➤ Pure role play 🎮

Let's start by clarifying a fundamental point: The Age of Decadence is a unique title for several reasons. The most obvious is that Iron Tower Studio took ten years to make, starting it when traditional role-playing games had not yet found their market niche. The developer (initially the team was made up of a single person) never hid his goal, which was to react to the decline of the genre, associated too easily with actions with statistics. The title itself reflects this will of his.

He always admitted that it would not be easy to do it and immediately stated that it would take a long time to complete it, because in the meantime he had to live. In short, his constancy must certainly be admired, also because in the end he made it while keeping all his promises. The second factor that makes The Age of Decadence unique is its intransigence: you will not find on the market another role-playing game that gives you so much freedom in character management, but at the same time punishes you for every stupid thing done. It is not unrealistic to say that, from this point of view, we are beyond what we have seen in classics of the genre such as the first two Fallout or Arcanum. Do you want to face the lands abandoned by the gods as a warrior? You can do this, but don't expect easy fights. Are you interested in developing social skills more but are you afraid of not being able to continue? Do not worry, because you can proceed safely even just talking to the other characters, without having to throw even a stone. It takes very little to realize that you can choose the approach you want to various situations, to the point that someone may initially find themselves confused in front of such a large system, which is only hinted at in the narrow tutorial.

We reviewed The Age of Decadence, a hardcore RPG for true connoisseurs

The maze

The Age of Decadence tells the story of a ruined world dominated by three houses and a few powerful guilds, who fight each other for absolute power and find out what caused the collapse of civilization. In the course of the adventure, the player does not follow a direct line to the ending, but participates in a series of events that lead to the resolution of the mystery. This is not a small detail, because only in this way it was possible to give weight to the relationships between the factions and the influence they have on the player. In spite of everything do not think it is a poor title from a narrative point of view.

Indeed, it is quite the opposite. And how could it not be, given that it contains the beauty of six hundred thousand lines of text that extensively explore its background? We are talking about a large-scale work, which has a difficult goal: to give the player the opportunity to explore as freely as possible the facts that will lead him to the end, allowing him to choose the point of view to keep on the whole affair. In short, we are faced with a conceptually very complex title, which can enchant but also displace due to its complexity. In reality, playing is very simple, as the interface is similar to what has been seen in dozens of other classic RPGs. The world is structured in closed and well-defined places that must be explored from top to bottom to find characters, missions and secrets (do you know any Baldur's Gate?). With the left mouse button you perform actions (talk, attack, open containers and so on), while with the right you move. The character management screens include a card with the various characteristics, in which the adventure points obtained by playing can be distributed, the diary with annotated events and missions, the map, useful not only for orienting but also for moving quickly and inventory, which also includes crafting and alchemy screens.

Identity

In most cases, you decide what to do by reading and selecting one of the various possibilities proposed: The Age of Decadence tries to always offer multiple solutions to different situations, reaching an incredible variety of resolutions. Whenever possible, the skill used is specified next to the action description by selecting it. For example, you can solve a quest using persuasion to convince a guy to leave the city (we don't give you too many details, don't worry), or you can kill him, or even intimidate him, again to make him escape.

There are other possibilities as well, but they vary according to the skills you have increased. Actually Iron Tower was really subtle from this point of view, because it happens very often that the decisions taken backfire against or in favor of the player in subsequent moments of the adventure, making the evolution of the plot dynamic and, in a certain sense, unpredictable. . Returning to the example just made, our choice was to persuade the guy to leave by setting a trap: we lured him into an empty house making him understand that someone wanted him dead, so we convinced him with good luck. Apparently we had succeeded in our enterprise, but then we found the same character next to one of the most powerful nobles in the city who almost exiled us to punish us for having tricked him. Other similar examples could be done by the dozen, if not hundreds. What is important for you to understand is the variety of the system described and the great replayability it offers: facing a game as a mercenary and improving only the fighting skills, you will experience completely different situations from those who perhaps favored social skills such as acting, or those related to stealth. We played The Age of Decadence several times, creating different characters, and in some games we struggled to find moments similar to those we experienced in the previous game.

PC System Requirements

Test Setup

Intel Core i7-4770 processor
16 GB of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 video card
Windows 10 operating system

Minimum requirements

Operating System: Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7 / Windows 8 / Windows 10
CPU: 1.7 GHz o superiore
Video card: Nvidia Geforce 8500 GT / ATI Radeon HD 7290 (512 Mb) or higher
2 GB of RAM
DirectX: 9.0c
1900 MB of disk space

Recommended Requirements

Operating system: Windows 7 / Windows 8 / Windows 10
CPU: 2.5 GHz o superiore
Scheda video: Nvidia Geforce GTS 250 / Radeon HD 4870 (1Gb) o superiore
4 GB of RAM

What did you say, gnat?

The combat system is simple, turn-based and often used in a punitive way. In the meantime, don't expect to create a super hero capable of exterminating entire armies with the laying on of hands alone: however strong it can be made, the protagonist of The Age of Decadence will always struggle in front of multiple opponents.

On some occasions, then, the game voluntarily disfavors the warlike aspect. Not that a warrior doesn't have to fight, but it's easy to get punished for being too reckless. Eg you are not given the opportunity to heal during a fight and health points do not automatically rise (imagine that a character made fun of us because we asked him about the matter, telling us that the enemies usually don't stop to make those who are about to kill drink magic potions). So, for example, it is not recommended to face two fights in a row against well-armored enemies, because you will almost certainly end up killed killed. Same goes if you have a character versed in sociability, but unable to fight. In this case, arrogance against opponents is not simply not recommended, but strictly prohibited, although it remains possible. Here, the biggest compliment that can be given to The Age of Decadence is that seems to have been written by a good master, eager to propose an interesting story and situations to the players, but unwilling to save them from their excesses: Did you play as a trader and decide without a reason to offend two professional assassins?

They will definitely kill you, but don't blame the game, because the fault is yours alone. It's a great lesson, pedagogically speaking. All this freedom also brings some problems. The first is that The Age of Decadence is a difficult title and not suitable for everyone. The second is that you risk ending up in dead ends whose only exit is loading a previous save or, worse, having to start over. Especially those who think they can create a well-rounded character will soon find themselves in unpleasant situations: better to specialize by excelling in a few fields, than to try to know how to do everything and not succeed in anything. Another problem, secondary but evident, is the age of the game: technically, the ten years that have passed since the beginning of development are all visible. Sure, playing you forget about the three-dimensional models from PlayStation 2 and the washed-out textures, but let's imagine that some of you would like to see your configuration gratified, which The Age of Decadence does not do in any way. From the point of view of the soundtrack, however, we point out a certain poverty of sound effects, offset by high quality music tracks, some of which deserve listening even outside the game.

Comment

Digital Delivery Steam Price 27,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

8.9

Readers (14)

8.8

Your vote

The Age of Decadence is a great RPG, there is little to discuss it. You probably won't find another one that offers such freedom of approach by playing alone. The campaign isn't very long, but the amount of things to do and the ways in which to do them make it replayable over and over again. Of course, the fact that it is an amateur production is quite evident, but if you manage to override some technical limitations and some manufacturing problems, you will enjoy a jewel of rare beauty.