Game:

The Age of Decadence (2015)

Category:

Review

Duration: 7:43

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Age Of Decadence - First Impression Review

The Age of Decadence is a post-apocalyptic fantasy RPG with an ancient Roman inspired setting. Its gameplay consists of tactical turn based combat and choose your own adventure style dialogue. This is a review of The Age of Decadence after about 8 hours of playing the game. It is not intended to be a totally comprehensive review of all aspects of Age of Decadence. Rather, this is a review of the gameplay and mechanics. It doesn't explore the writing or setting except when needed to explain the gameplay. It is also not based on full completion of the game.

The Age of Decadence is a very mechanically deep RPG that offers a lot of gameplay, and with only 8-hours of playtime, it is not possible for me to make a totally comprehensive review, so I've called this a First Impression Review, as it only contains my initial thoughts. In fact, the game has been out on steam early access for a while now, but the final release date is due for October 14, 2015.

Get the game: http://store.steampowered.com/app/230070/
Developer's twitter: @IronTowerStudio
Official Website: http://irontowerstudio.com/

Endslate Music Credits:
"In Your Arms" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Review Key Points:

The Age of Decadence is a mechanically deep game, with a lot of interesting gameplay, but it's also very hard and not very accessible to new players.

The frequent usage of skill checks makes the noncombat gameplay more interesting and viable than in most CRPGs, but there are some situations where you simply hit up against a wall and need to save and reload until you discover what the optimal or allowable route is.

Combat in Age of Decadence is quite challenging, and this may turn some people away from the game, since even though the player doesn't always resort to combat as a resolution, a lot of the NPCs do. I found the combat to be quite fun, and a step up from other single character turn based combat games, because of the different weapon types and attack type you could use. Yet it was not as good as most party based games because of the lack of variety in the tactics you can use during battles in Age of Decadence.

The Age of Decadence is very hard, and much like classic crpgs, I had to start over after realizing my character build wouldn't cut it. Luckily this was a fun and painless experience because characters with different skills and attributes really do seem to play differently in Age of Decadence. Plus, the game is designed so that a lot of tedious things like walking to and fro can be skipped entirely through liberal use of fast travel, which I appreciated immensely when I played it.

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