The Age of Decadence. Hardcore RPG incarnate.
Once upon a time, there was an empire in this world. The empire was ruled by great houses, and the peace and order were kept by the Imperial Army. However, that era passed and was replaced by the Age of Decay.
Introduction
The Crpg genre has been on the rise lately. Largely, thanks to the magnificent Baldur’s gate 3. I will not talk about the most famous Crpg of recent years. No, I would like to talk about a hardcore RPG, known only in narrow circles of genre fans. The developer studio itself, on its own website , declares proudly serving 0.003% of the global gaming market since 2015.
Development
The development of the game was more difficult. The development process began in March 2004. The first demo version, which only had a combat system, was released only five years later, in December 2009. In March 2012, a public beta was released, eight years after the start of development. On November 15, 2013, the game reached early access, and two years after that and eleven years after the start of development, on October 14, 2015, the game was released on Steam and GOG .
Character Creation and Story Inception
The first thing that greets us when we start a new game is the character creation window. First, we will choose a backstory and appearance. If you can forget about appearance, then you should choose the backstory carefully, because it determines not only the beginning of the stories and the starting relations with factions, but also the list of possible quests, some ways to solve tasks and even some endings.
The screen for selecting characteristics is quite standard for the genre. I would only advise you to go through the local combat tutorial and immediately decide on the weapon you want to use to complete the game. This way you won’t waste your precious points.
I won’t dwell on the introduction for long. I’ll just note that the game immediately puts forward its merit, namely the role-playing component. The starting and ending points will be the same in any playthrough, but the path that you, as a player, will take will be different.
The plot of the game unfolds around a mystical map. Depending on the character’s backstory, the way we get this map may be different. For example, if you chose the thief’s backstory, then we will have to steal it, and if you chose a merchant or scientist, you will have to ransom it. Further moving along the plot, we will read the map one way or another, and reach the desired point.
Setting
Post-apocalypse in a Roman setting. A brief description of the setting already arouses genuine interest. After all, we have never seen anything like this. At the very beginning, after creating a character, we are briefly told the history of this world.
If you want to dive deeper into it, it is recommended to choose the path of a scientist. In it, you will interact more often with technologies and records of the past, studying and learning about forgotten technologies.
Gameplay
Gameplay is globally divided into two parts. Dialogues and combat.
All quests are tied to this in one way or another. They can be completed either by persuasion or brute force. Here, the role-playing element also comes forward. When creating a character, the game itself recommends that we do not assemble a combat scientist/merchant or a mercenary with a gab.
The thing is that experience in the game is obtained exclusively for completing tasks. And it is best to complete them in the way that we ourselves determined at the beginning, choosing a background. This helps to get used to the role and play it. Of course, you can try to make a Trader out of a Scientist, maybe you will succeed, but you are unlikely to mold a mercenary/assassin out of a scientist.
Difficulties
Based on the above, it is clear that if you level up incorrectly, you can softlock the game so that both skills are not enough to complete the missions.
This is the main hardcore and complexity of the game. It does not forgive mistakes. You will have to play the character you created, otherwise it will be very difficult for you.
Flaws
If we talk about disadvantages, the first thing that the combat tutorial met me with was a graphical artifact. They say this is a problem in the drivers and is present only on NVidia cards. To solve the problem, people use compatibility mode with Windows 7/8.
The graphics in the game are not just outdated, they were outdated at the time of release. Yes, for Crpg the main thing is not the graphics, that’s true. But even by genre standards, the game’s graphics are not impressive, not at all.
If we put aside the graphics and talk about the combat, it is clear that it is not ideal either. There is some roughness and oakiness in it. I have no particular complaints about the dialogue part.
Conclusion
The Age of Decadence – This is not a perfect game, just as it is not a perfect Crpg. But it is a very bright representative of the genre, with a truly unique setting and allowing you to play the character you create very deeply.
Therefore, if you are a fan of the genre and for some reason have not heard of The Age of Decadence, I strongly recommend you to touch this game. Newcomers to the genre may be scared off by the complexity of the game, but if you are not afraid of it, the game will be able to give you a unique experience.
