The Age of Decadence is an isometric, turn-based role-playing game set in a low magic, post-apocalyptic fantasy world, inspired by the fall of the Roman Empire. The game features a detailed skill-based character system, non-linear gameplay, multiple skill-based ways to handle quests, choices & consequences, and extensive dialogue trees.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if developers took the ideas present in the first two fallouts and expanded on them?
AoD takes the idea of choices and consequences, combines them with charchter-skill based gameplay and drives them to their logical conclusion.
This is not a nostalgia filled remake, this is something truly new! Until you learn the nuances the game will be hard as hell. The brutality of the world is not just for pretend. It's focused on replayability, and the story can be seen from many angles.
The game really respects your time - there's no filler, you won't be fighting rats or wave after wave of orks.
While it may not be for everyone, personally, I haven't had so much fun with an RPG in ages.
A 2020 Review - The Age of Decadence (PC, 2015)
Score: 4/10
Mediocrity Score: Mediocre at Best.
The Age of Decadence is a strangely unbalanced turn-based CRPG. It rather uniquely takes combat out from being the main focus and pits the player into a scenario where you can take different approaches. Touted for being a game where "choices matter", the game somehow feels so linear - locking the player into a path chosen early on. Choices in the game will keep you on your toes, that is until you realize the pattern of don't trust anyone, ever. My advice before buying is - play the demo first.
Tags: The few words that come to mind are: mediocre, unbalanced, dialogue-heavy, cheap.
Play the demo first. If there is anything you should do before buying, it is to play the demo. This game is both very difficult and very easy. Rather unique in its approach, within The Age of Decadence you can 100% avoid all combat in the game by taking a more charismatic-stacked approach in your character build. What they don't mention is how incredibly simple the game becomes when you go for this non-combat route. It turns into a dialogue-heavy, point-and-click game where if you make the wrong choice you likely will be thrown into a combat situation where you will surely, and cheaply, die. Go with the combat route, and you are faced with a stacked-against-you RNG-based combat which is difficult to the point of coming off as both brutal and cheap. The one thing both routes have in common is the smoke-and-mirrors masking the cheap game-ending situations it constantly throws your way. In complete fairness reading reviews, watching let's plays, playing the demo, or even the reading developer's own disclaimers - potential players have been warned that "there is a good chance that you won’t like it, precisely because we took too many liberties with the established design". I can't help but feel like this is akin to being told "Here's the really over-cooked steak you ordered. There is a good chance you won't like it, but since this is all intentional - we've taken an extra heavy-handed approach with its blackened design." Yet here I am, disappointed that I paid for a really over-cooked steak that has an impressive char-broiled aesthetic.
Pros:
- Has an honest demo.
- Multiple routes may be taken to beat the game.
- Incredibly funny and useful skill/ability descriptions. More games should take inspiration from this.
- Some hilarious ways to find yourself dying, made out as a fool, or being separated from your money.
- Budget-friendly in cost and in required/recommended system specs.
- NPCs are hilariously evil, greedy, untrustworthy, and always out to get you.
Cons:
- A lot of cheap situations made to make you fail while masquerading as being a "choices matter" feature.
- RNG in combat is grossly stacked against the player, and always in favor of the NPC combatants.
- The non-combat path becomes a trivial point-and-click game that leads to instadeath anytime you find yourself having clicked the wrong dialogue choice and end-up in combat.
- Boring story with a boring end-conclusion. Dialogue becomes a chore.
- The most important choice you will pick are your attribute points at the start of the game. Once you set yourself on that path, there is no deviating from it. You are locked in and cannot improve your stats in the game.
- Lacking equipment options to suit your character with. I felt it was far too shallow.
$15 USD is a good, reasonable asking price for the game. If a sale put's it at 50-75% off, then all the better. Great budget recommended system specs and even better minimum. If you've got an older, or perhaps simply not as high-performance of a computer, this game would be a great fit and all the more worth the price. That being said, I don't know that I can put much more than maybe 10 hours into the game. Sure - there's some replay value but the same NPC conversations and quests get dull rather quickly. It's simply not something I'd generally recommend. Only with asterisks. Which brings me to my rating and recommendations:
For me, a 4/10. Strangely unbalanced. It does some things really right, and some things really wrong. I preferred the non-combat, more dialogue-driven paths - but that required a lot of reading of a rather...mediocre story. I did like how dishonest and untrustworthy almost the entire NPC base is. Kept me on my toes... until I realized the pattern of don't trust anyone.
I'd recommend the game to people who:
-Loved the demo.
-Love hardcore combat.
-Love point-and-click games and are willing to stick to non-combat builds.
-Have a budget or low-performance system, but are itching for a different RPG.
-Getting it with a significant discount
Everyone else, probably don't bother. There are much better RPG titles out there more worthy of your time and money.
perfect for my tastes of what I call rpg
damn good, near perfect, for players who like to be challenged but don't mind (or better yet love) old school mechanics - specificaly fallout, which is the main inspiration for this game
Fantastic, there is little else to say.. tons of options in how you can approach the game, a believable set of rules and a consistent world
Best C&C in an RPG to date. Most frustrating, fun and intelligent combat since Jagged Alliance 2. Well written and diverse story paths.
I am an RPG lover. And when i say RPG, i mean in the traditional way of roleplaying games, of a complicated and intricate system, of multiple choices with equally multiple consequences and a lover of simple but beautiful stories, far apart from the disgusting "new age" RPGs, inserting a story just to call it such.
This game is a hope bringer for the true idea of roleplaying games lost with the rise of the need for action. The people behind this game must have spent time and soul to create such a marvelous, and true, roleplaying game.
I salute them doing the best they can to create a good game. Thank you.
Best RPG for many years for me. Really unique experience - in some aspects this game even better than Planescape: Torment.
Hardcore combat that actually requires you to use all the options, a really fun CYOA style non lethal path, an amazing and unique world and great writing throughout. What's not to love (well, maybe the time it took for the game to come out :D)?
A finer game I have rarely seen. A marvel onto itself, offering a bevy of choices for the chosen one.