Looking to play another CRPG, currently debating between Age of Decadence or Expeditions: Rome, which is better or should I play first?
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Looking to play another CRPG, currently debating between Age of Decadence or Expeditions: Rome, which is better or should I play first?
Age of Decadence requires a very specific mindset to enjoy, it filtered me at first and I had a few more flubbed tries at getting into it within the next few weeks until something clicked and I started maraphoning the game to see 90% of the content
What's the mindset? How do I go in amd take the most from it?
Age of Decadence has great combat when you figure it out. Just finished playthrough with my take on hybrid character, but it's difficult for the beginner. I suggest going full combat or full social route for the first time.
mindset that your char can't do everything. we're used to being able to take and complete 100% of quests, in AoD it's impossible - Loremaster won't become arena champion, bulky Leggionaire won't figure out how to fix ancient machinery or read cuneiform in ruins. But it's nice when you get used to this, adds some relistic tones.
don't listen to him, he won't suggest you anything. I'm tired of malcontents on this board.
OP here, thanks for the information anon, this helps alot.
I'm installing it now and will give it a try, I'll check out and see how interesting a social character is.
Is it possible to finish the whole game just social skills? Will I still be required to spec into combat skills for odd occasions?
Any pointers for a new player would be greatly appreciated. When I play underrail last month I didn't get any pointers or follow a built and made that experience so much worse then it needed to be.
>Any pointers for a new player
don't rush to next city, try to do maximum amount of quests before. they'll become unavailable once you move on.
You're not me, frick off with your RPGcodex moron babble. I can already tell you haven't beaten the Merchant fight against the entirety of the Thieves Guild you can get if you cheat against Mercato. You HAVEN'T BEATEN THE GAME.
You have to be in the mood to restart the same quick save before a big conversation 5 times after stockpiling a bunch of skill points and then reallocating them over and over to see the exact skill combination you need to get the outcome you want to then restart your run and get to the same point you were at earlier in half an hour so you can cram an additional piece of side content you weren't able to do before due to a suboptimal skill allocation but which you are now able to pass by a razor thin margin which will give you 10 more skill points which you'll need to get the ending you were going for
The most important mindset if you're going to play age of decadence is "I don't give a frick about graphics AT ALL". The game looks like crap, literaly worse than fallout 2.
That beeing said the story is fun and the game is cheap, I only played a talker so I wouldn't know much about the combat as I did almost none of it in my playthrough.
Another slight dig I have with the game is that for all the place crawls with taverns and brothels and crap, and several characters are mentioned as visitors of them. There wasn't one instance where my female cha-build could lean on seduction, whoring or anything like that throughout the whole game. Which seemed out of synch with the games theme to me.
That said I got my monneys worth from it and would recomend it to anyone who doesn't care at all about graphics, and is fine with the game cutting out the sexual aspects implied with" decadence" from the players agency.
Discard any notion that you're playing a regular RPG. AoD is extremely railroaded in its design and any deviation from one of determined paths is literal soft-lock.
You will have to think NOT how YOU want to solve something, but how THE DEVELOPER wants you to do things. First off, if you play RPGs for immersion, drop this one. Second, Save after every dialogue/combat encounter in separate slots. Third, never distiribute points without knowing what to expect, exploiting Save-Loading is mandatory here, in the beginning especially. Fourth, you can frick everything up and soft-lock yourself by choosing wrong stats on character generation, stick to pregenerated stats in the beginning. And Fifth - simply try to get to the end, decide for yourself if you want to try going for other endings and if yes - go to wiki and read about stat-requirements and conditions, some of them are really cryptic.
>how THE DEVELOPER wants you to do things
How is this not how you approach every problem in a computer game though? Working backwards with the knowledge that it was designed by a human is in 95% of cases the easiest way to beat any game.
Along with "which of these numbers seem to scale multiplicatively" because devs often accidentaly create gemoetrical scalings that break the game and they're often not found in early testing.
When you want to do X you go try and see if you can.
If the game design adhers to common sense it works around simple to grasp expectations creating illusion of player agency - YOU decide how you want to solve things and the game coincidentaly accomodates these choices.
Alternatively, if the developer designs his game based around their own perception of a hardcore experience rather then player logic, things quickly devolve into nonsense - things like false requirements that ask you for 1 skill check but mask several harder ones behind them, things like railroading to specific esoteric choices when most common and simple solution is deemed too simple and therefore not accounted for, things like expecting exploits on meta-level to reinforce the illusion of difficuilty. This creates the feeling that THE DEVELOPER wants you to approach problems in a very specific way and, in AoD's case, the developer's specific way doesn't account for boot-up-and-play mentality, demanding supernatural premonition or extensive trial and error to find solutions.
These anons are on the spectrum.
Anons?
Did you mean the game?
Cause they don't look happy with game's shit.
>Cause they don't look happy with game's shit.
they aren't happy, because their OCD makes them suffer when they can't do all quests and become head of all guilds, like they can in Skyrimming.
>magister of bullshit minmaxing
well said, it's fun to plan how you will play and which ending you will pursue, when you get to know the game
>... they can't do all quests and become head of all guilds...
Bullshit, runs are relatively short and you can roll and finish every playstyle-specific char in rather short amount of time.
Maybe the fact that the game is in actuality a Ren-Py visual novel made on Torque with false complexity is the reason people don't like your shitty CYOA?
I think the 3D environments add a lot to the immersion even if their overall graphical fidelity is shit, but the combat sucks sweaty balls and is easily the worst part of the game. You can have a very skill-check heavy game with an intricate combat system, but in that case combat needs a different mode of progression that civilian skills, otherwise you end up being encouraged to try and pass combat encounters by a razor thin margin like you are for regular skill checks, except this time you also heavily depend on RNG.
>combat sucks sweaty balls and is easily the worst part of the game
I'm surprised, combat is my favourite part, and that's why I liked Dungeon Rats too. Combat isn't THAT rng-dependant, unless you frick up your build. All human enemies cannot have stats higher than player, which is fair. Try investing more points into defence than damage, it should help. With high dodge and 6+ empty squares around, you rarely get hit and enemies take majority of damage from your counterattacks.
Nah, I 90%'d the game in 2017-2018. I think there's a lot of scenic battles that are fun to *look at* because of the sense of scale and which also happen to be some of the easier ones like the Teron tower assault for the IG, the defense of the overpass against the Ordu, that one mercenary quest in Maadoran and the last Miltiades quest, but I am permanently traumatized from having to perfectly balance civilian and combat skills to win the duel with the Ordu champion without fricking the rest of my run over
beating those encounters with balanced char must have required lots of patience from you, congrats.
>2017-2018
I played it around this time for first time, replayed recently and got surprised by buffed Agathoth. Now this battle is really tough, as it should be.
Yeah, I played the entire game without a guide and pretty much the only things I haven't done were the ending where every city state and the Imperial Guard ends up being destroyed, and the conversation with the being in the Arch. There's many funny moments that are absolutely hilarious and make you go "Oh, shit", like when you find out how to destroy Maadoran for the first time or the fricking Divine Spear ending, which is why I'd only recommend looking up online tips after you've already seen the basics of what the game has to offer and only if you're stuck trying to do something
Divine spear made ma laugh, on 1st playthrough I went with dumb mercenary and Hellgate was the first moment game hinted my that it's actually post-apo world
I am, AoD is one of my favorite RPGs I've ever played because you have an interesting story being fed to you in bits as you start from struggling to even complete the game to becoming the magister of bullshit minmaxing to see every single bit of content there is. It reminds me of Princess Maker games. I think the developers accidentally stumbled into making something good and their Colony Ship project looks much more sus in comparison
Don't play any of them, they're both garbage.
Alright then anon, aside from the crpgs everyone has played like divinity, pillars, baldurs gate or fallout, what would you recommend?
Age of Decadence, do first playthrough with non-combat, high INT and CHA character. It's great.
Is it ok to play Age of Decadence blind or do I need some pointers? I have experience with old school CRPGs but don't know if I can quite yet call myself a veteran
few pointers will make it more enjoyable at the beginning. but don't read too much because spoilers. what kind of character do you want to play?
I want to play a legionary type character inspired by Caesar who is a great diplomat and natural orator but is very much capable of picking up a sword and shield to fight when necessary. But I heard this game isn't very good for hybrid builds and that you should either fully spec into combat or non-combat. I suppose if I want to play a legionary, it makes more sense to do combat. Also, if you do combat build, does that mean you solve everything with violence? I like to have options depending on the context in different situations
hybrids can work, just posted my endgame hybrid asassin, but they're quite tricky. You have to meet certain levels of skills to do specific quests and not spread you points too thin. It's doable, but after you finish game once and know what to expect.
For Caesar inspired character there's ideal background (Praetor), but it's best played as a hybrid char. Highly recommended for second playthrough tho. For now, start as Mercenary and join Imperial Guards.
>Is it possible to finish the whole game just social skills? Will I still be required to spec into combat skills for odd occasions?
You can finish whole game without a single fight.
General tips for non-combat char:
>4-4-6-8-9-9 stats
>start as Loremaster or Merchant
>put points in Persuasion, Lore and Crafting
>Important! when starting as Loremaster, don't allocate points at start, just save them - in Loremaster House there are books and documents that raise your skills ONLY if their level is 1. Read everything, then allocate points.
>save often, if you fail some check, reload and just try later.
General tips for Combat char:
-6-10-7-8-5-4
>choose one weapon (they're fairy balanced, go for flavour) and one mean of defence (block or dodge)
>defense should be approx. 3 levels higher than weapon skill, it's more important to live longer in a fight
>block uses shield and pairs nicely with heavy armor, dodge is better for daggers or 2-handed weapons. also, dodge is stronger with free squares around you, so positioning is crucial.
>put spare points in Critical Strike
>put social points in Crafting, it will be handy to improve and repair your equipment. Alchemy 3-4 is also good, as allows you to brew poisons and healing balms, you consume lot of these
>if you do combat build, does that mean you solve everything with violence?
not quite, if you have high body count you can intimidate npcs in dialogue and it's completely independent from Charisma. Same with reputation as arena champion (tho some guys will chase you and try to initiate duel to test themselves).
play decadence !!!!!!!
OP here again. Ive started AoD.
Figured Id try loremaster and just chat and explore the world, and then try a roman warrior inspired playthrough after I have figured the game out.
Heres where Im currently at.
Im enjoying it quite a bit, and I see what you guys mean about allocating stats and loading saves. Im surprised at how many just let you retry later, and the ones that dont are kinda jarring.
Very interesting so far though, I hope I havent fricked up my stats and skills terribly, I kept the default stats because I wasnt really sure how much theyd matter.
Realized my charisma is way too low, guess I'll just reroll and try with what
said stats should be.
Very moronic of me to not put points in charisma if I'm going a talking build
Skills are ok, but be careful not to spread points too thin - you will hit the wall mid-game, where more difficult checks come into play. Prioritize Persuasion and Lore, followed by Crafting, as they are most frequently used. Uncovering mysteries of ancient ruins often require joined Lore+Crafting checks. Some lower level in Streetwise is ok too, as it allows noticing when someone's trying to trick you.
You can safely ignore Steal and Impersonate. Etiquette is weird, it is used when talking with rulers, high officials etc. but almost always you can rely on Persuasion in those dialogues instead.
Just lfip a coin.
Lucky Strikes are the most aesthetic cigarettes. They should still be issued in MRE's