playing Age of Decadence. it's pretty engaging, but *spoilers*

i'm in Act 3 and playing as a combat-heavy Imperial Guard, and i'm having a ton of fun seeing what ways i can go about completing quests and getting achievements with the limited non-combat skills i have, while planning future playthroughs of a charismatic Loremaster and a sneaky Thief and whatnot and thinking of the different ways i will want to try to tackle quests with those different skillsets, but the more i play and the more combat i experience, the more i think that there really should just be companions in this game.

don't get me wrong, it's kinda fun just playing as the one character and being tactically limited in how you are able to tackle things based on the skills and renown and reputation of just yourself, and being encouraged to do multiple playthroughs with different character types aligning with different factions seems like a fun and interesting concept, but if they just had recruitable companions who could do the kind of stuff your character isn't personally specced for just seems like a more logical and commonplace game structure to go with.

and also combat really seems at this point like you need more than one character. it's kind of ridiculous when you are going around as a one-man powerhouse just tanking like a dozen guys at a time with a ridiculously high block skill and just whittling everyone down one by one while they are all throwing themselves at you. having a full party would just enable a much more logical combat system.

but the lore and worldbuilding are absolutely amazing, and by far the best part of the game imo. i love the semi-renaissance inspirations, and the whole history of an advanced civilization waking gods and demons and trying to do a bunch of stuff beyond their understanding, and fucking it all up and ending up destroying themselves, leaving a post-apocalyptic interregnum worldstate behind where people see and collect and know about the centuries old advanced tech but for the most part have no idea what it all really is or how any of it works. some awesome stuff. especially stuff like when you encounter one of the "demon" guardians who tells you about how he's a silicon based lifeform and immediately adds that you probably don't even know what that means, lol.

anyone else play this game? if you like story-rich TRPGs, i would definitely say give it a go.

Agree. Great story but does NOT play like other RPGs. You can also lock yourself out of the game if you don't go all in on your chosen class. IE, if your a weasly merchant don't put a point or two into alchemy. Go hard on one or two skills and watch the game play out.

I played through it once. It was okay. Super short

lord0fmud posted...

Agree. Great story but does NOT play like other RPGs. You can also lock yourself out of the game if you don't go all in on your chosen class. IE, if your a weasly merchant don't put a point or two into alchemy. Go hard on one or two skills and watch the game play out.

yeah, from what i've looked up, trying to do any kind of hybrid build is pretty risky. i've been tempted to do it with my Imperial Guard mostly just cuz i want to get all the achievements i can, but i have to stop myself most of the time from putting points into stuff like Lore or Persuasion. sometimes though if i have enough general or civil skill points banked up, i'll just go ahead and save and allocate them and see how i can make things play out, but then reload and end up putting them into Crafting or Alchemy or a combat skill. i am planning on doing several playthroughs and trying to get all the achievements, so i know i should just save stuff i have to do this for for later playthroughs lol, but i just can't.

ArchNemo posted...

I played through it once. It was okay. Super short

yeah i guess it being short is one of the ways it encourages you to do more than one playthrough. i think if they had just had companions and had let you tackle more content in one playthrough utilizing your companions' skillsets, they could have made the game longer.

Yeah it's a pretty rad game. It's short because it has a branching storyline with different and mutually exclusive endings so you're not going to see everything in just one playthrough. I played twice (one blind and then a second looking up guides and making a munchkin to do as much with one character as I could).

I want to play their other game, Colony Ship, but it's still Early Access and haven't seen it on sale yet.

Pitlord_Special posted...

I want to play their other game, Colony Ship, but it's still Early Access and haven't seen it on sale yet.

oh, i wasn't aware of this. the trailer looks great! i am wishlisting this game. a generation ship is a really neat idea for a setting, and i feel like futuristic settings in general are kind of underrepresented in TRPGs. and it seems as though you get a party in this game, which is awesome, given how i feel about Aod.

From following an exhaustive LP of the game, the two criticisms of it are that combat-focused characters quickly become ridiculous at combat and that the tracks it puts you on are very railroady: attempting hybridization is a recipe for soft-locking, because the ramping on skill checks is fierce .
Except Loremaster. Loremaster snowballs ridiculously if you know where to look, holy fucking shit!

ElatedVenusaur posted...

From following an exhaustive LP of the game, the two criticisms of it are that combat-focused characters quickly become ridiculous at combat and that the tracks it puts you on are very railroady: attempting hybridization is a recipe for soft-locking.
Except Loremaster. Loremaster snowballs ridiculously if you know where to look, holy fucking shit!

yeah, from looking at achievement guides and poking around with banked up skillpoints and then reloading, it looks like you can get some pretty crazy stuff with high Intelligence and Lore. like a suit of powered armor and a gun, lol. that playthrough is gonna be fun.