The 40% sale has triggered an interesting discussion on 4chan: http://boards.4chan.org/v/thread/332198740/age-of-decadence
Some of the posts:
Some of the posts:
__________Age of Decadence is fucking awful.
I can forgive it's garbage graphics and poor transitions, but the indie quality maps and map navigation, the boring, simplistic and repetitive boring combat system and the atrociously clunky interface I cannot stand.
It seriously plays like a game released in 1990 and I'm sorry, but that shit just doesn't fly. It took 7 years to develop and this was the best they could come up with, fucking embarrassing.
The writing may be excellent (I cannot confirm or deny, did not go far enough into it), but everything around is is awful. Pretty much every other CRPG released the same year is much better than this piece of shit.
__________this
fuck rpg codex
__________It's one of the best RPGs made in the past twenty years and one of the most important titles too.
Age of Decadence has taken the whole choices/consequences thing to a never seen before level, even surpassing Planescape: Torment and Mask of the Betrayer.
The system itself is rather unforgiving though, which comes with some problems - most importantly inviting meta-gaming.
If you like games like Torment, Bloodlines, Arcanum, New Vegas, etc. however in the sense of role playing a character in a fictional world which you can actually affect and where decisions have lasting consequences, then you should definitely give it a try. You should be frustration tolerant though since the game is rather unforgiving. Prepare to restart often - especially at the beginning since you may end up in a situation where your character is unable to handle the given problems.
__________bait
there is nothing good about this savescumming shitfest
the only good thing in aod is reactivity
I know you want to be cool and elite by sucking those indie devs cocks but come on
__________"atmosphere" is a murky term which depends more on feelings than reason. Some SJW might tell you that Gothic has "garbage" atmosphere due to there not being enough female characters present.
In my opinion AoD has great atmosphere, but it takes a while until you get into it, since the atmosphere is mostly created by the setting and believable faction dynamics which you only get to fully grasp when you're way into the game, or having beaten the game already and recognising things you've seen from previous playthroughs from a different perspective, e.g. meeting someone who's attempting to do what you had to do before while working for someone else and keeping him from doing it.
What made Torment brilliant was most of all the dialogue-based role playing. How they seemingly managed to interweave player-stats into the dialogue, and had dialogue play a major part in solving the game rather than just providing a bit of banter between the combat encounters where the player could communicate whether he was a nice guy or a dick.
AoD manages to recreate that - and even surpass it in many regard, since they've taken dialogue based role playing a step further, allowing you to beat the whole game that way if your character is skilled accordingly.
As I said before: this doesn't come without problems, e.g. inviting meta-gaming, but in my opinion it is incredibly important that someone actually came and made this game, pushing the system to its limitations so that future developers could learn from it.
__________>Eh, "run to choke" and "use consumables" is as varied as it gets really.
Not really. It also depends on your weapon of choice, e.g. you may want to use a different weapon in order to get a certain bonus, use a certain type of equipment to counter-act a certain type of weapon the enemy is using.
Also what really fascinated me is how the various weapon types also required vastly different tactics.
E.g. spears were actually completely different in their usage than swords for example. With a long spear, you needed to fight passively, relying on the chance to interrupt an enemy upon closing in on you rather than outright attacking. You would avoid direct encounters, keep enemies at a distance and wear them down that way - ideally using poison.
With daggers you would make use of your low point costs to attack in order to strike at limbs, reducing your enemy's chance to hit and evade, then after having "debuffed" the enemy strike at vulnerable parts of the armour to do damage.
Bows, crossbows, swords, hammers, axes, .. all weapons had different strengths and required different tactics in order to be successful. The game is a lot more varied than you're giving it credit.
Certainly, if you're playing a "pure" combat build, you're having a much easier time, and you don't require very elaborate tactics since you can simply "brute force" the encounter to victory, but as soon as you're trying to play hybrid characters who can also do a bit of talking, and have scholarly skills, you need to fight more elaborately.
This definitely beats games like Fallout for example, which came down to "shoot at the eyes".
>And yeah anything post arena champ is game breakingly easy, which is a pretty big flaw I think.
I'd say it's well earned. And a few fights may still give you a bit of trouble afterwards depending on your build.
In the end: AoD has more to offer than just combat. And there are plenty of great RPGs with a lot worse combat out there.
__________>part of the reason why games like pt, fallout and bg are considered classics besides other points was mastercrafted atmosphere and overall timeless designs
But what was timeless design about Torment? Torment is most of all unique because of its enormous dialogue and most of all: dialogue choices. Before Torment this was unusual - that is what made the game unique. Certainly, some people might tell you about great writing, or nice visual design, but in my opinion that's nothing that couldn't have been done in any other game. What made Torment memorable is how they turned it into a personal experience, allowing the player to fully flesh out the personality of the Nameless One through his dialogue choices, and explore how it would contrast or resemble past incarnations. This was only possible due to its role playing mechanics. And AoD manages to recreate and even surpass some of that. They have learned from Torment and taken things a step further, which I can't say about many games released since.
>everything in torment looks unique and interesting, it's a truly Impressive experience not just because the writting but because how well crafted the world and the characters are
As I said: that's all individual impression. What looks "interesting" to you may not look interesting to others. In my opinion such things cannot be judged properly, as these are not hard facts. I even agree with you, but I disagree in regards to that it's this which made Torment unique. In fact, I found a lot about the visual art direction about Torment appalling. I thought it looked too brown, I absolutely hated the ugly 3D character models. The "weird" world didn't seem interesting to me.
>same goes for fallout, the look of the weapons, iconic armors, the hub, harold etc. it's a post apocalyptic masterpiece
Same with Fallout, it's not particularly great looking. The hex-fields don't provide that great looks, the graphics are all rather brown-ish, even more so than in Torment. And while the armours are iconic, I don't think you got to see a lot of that in-game. If anything in concept art. In-game it was just a low-detailed grey sprite. What made Fallout unique to me was the interactiveness of the world. Being able to solve the scorpion cave quest by NOT entering the scorpion cave but blowing up the entrance with dynamite. When I could do that I realised that I was playing a great game. The graphics and art direction didn't sell the game to me.
>This is the reason why games like aod and underrail while better on some aspects will never top games like torment and fallout
Whether they're better or not is something I find completely unimportant and an uninteresting debate. I don't judge games on a linear scale where I could definitely say that one game is better than the other, games are too varied for that. I've already played Torment and Fallout, so getting something nearly as good or even half as good is perfectly fine to me.
__________>I loved being able to see the plot from various perspectives
I'm amazed more games don't do this, they really executed it well
__________AoD is a game which requires a lot of frustration tolerance, but if you get past that it's worth it. You'll hate combat in the beginning but after a certain amount of time you'll get a feel for how it works and you'll possibly enjoy it. Maybe this is Stockholm Syndrome, but I can only recommend giving it a try.
There's always the option to play a talker of course and breeze through the game. As a pure fighter it won't be that hard either.
Hard are hybrid characters, e.g. trying to play a scheming officer in the Imperial Guard who's not that great as a frontline fighter. For that you'll ideally have beaten the game already as a pure talker and a pure fighter so you know which types of encounters you can take and where you can easily gain experience.
__________>You're trying to act like there's some strategy involves in this process but all it boils down to is picking what gives you the best AP/thc/dmg ratio and using it over and over and maybe using a net sometime
Try playing a ranged build, especially a crossbow one. It involves a lot more strategy.
Not to mention things like positioning, crowd control and such are also very important. There were lots of fights when the "grab" move or liquid fire made the whole fight a lot more easier etc.
__________>And pick the one attack type that's best and use it until the enemy is dead.
And picking that right attack for the right enemy type, knowing which enemy to engage in which order at which position is the embodiment of tactical depth. With a spear/bow you also need to make sure that you're not cornered, etc.
>You're trying to act like there's some strategy involves in this process
General Carl von Clausewitz defined strategy as the lore of the use of battles for the purpose of war. What you're talking about is tactics, which is the lore of commanding troops in battle. And yes, this is what tactics are about. Depending on environmental constraints, depending on equipment constraints and other factors you decide what you're going to do.
Have you played with all types of combat builds? You just told me you haven't even entered the third city.
>attack the most threatening enemy with the one attack that works best against them then move on to the next dude.
What is the most threatening enemy? That would depend on your own equipment and the enemy's equipment as well as his stats. Finding that out isn't immediately apparent and finding the right solution to a problem often requires multiple attempts.
I don't know what you are expecting in terms of tactics, and frankly: I don't think you know it yourself.
Especially when talking about RPGs with a heavy role playing focus, it is rare to see a game with tactical combat that elaborate, which is why the Fallout example was mentioned. Torment or Arcanum don't excel in terms of combat either.
__________It's so easy to see how to weed casuals out when they say AoD combat is terrible. What it is is poorly documented and explained. It's the most nuanced combat system in a CRPG since Temple of Elemental Evil and it does all that without needing to rely on shit like spells to make it seem like there are a lot of options.
__________>Trying to defeat Melinus' ambush in the first town.
That fat bearded fuck.
__________>anyone know if you can craft the wolf helmets yet?
As I said haven't played in a while, but I doubt that. Crafting is pretty lackluster overall, the selection of things you can craft is pretty limited.
I'm still fucking mad they won't let us craft repeating/double/scoped crossbows, especially the scoped and reapeting one. They are both fucking great as a concept but since they can't get any crafting bonuses they become useless very fast.
"Snipe" attack on scoped crossbow is fucking great since it pretty much always has 90%+ THC and lots of CS as well on extremaly long distances where your usual THC would be around 10%, at the cost of 8 AP if I remeber correctly.
Repeating crossbow could make for an interesting 10 alchemy build where the main tactic would be to just poison everyone in one turn, run the fuck away/liquid fire/use the "burst" attack and reapply poison when needed.
So much potential wasted.
__________The things is that the game actually wants you to fail a few minor checks from time to time so you know which skills you need to raise. You are not supposed to pass the 100% of the time, even if you raise said skill.
The life-or-death checks are usually low enough .
__________I disagree there. While your singular build is going to fight somewhat similarly, e.g. you're probably going to use at most three different types of attacks as well as some consumable types, the fighting styles of the different weapons is actually quite different.
e.g. a spear fights completely different from a dagger and requires completely different tactics.
This is something you rarely see in games, where different weapons usually only do different types of damage while everything else is pretty much the same. In AoD, weapons have different abilities (e.g. "debuffing" is done with specific types of crippling attacks which depending on the enemy type can be more or less effective), and different strengths which play out in different situations.
For a game where you only control a single character it has a surprising amount of tactical depth.
__________Not really, in that case you should net/bola the archers, or maybe grab one of the melee guys to go after archers first.
I still remember that ambush after you steal a gem from a rich guy in Madooran, 3 melee guys and 2 ranged behind a barricade. Playing a crossbow build myself.
Literally ubeatable until I figured out to grab one of them to get past the barricade, throw liquid fire so I have 3 turns to deal with the archers and gain some distance before they can get to me.
__________How about you just play the demo you fucking faggot?
>"WAAAAH, GAMES DON'T HAVE DEMOS ANYMORE!"
>but when they do, don't play them, just solicit the opinions of anonymous /v/irgins who haven't played a video game since 2008
__________>need to clear an outpost
>kill 3 guards at the front
>loot them
>reached carry weight limit, so I returned to town to sell all of the loot, then came back to finish the rest of the outpost
>the game actually reacts ti this
>the rest of the guards set up a barricade and armed the slaves while I was gone
>need to pass the dodge check while jumping through the barricade because the fuckers are shooting at me with the bows
>fail, lost half of my HP before the fight even begins
>get wrecked by battle slaves
>need to get something from a remote monastery
>there are raiders outside
>talk to them
>they want to destroy the monastery, kill everyone inside and steal everything
>refuse because moralfag
>I decide to leave for now and come back later when I'm stronger
>come back
>the game actually reacts to this
>raider destroyed the monastery soon after I left and took everything valueable
>quest failed
10/10 breddy good
Also
>talk to a raider leader
>try to kill him with a surprise attack
>failed, he knocks me to the ground
>all of the raiders start kicking me until I pass out
>wake up later
>raiders are gone
>lost some max HP because they were pretty brutal
>also gained some dodge skill because being almost kicked to death is good practice
>quest failed
This is something people fail to grasp most of the time when playing AoD. It's ok to fail as long as you don't die. The only way this kind of interactive storytelling could be better is if the game actually moves forward without player input like in The Last Express. Now there's another game with beautiful replayability.
