A Fantastic RPG That Defies Genre Conventions and Demands Player Investment
When Age of Decadence first hit the radar in around 2008 I think most people took it as an independent studio's spin on the classic Fallout formula in the wake of Bethesda's decidedly non-isometric, realtime FPS revival of the series. And given the desert post-apocalyptic setting, the top-down camera, the emphasis on reactivity, the turn based combat, the very GURPS-esque character system, and the near-identical interface, it's excusable to make this mistake. So I want to be clear: Age of Decadence is very much NOT THAT. If you want a new game in the style of Fallout 1 and 2, play Wasteland 2. Or better yet, check out Underrail.
I'd describe AoD as being more like a mix between King of Dragon Pass and Way of the Samurai, although that's downplaying the impressively robust and balanced turn based combat system. Most action takes place in choose-your-own-adventure style dialogue panels in which options are weighted by skill checks. It is a very short game; a dedicated player could finish it in one sitting. However, the ways the story changes are very dramatic and make use of this density-of-scale to the extent that one could play through the whole thing several times with wildly different paths and playstyles and still not exhaust all possibilities contained within.
It is also a very punishing game. Unlike many RPGs, AoD will react your choices with both positive and very negative reinforcement. This has its ups and its downs. At the best of times, you'll come to find that refusing to kill a character at the beginning of the game comes to bite you in the ass later and you'll curse your own naivety. And then there are times when characters lead you down alleyways and armed men jump out and beat you up. The game doesn't hide its nature, so it's a lesson learned, I suppose, but not an especially poignant or interesting one. "Gotcha, idiot!" sums that up that teaching moment.
Success in the game's many, many skill checks requires a high degree of specialization within character growth. This, again, comes with pros and cons. It's nice to be forced into spending every single level-up I earn as wisely as possible. But, while I can't say for certain whether it's possible to enter an unwinnable state, I did manage to find myself into something that felt a lot like one to the extent that I decided to restart from the beginning. Luckily this surprisingly less than a dealbreaker than it sounds, since getting back to where I was (some 75% of the way through the game) took only an hour or two and was a much smoother experience.
Age of Decadence is a game that is great to replay over and over, but the first playthrough is probably going to be rough. There are a ton of methods to accomplish any given task, but finding those methods can be tricky due to a lack of feedback and a problematic way of dispensing information. Many events and possibilities are only triggered by wandering into specific areas, but there is no way of knowing where these areas are or that they even exist to begin with. Important NPCs are indistinguishable from decorative ones, requiring one to place the mouse cursor over them to see if they can be interacted with. Examining environmental objects usually does little more than display some flavor text, but there are a few times here and there where it triggers something important. Much of Age of Decadence is a reaction to the 'hand-holding' of modern RPGs, and I'm not asking for breadcrumb trails and massive quest arrows, but not having those crutches necessitates a more thoughtful presentation to guide the player invisibly, and AoD doesn't always put its best foot forward in that regard.
Similarly, the game puts undue pressure on the player to act without knowledge. I found myself quick saving before every single dialogue or event simply so that I could see what my options were before I was forced to commit to them.
I can't exactly ignore these faults, but at the same time I can't ignore that a small group of unproven industry outsiders put together something this intricate. The fact that it holds together at all is a marvel, but that it excels beyond its station is mightily impressive.
