Review RPG Codex Review: The Age of Decadence

[likaq]

What's the problem, lecuck?

Review should end with:
This is literally the worst crpg I’ve played to date. That’s right, I even had more fun with Pillars Of Eternity - at least it was a fun romp, as opposed to this lifeless, uninspired husk. Disappointment, thy name is Age of Decadence.

was a joke.

What's the problem, retarded dumbfuck?

 

[hivemind]

true but boring

 

[Irenaeus II]

Darth Roxor, you have finally redeemed yourself in my eyes.

 

[MicoSelva]

Now waiting for the(at least) three other AoD reviews that will be posted on The Codex front page, because we all know it cannot do worse than PoE.

 

[Infinitron]

I'd prefer we not waste our reviewing manpower on that when Underrail is coming out in two weeks...

 

[Eyestabber]

Great review. I'm guessing the dungeon crawler will be for our favorite potato reviewer.

 

[Zeriel]

Unless you want to jump right into the full deal, in which case, please follow me into this alley here so that I may sell it to you with a wondrous discount.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Well, I ask because you had a negative opinion about the game's demo (including the combat), so basically I'm curious what exactly changed your mind in the final game.

The very first demo didn't have a lot in common with the current state of the game overall.

Sure they are similar but they play entirely different.

wow men ur totally rite!

Loremaster almost completely can ignore affiliations to houses and follow secrets of ancients.

wow just like everyone else!

Drifter IS blank state character which can "drift" between various factions

wow just like everyone else!

Grifter is your snakeoil salesman using people (even if he himself isn't in position do to so) cheating any lying.

wow just like everyone else!

such uniqueness

you forgot about mercenary tho after all he can fight for money (wow just like everyone else!)

Needlessly long and most of the time reviewer starts to talk more about himself his personal preference not the game.

ok next time i'll just focus on things independent from my preferences and my next review will be "this game has graphix and text and sounds and also some numbers on screens"

will that be devoid enough of personal preferences

 

[Irenaeus II]

the only non-starting faction that can be joined is the Imperial Guard

If I wanted to be boring, I'd say that you can join two other non-starting factions: House Aurelian and House Crassus

Obviously to anyone who played the game, you can join them regardless of your background.

 

[Eyestabber]

I think the grifter is a bit of a missed opportunity. It would be pretty cool to have an independent playthrough, on which your grifter dude simply goes around conning men in high places.

I also agree with the criticism on the Boatmen's questline. The crossbow thing and the "dress as a hobo now!" thing felt REALLY awkward. On its defense, AG questline DOES have a lot of cool opportunities to use CS and the Levir-CS thing was really brillant. And Stone Cold Killer.

Funny you didn't mention TG Darth Roxor. I'm guessing TG is one of the factions you skipped? I'd like to know your thoughts on the heavily criticized "hey thief dude, murder the not-emperor now!!!". "oh, murdering is not your thing? No problem, you can play sidekick for this assassin dude that was introduced into the game just for the occasion". õ.O

 

[Carrion]

Any examples of the "BioWarian" C&C? There are some parts that feel kind of unfinished, characters swearing that they'll get you some day but never making an appearance etc., but as a whole I think the C&C in the game is superb. The reputation system is rather underused, though.

Two things that annoyed me about the combat already in the demo are the fact that you cannot affect your character's positioning before combat, and that the actual combat area is often so limited. This may lead to situations like ambushing a group of enemies with your buddies only to realize that your ranged characer is just standing in the middle of a street a few feet away from the enemies and having to face three thugs on his own. Alternatively you might find yourself ambushed out in the open without being able to run away unless there's a separate dexterity check for that, even if you've got a DEX of 10 and could easily outrun anyone. The combat is greatly improved otherwise, though, and simply calculating the highest damage expectancy for each turn and repeating the same attacks until everything is dead doesn't usually cut it anymore.

All in all a really good and thorough review.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Any examples of the "BioWarian" C&C?

The one that bugged me the most was probably breaking the siege of Zanzibar as commercium.

Made Paullus side with Aurelian? Good, the siege is broken and Whatshisname The Merchant now welcomes you to Meru's librarium! Please go find the Ziggurat to win!
Made Paullus side with Meru? Good, the siege is broken and Meru now welcomes you to his librarium! Please go find the Ziggurat to win!
Made Paullus side with Meru and convinced him not to blow up Al-Akia? Good, the siege is broken and Meru now welcomes you to his librarium! Please go find the Ziggurat to win!
Made Teron side with Meru? Good, the siege is broken and Meru now welcomes you to his librarium! Please go find the Ziggurat to win!

 

[Esquilax]

Any examples of the "BioWarian" C&C? There are some parts that feel kind of unfinished, characters swearing that they'll get you some day but never making an appearance etc., but as a whole I think the C&C in the game is superb. The reputation system is rather underused, though.

With regards to this specifically, there are a few examples. First is Amerius, the guy who had his house taken by Marcus Valla. If you make a deal with Valla, he swears vengeance upon you, but never follows through. Honestly, this I didn't mind because at this point, Amerius is a penniless, homeless guy who realistically can't do shit to you. However, if you side with Amerius and get his house back by duping Valla into thinking that you're a praetor of House Aurelian and telling him to GTFO right now, he also threatens you, but we never see him again. In this case, it makes less sense because Valla is a powerful man.

I can see why Roxor might have found this a bit irritating, but I don't think that Iron Tower had the time to script a unique scenario for every dude that threatens your PC in the gameworld.

Spoiler

Nevertheless, bigger example that I would have loved to see more fleshed out is a possible vengeance scenario with Legatus Carbo, a psychotic Sargent Barnes type, if you're a House Aurelian praetor who managed to convince him to let the Ordu through. You do so by promising him that the great war that he has always wanted is now possible and that he will no longer have to wait for it. Eventually, you can then arrange for the Ordu to kill off the vast majority of the Imperial Guard just as they seize Ganezzar for Lord Gaelius, leaving Carbo as the new Dux of what remains of the IG. Now, given that Carbo was not the most stable of people before you tricked him into setting in motion a series of events that would kill off the only thing he ever cared about, I can only imagine that this is the event that would make him completely snap.

Obviously, we can't expect there to be C & C for everything, but it would be a very nice personal touch to the questline in this case. It's not often that you see an enemy in an RPG with a very real, personal grudge against you.

 

[Darth Roxor]

^ Yup, Carbo is #2 on my list right after Zanzibar.

 

[valcik]

Made Paullus side with Aurelian? Good, the siege is broken and Whatshisname The Merchant now welcomes you to Meru's librarium! Please go find the Ziggurat to win!
Made Paullus side with Meru? Good, the siege is broken and Meru now welcomes you to his librarium! Please go find the Ziggurat to win!

Just out of curiosity, what reputation allows you to enter Meru's private library? I couldn't enter it as loremaster with Commercium reputation 13, no matter what faction I made Paullus to side with after breaking the siege.

 

[Achiman]

Good review. I must admit I though the game would be shit or disappointing. It was neither, I had a good time and beat it twice. When you figure out some of the games systems and finally start to win some fights, it really grows on you. My only other real gripe was the end game (last 25%) seemed abrupt, whatever way you chose to follow.

 

[Eyestabber]

From what I gather from VD's posts, the next updates will flesh out both Ganezzar and the AG, so it might be worth a new playthrough. I know I'm holding on my AG ironman game until the update...

 

[Drowed]

So, another Roxor's review, and as expected, it's shi....

...oh. You know, it's quite good. Surprisingly, I agree with most of it. Especially with the idea that many quests often don't provide basic solutions that you would expect in a given context, or factions (Assassin's guild) which, comically, don't deserve its name.

Good combat, "thousands" of branching paths, some great quests, some WTF quests, OP Lore, etc. Unique and fun game, I will certainly come back to play it again in the future, but fits perfectly in the "unpolished gem" syndrome.

Well... I guess it's a great start for anyone, isn't it?

 

[anus_pounder]

So, ultimately, I guess the joke’s on me. Age of Decadence is a good game, and I’ll likely revisit it in the future. It still leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s definitely an ambitious game, perhaps even one of a kind, and it is good for what it is as the only one of its kind. It might not be particularly innovative per se, but it has its own quirky convention, it sticks to it firmly and pulls no punches or takes any steps back to adhere to popular practices.

This is not how you generate drama!

 

[Lurker King]

As for the backgrounds altogether, one question that I have to ask is what exactly is the purpose of the non-affiliated ones.

Exactly. The fact they are not really supported throughout the game with their own quests is disappointing, even though I can enjoy the different perspectives they offer at the beginning.

There is a neat distinction here between combat and civil skill categories that is as simple as it is obvious, which only makes me wonder how come other RPGs don’t use it as well.

True. Players don’t pay attention to this nice detail, but it’s well thought-out.

The developers have stated multiple times that making a character that simply “makes sense” is enough for you to be successful. But I really do beg to differ. My first character, an assassin, I envisioned as a “ninja” type of survivalist sneaker relying on his own wits, focusing on Alchemy, Sneak, Streetwise, etc. What I had in mind was climbing into people’s villas via balconies, putting scorpions under their pillows and disappearing into the crowds unnoticed.

True, but that is what happens when you want to subvert the conventions with realism. We all have this ninja assassin mindset, but the assassin guild in AoD is more down to earth and realist. That’s the reason why the thieves guild is more powerful and connected than the boatmen, and why each of the individual guilds end up being involved with the consequences of their jobs. Moreover, while you can’t do most of your missions in a Hitman fashion, you have some nice text-adventures in a ninja fashion. Most of your criticisms agaisnt the merchant playthrough reveal more about your preconceptions about this topic in fiction than whether the quests are believable or not.

A large part of this stems from the blasted mandatory Lore/Crafting. Simply put, the rich get richer in AoD – every new place unlocks more places, and thus more SP.

That is correct. But then again, that is the price for having a game world that is believable. In W2 you will find mines, alarms and toasters everywhere just so that the player can feel that his investment in those skills was justified. The consequence of that type of design is that the game world feels completely artificial and narcissist. Everything is particularly arranged so that the player can feel like a super-awesome explorer. Not in AoD.

But a specific mindset is necessary in many other ways, and here things start to get a bit ugly. It is perhaps the most difficult to get accustomed to the idea of hoarding skill points.

True, but then again, it is about realism. The only way to get rid of this problem is to have a fluffy character system that doesn’t really matter. If you can allocate SPs anyway you want and surpass all the challenges the game world impose on you, then you don’t really have any challenges to begin with. In that case, the skills, stats and SPs would be purely cosmetic.

However, that is not to say that everything is perfect around here. The biggest stinker is probably the enemy AI. Your enemies are pretty dumb and usually act only in the most basic ways. This is probably why you are always so desperately outnumbered – it does tend to offset the enemies’ stupidity and present you with adequate challenge. But still, there are many routines and actions that the AI always employs, which you will quickly learn to recognise and abuse in all kinds of ways. The biggest problem, perhaps, is that your enemies never act as teams, but instead as groups of individuals. You will often see your foes clog up a chokepoint and block their allies or surround you in ways that are absolutely counterproductive to some of them, not to mention their usage of whirlwind attacks that hit more allies than enemies.

Mostly true, but I disagree with the part about chokepoints. If enemies were smart enough to avoid chokepoints, the chokepoints would be useless. At least in that aspect, enemies are intentionally dumb. In addition, some fights are planned in a way that the AI works like an elegant clock. For instance, if you refuse the first invitation to see Gaelius, you will face a team of guards, with two long spears on the back, and tower shield guys on the front, and almost no space for kiting.

First, a “diplomatic” playthrough is extremely limited and easy, almost to the point of the game playing itself. You never really do anything.

Even if you convince a bunch of mercenaries to kill themselves, destroy Maadoran pressing a button, open a teleport to other dimension, or become a god? Besides, the passiveness in the diplomat playthrough is an inherit limit of the accepted cRPG conventions we have. In most cRPGs, this flaw is not apparent because the talker options are just fluffy options to a combat playthrough. AoD take this seriously, but this reveals its limitations. The only way to fix this is to change our conventions about dialogue checks, which is a herculean task.

To me, the first “chapter” of the game around the city of Teron is AoD at its peak. It gives you the greatest flexibility of approach, internal logic and overall quality. The next chapter in Maadoran is still good and introduces more variety of content, but it’s here that you’ll see the first seeds of badness. And then you finally get to Ganezzar and beyond where things really start to fall apart, where logic takes a holiday and where the quality of design simply plummets all the way down to the three final endgame “dungeons”.

I partially agree. The truth is that Teron is so rich with content and polish that anything that they could come up later is pallid in comparison. Even if they had more three years, the last city would still be inferior. The fact that most of the playthroughs lead us to the temple is also silly. Of course, most of the background quests begin with the map, but the life and blood of the game are the core quests. The temple should be inevitable for a loremaster character, not to every background.


Things you should criticize:


(1) There is no synergy between stats and skills.

(2) You mention that the world doesn’t track really well your reputation and deeds. The worst offender in that regard is the destruction of Maadoran.

(3) Incomplete crafting. Crafting is mostly about metal. Different types of wood and leather are completly irrelevant.

(4) The abundance of dead lore.

The developers didn’t implement (1) because it lead to pigeonholed characters – I bet it also made the game easier. For me, this shows that there are some limits with the prevailing conventions of cRPGs concerning the use of stats and skills. (2) and (3) weren’t implemented because they didn’t had time. (4) is mostly cargo cult. The lore that matters is always that one that have a life of its own or put things in motion, like the events in the abyss and the arch. Reading pages and pages of lore to know how the battle with airship happened is not that great, even though is not poorly written.

 

[Infinitron]

True, true, that is correct, mostly true. Lurker King's post is as disappointingly rage-free as the review.

 

[Lurker King]

True, true, that is correct, mostly true. Lurker King's post is as disappointingly rage-free as the review.

The only thing that makes me angry is people calling me a fanboy for ignoring unfair criticisms, obvious trolling and spending too much time talking about the same game. It is all about focus. In an ideal world, I would play and discuss every game, but I don't have too much free time.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Good effortpost by Lurker King.

Reading pages and pages of lore to know how the battle with airship happened is not that great, even though is not poorly written.

I like it. Then again, I like history in real life.

 

[King Crispy]

It is ambitious because it tries to blend so many things into one. The developers say that their game is “not for everyone”, but I disagree. After all, it has a great combat system and can be played for it alone. It has plenty of branching and reactivity. It may not have much in terms of exploration, but it does have a lot of secret hunting and info collection. For God’s sake, it even has an inbuilt CYOA mode if you hate RPGs, no matter the fact that it’s not particularly good. In this way, AoD is actually for everyone, simply due to the breadth of playstyles and approaches supported by it.

Good paragraph.

 

[Grauken]

Neat review, feels like my int score went up a point just from reading it