This is all great news. I noticed that the Steam discussions on DR are WAY more positive than what it was back during AoD's release. And I always suspected DR was meant to make people more familiar with ITS combat system, which is why I started writing my guide on the same day DR was released.
I always noticed that much of the butthurt around AoD came from the fact that people failed to understand the system, despite the fact that ITS system is actually pretty straightforward. I did my best to change that, with the videos, guides, build tips and whatnot (tho I doubt I had much influence). However it's pretty clear to me that NOW, a year after AoD release, people are starting to "get it".
It's pretty baffling that it took people this long to realize you're supposed to put a lot of points on your favorite weapon and favorite defense and you're not supposed to change your mind after choosing a particular build. I blame consoles. And Kim Kardashian.
They still complain. I noticed that our rating on GOG dropped from 4.5 to 4.3 and went to take a look:
Not as advertised - 1/5
The game advertises that it offers you choice and the ability to carve your own destiny out of it's crusty post-apocalyptic landscape. It also advertises itself as a wonderfully wrought tale.It lives up to neither claim.The writing is terrible. Perhaps if you've never opened a real book before and your only experience with story-telling has been Call of Duty and Halo you might find AoD's writing to be intriguing. However, Curious George trumps the dry, incapable pen of whatever monkey they got to write this steaming pile of garbage. The choice it offers is whether to hit the + button next to Strength or Persuade. No, don't touch the other! A successful character in AoD is very strictly relegated to doing one thing very well and nothing else. Difficult combat? Please. It's either impossible, if you chose to be persuasive, or it's simply dull, if you chose to be a scrapper.The dialogue choices during scenarios are incredibly limiting as well. There's no flexibility. In a world where everyone is trying to deceive you and take you for every penny you're worth, you, the player, aren't given the option to be deceitful. The writers obviously couldn't conceive of the possibility their players would want to keep their options open in a situation. I guess if I said I'd help this guy out I must accept the fact there's no option to back out of it, no matter how the situation changes during its course.I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm throwing a tantrum because I couldn't make an intellectual, charismatic assassin who could play politics, which is all I really wanted to do in this trite, pointless waste of time.
Want to be deceitful? Invest in Streetwise.
Extremely disappointing - 1/5
I really thought i would never have to make a review on GOG, but this game really bugs me. At first, it looks really good with nice plots and various ways to solve problems, but you discover very soon that the "watch your step" behaviour doesn't work in your favor at all. If i had to sum up, i'd say that everybody is lying to you, but you can't lie to anyone.I decided to take a merchant working for the merchant's guild. Everything was fine at the beginning, even if the game really makes you feel that the whole situation was stuck just before you magically appeared, but when i arrived in the second city, everything went like sh*t.I had to rally support to overthrow the government there but i found myself in a complicated situation since one of the "support" wanted me to cross my boss and since she didn't take no for an answer, i had to go along and say "okay, i'll be with you", thinking that i will betray her in time. But it never happened. Once i gathered support, the game was on a roll and everything went on an instant. I couldn't do or say anything and i had to leave on a huge failure since the new boss allied with the women who mislead me. I thought this was just a mistake and i tried to keep on but something similar happened just after that which made me want to throw my screen away.So i am extremely disapointed, especially when i have to pay almost 30 dollars for it. Even old school RPGs like KOTOR 2 proposed to change sides, interrupt your quests, modify your alliegance, change your word and so on at almost every step, but this game does not come close to that, even if it says so.What a waste.
Takes a special kind of effort to fail to see all the options to lie, betray, change sides.
Very highly NOT recommended - 1/5
This is a weird exercise in text based adventure with a retro graphics overlay. That may indeed work for a game for some, but where this game fails me utterly is with the difficulty. If your idea of a good time is to reload an unavoidable battle with the odds WAY stacked against you, over and over and over again, literally for hours on end, and have no choice but to do this in order to progress, then this will be a great game. For the rest of us, after several hours of frustrating tedium, I gave up in disgust.Some might say I should just try with a different build (I had a maxed mercenary and it would be virtually impossible to have a more powerful mercenary by that point in the game), or go for a different quest line... Except I have absolutely zero desire to continue trying with this, what is to me, utterly broken game.There is no difficulty setting with which to tweak one's challenge level. There is no way to heal your character other than spending gold at a healer, resting in your bed is not an option. Forget about any mechanism to heal during combat!
I'm tired of posting your ironman video to every guy who truly believes that combat is impossible and one can't possibly play the game with a combat character.
I don't think we would want to do it regardless of how profitable it is. One game per setting is more than enough.
IMHO you should reconsider that stance. It may be a bit of misguided optimism, but I believe you guys achieved what Obshitian tried to but failed. You now have a solid ruleset perfectly capable of living up to the "easy to learn but hard to master" mantra
and an interesting setting that got people talking. I've seen a lot of discussion of AoD lore on Steam, something you don't usually see in other games.
I GET IT! You guys want to avoid the "slam dunk" mentality, but there is a reasonable middle ground and I'm confident you can find it. AoD/DR are clearly developing a cult following, which means releasing a third title wouldn't present much risk for your financials. Maybe after CSG, maybe after the game that comes after CSG,
but I strongly believe the World of Decadence™ deserves a third game. 
In general, I believe that each subsequent game set in the same world and using the same systems/assets will sell less and less (unless it's a AAA game with high productive values that keep going up).
From Steamspy:
Legend of Grimrock 1 vs 2 - 945,302 vs 258,415 (I think LoR 2 was a fantastic, far superior game) - lost 3/4
XCOM 1 vs 2 - 3,444,778 vs 996,144 - lost 2/3, 87% of people who bought it played XCOM
Banner Saga 1 vs 2 - 529,804 vs 53,471 - lost 90%, that's gotta hurt
Blackguards 1 vs 2 - 491,760 vs 185,484 - some people think it's because the second game was more streamlined but I suspect the main reason is that it's a sequel
Even if you look at DR, the results are fairly humble. Sure, we did better than some tactical and even non-tactical indies, but so far we sold 10% of what AoD sold and that's at a third of the price. So most people who played AoD and liked it aren't eager to pick it up, either because they think it's just a combat game (which it is) or because they feel they already know the mechanics and the game offers nothing new. So if AoD was a niche within a niche game, DR is a niche game within the AoD niche, which makes it a very tiny niche.
Anyway, we made it because we had 10 months and it was either that or doing nothing. We gained some experience with the party system, SP split and balance, so both the code and the experience will benefit the CSG, regardless of what DR sells. Doing another game set in the Qantari world will push the CSG by 12-14 months (we'll have to redo all weapons and armor to fit the 'Aztec' setting, so we wouldn't be able to do it in 10 months) is risky because if it sells even less than DR, we might run out of money midway through the CSG development cycle.
Last but not the least, when it comes to indies, only the 'different' sells. AoD was different which is why people are still talking about it. DR is just another tactical game. It's a booster not an engine.
