Sorry this is so long, feel free to excerpt any part of it.
The Age of Decadence retrospective
by Jason Liang
The Age of Decadence is the first project published by indie rpg maker Iron Tower Studios.
I've called AoD's combat shit, and I've also
circuitously compared AoD to one of the all-time classic computer games. Where does this game succeed as an rpg?
My thoughts keep returning to
Adam Cadre's retrospective on Star Control 2 (ironic since AoD's gameplay has been negatively referred to as "text adventure"):
Adam Cadre said:
The freedom Star Control II offers [is] the freedom to experience a worse story. Not one with a worse outcome for the player - one whose quality as a story is worse.
When I read this, I immediately thought of AoD- that has to count for something, right? This elusive quality of SC2's greatness-
missable content- has been excavated 24 years later by AoD. AoD's game structure might feel railroaded to some players but in this other aspect players have the freedom to choose how to experience the game.
Nearly all of AoD's rich backstory and world building is missable content. If you don't talk to the right people, choose the right story path, and invest in the right skills, you'll completely miss most of the content that other rpgs railroad you into visiting on your day-tour of their fantasy world. In fact, one of AoD's most innovative ideas is to define missable content in the game world as "lore" and encourage players to play as a "loremaster" whose goal is to discover and experience all of the missable content this game has to offer. To prudently lock away "the details" from first time players behind skill checks and c&c, allowing players to get something out of revisiting their world is a smart decision that
Westworld's Man in Black would surely appreciate.
Now I want to say a few things about AoD's combat.
To recommend AoD for its tactical combat is to saddle it with false advertising. On the positive side, some of AoD's combat systems are genuinely innovative and groundbreaking. The armor system, by which heavy and light armor is balanced with heavy and light weapons, is fabulous. Weapons and armor are crafted from five increasingly rare materials- bronze, iron, steel, blue steel and sky metal. However, each advancement in material rarity only provides +1 damage for weapons or +1 damage reduction for armor. This means that light and heavy weapons can be balanced elegantly with light and heavy armor. The lightest, fastest weapons will have trouble damaging the heavy armor, whereas heavy armor limits a build's AP and comes with large penalties to dodging and blocking. It's all very elegant and it's backed by a material system that allows just enough advantage for rare materials without breaking the system's innate balance. It's the balance that the original Dungeons and Dragons was meticulous about getting perfect that gets lost in Baldur's Gate 2's loot fest.
However, the other combat systems are poorly implemented. The balance between the two defensive skills makes sense on paper- dodge is better against melee while block is better against range. But the implementation leans so far toward dodge mechanically that dodge is in practice the better choice for 95% of builds. The knockdown mechanics seem completely like a spur-of-the-movement addition- "Hey, shouldn't we have knockdown?"- but the implementation is so absurdly unrealistic and OP that the enemy AI is prohibited from using most of the many knockdown abilities available to the player- enemies with shields don't shield bash, the ones with hammers don't knockdown, and they never throw bombs- or it would expose how terrible the mechanic is. It's so bad that for many players getting randomly knocked down by a crossbow is an instant "reload." The alchemy system is completely gamebreaking, imbalanced and undercosted. The combat might satisfy players looking to get their jollies by butchering a bunch of trash mobs with their OP abilities and equipment, but for players that are looking for a game that forces them to use actual strategy and tactics- if you've skirmished in Arulco, this isn't JA2 with axes and crossbows, sorry.
That the game's combat so poorly serves the game's encounter design is a true shame.
AoD's missable content isn't just the story, but also the combat as well- and I don't mean talking your way out of fights. The truth is that AoD doesn't have trash mobs (except creatures). Each combat encounter has been meticulously scripted, and each human enemy you fight has unique stats, equipment and behavior. This allows nearly every encounter to have meaningful strategy and tactics- but most players will never discover this due to all the absurd abilities the game makers have popamoled for them. If a player barrels through the Maadoran Arena as a dumb axe murderhobo- which is a commonly suggested combat build- they will completely miss that in the 3 Barbari fight, each Barbari uses a different weapon and one is less dangerous than the other two-
details that allow for actual strategy. But when you are just savagely cleaving things left and right with your sharpened poisoned blue steel shadhavar, you get to treat this fight just as a trash mob. You might just as well be playing a whirlwind baba in Diablo 2- and you'll be likewise disappointed in the lewt drop. The game makers cater to a player base that doesn't understand real tactical combat. 95% of the discussion about AoD's fights is about what build and what equipment to use, or how to "cheese" enemies like Al Shahir with bola choke and the demons with liquid fire. That's a jrpg walkthrough- that's not real tactics. There's almost zero discussion about how to beat the fights using real strategy and tactics. The game doesn't push the player to ever need to develop strategy and tactics and that's its biggest failure. Combat in AoD is missable content just as much as the story.
Only by playing a build that's completely gimped in combat can a player appreciate that, underneath all the popamole, the game does have beautiful, elegant combat math,
meticulously balanced encounter design and
the potential for strategy and tactics. But that player has to be like the Man in Black- back again for the nth time and playing the game to its limit- to know the real AoD.
If I seem to condemn the combat while praising the encounter design, I'd be amiss if I didn't mention the one single part of this game where it brushes greatness. All of the combat encounters in AoD are meticulously balanced and designed- except one.
For one battle, the game makers decided to throw balance out the window and give the player a taste of real combat. This one infamous battle, Harran's Pass, is on the Imperial Guard path, which is the "combat" path through the game. The player, with a handful of other guards, must defend an outpost against an entire Ordu barbarian horde. It's a hopeless fight. If you couldn't talk your way out of it, there's no retreat. Once the battle starts, they will keep coming. You asked for an ass spanking, and now you have to deal with it. You think it must be over soon, but no. They keep coming. You will know real despair. You will be buried in butcher as if you were fighting in Dumai's Wells from
Wheel of Time or the Battle of the Bastards from
A Game of Thrones. And if you somehow conquer this, survive this by killing every last one of the Ordu, it's a real feeling of accomplishment that will rank among one of the greatest gaming experiences of your life. I might seem critical of AoD's combat, but I am probably a minority on Codex that likes AoD's combat more than Underrail's. Harran's Pass is a significant reason why. Underrail doesn't have its Harran's Pass. This one battle is something Iron Tower Studios should be proud that they've accomplished something in this game that can stand singular among the great experiences in computer gaming history. It's that good.
AoD is distributed as a $25 on sale 15 hour weekend gaming experience, and you'll certainly get your money's worth if you sojourn the Imperial Guard path alone. But the best part of AoD is that it's a game that you can keep coming back to and discover something new, some worksmanship to appreciate, each time. It isn't a weekend experience at all, but a game and place meant for many journeys.
