is that the game punishes severely for not using min-maxing builds and encourages reloading.

ps. The font is way too small.

I'm getting tired of repeating it, but combat is hard because many of you aren't paying attention and just expecting to win.

For example, the Dex comment. What the fuck does it have to do with dodging attacks? I can consistently beat the assassin or the merc with an average 7 in all physical stats character.

"The most damage I can do is 2" - with what weapon? If you can't beat it with a dagger, try it with a sword or hammer or crossbow. You sure as fuck can do a lot more than 2 points of damage.

As for teaching, easy fights don't teach you anything.

Yeah. That's exactly what's happening here.

Complaints about gameplay - HALP! I CANT WIN! I PRESS THESE BUTTONS BUT NOTHING AWESOME HAPPENS!
Calling them stupid - guys, please pay attention, the game isn't as hard as you think.

Played today for 2-3 hours and I like it. I like quests, character building, combat.
But I can't stand this teleporting. Why can't I do something between scenes? Why can't I change my equipment? Why can't I apply skill points I gained?Maybe I would like to buy something, or sell? But you MAKE me go somewhere, do something.

Once I got some skill points and right after that (I believe it was the end of the Commercium quests) I was just teleported outside Teron where 3 thugs killed me in a matter of seconds. I could have been prepared (change equipment, apply skill points, SAVE GAME) if it wasn't for teleportation. Please change it.

And off course some small stuff - fonts, camera movement.