When Cobbo and Livers played The Age of Decadence, they both tried to charm, cheat, and lie their way through Iron Tower's mega-tough isometric RPG. I'm not sure I want to know what that says about them - or us. Anyway, they might have a harder time of that in Dungeon Rats [official site], an upcoming combat-focused party-based RPG set in Age of Decadence's world. Iron Tower have announced that Dungeon Rats will launch next week, on November 4th, and shared a little trailer showing turn-based action:
]]>I must confess, since finishing Siege of Dragonspear the other week, I've not actually fired up any RPGs. It's not for want of them to play. I'm particularly looking forward to finally trying Final Fantasy IX, which I missed back in the day, and Beamdog's recently announced interquel, Planescape Torment: The Nameless One And A Half. (It's very similar to the original, only now whenever someone asks "What can change the nature of a man?" a furious little goblin pops onto the screen to yell "#notallmen!")
The problem has simply been timing - not having a nice satisfying chunk of time to really settle down for an epic experience. So instead, I thought I'd take a look at a few speed-runs, and see how fifty hours suddenly becomes a minute and a half... provided you don't include the hundreds of hours to get to that point. Here's a few of them I dug up to make your completion times look like crap, from RPGs old and new.
]]>Since the dawn of RPGs, two things have remained constant: heroes require armour, and players will always want to find out what happens if they strip it all off and run around. Some would call it a secret test of a game's devotion to world simulation - that if characters react, it says good things about the developers' devotion to detail. Others just think it's really funny. (To be clear, it's very rarely even close to sexy.)
This week then, a random sample will answer the question the world has been waiting to realise it should have asked - objectively speaking, which RPG is the best? Specifically, if they all forgot their PE kits and had to go quest in their pants.
]]>After what seems like forever, but has really just been ages, Age of Decadence [official site] is out and ready to kick your arse/ass (delete according to your ability to pronounce 'aluminium'). I've not had much time to put into it myself yet, but I'm looking forward to doing so, not least because of the promise of not being your usual combat heavy RPG. There's combat, but also plenty of scope for talking your way out of problems, as well as a cast not all patterned after the knight that can only tell the truth from that tiresome logic puzzle. You know. Towers of Hanoi.
What really caught my attention on firing it up though was one of the character classes - "Grifter". Hmm. How would that go? No weapons, just wits. Time to hustle.
]]>O, for the RPG that advertises itself as different from the others by being easy, instead of always bragging about being more difficult. The Age of Decadence [official site] is not that RPG. After ten years development, including a couple on Steam Early Access, it has now been fully released. And although it is proud of how hard its combat is, it's also an RPG that brags about being about choice and consequence.
]]>Each Monday, Chris Livingston visits an early access game and reports back with stories about whatever he finds inside. This week, isometric turn-based RPG combat (and attempting to avoid it) in The Age of Decadence.
Imagine walking out of a store and discovering that not only have you been pickpocketed while shopping, but the expensive item you bought is actually a worthless trinket. When you complain to a city guard, he suspects you're the real thief, and when a friendly citizen offers to help, you soon find yourself in an alley surrounded by armed thugs. You've been ripped off, robbed, accused, mislead, and stabbed to death, all in a single afternoon. Welcome to The Age of Decadence! A quote from the tutorial seems fitting: "Remember to save, you are going to die soon."
]]>Age of Decadence belongs to the diminishing group of games currently in development that I first took am interest in because of a post on this 'ere website long before my ugly mug was ever on the 'About Us' page. I spent some time with the demo at the end of last year and my interest levels rose so high that my Wonga alert sounded at full blast. I was expecting something similar to Baldur's Gate but the reality is something else entirely. The game is now available on Steam Early Access, with 60% of the content included and the complete set of features from the finished product.
]]>I barely scratched the surface of the Age of Decadence demo when it was released so when I received word from Iron Tower that a new version was available, with all kinds of additions and fixes, I thought it might be a perfect opportunity to revisit. And so I did, only to realise that even the surface is the sort of thing I'd have to scratch at until my fingers were blood-encrusted nubs of bone to form a proper opinion. I've played the opening sections with two different character classes and there's a staggering variety in dialogue, choices and skills. This is shaping up to be the sort of RPG people often complain 'they don't make anymore', or Kickstart with wild abandon. I urge you to try it.
]]>John's just been moaning that he wants a new RPG to lose himself in for hours, and so I will provide. Well, eventually. Underrail isn't out yet - why must videogames exist before they are finished? - but if the wait for Wasteland 2 seems too torturous perhaps this could fill that turn-based, it's the end of the world and I feel fine, hole in your life.
]]>My Age of Decadence was my early twenties. I travelled slowly down the Mekong river longing for the horizon, drank copious amounts of bourbon in all-night jazz bars and dusty, dilapidated dives, all the while studying the world through an eyeglass of glamour and sleaze. Perhaps not coincidentally I also spent a lot of time in Manchester cafes reading Graham Greene and Paul Theroux. The game Age of Decadence aims to provide players with freedom of choice although I doubt it's possible to recreate my own youthful exuberance. The trailer below draws attention to a host of other features that can best be described as 'old-school', words which I can write but should never say aloud.
]]>Well well well. After writing about Dead State earlier today, I now discover that the public beta demo for long-awaited Age of Decadence has been released. It would appear that everybody in the world is trying to download it at the moment and I'm probably not going to help matters by doing this but here's the only working link I've found over on RapidShare. Because it's downloading quite slowly I haven't had a chance to try it out yet but here's hoping it's as good as it looked when Kieron spoke about it in olden times.
]]>Remember Age of Decadence? Fallout-inspired indie RPG set after the fall of the Roman Empire? Kieron did an A-Grade interview with the angry developer, covering the dearth of dialogue-heavy RPGs and whether turn-based combat in RPGs was, in fact, an anachronism? Well, there's a new gameplay trailer out. Ooh yes, I can already hear you locking and popping with excitement.
]]>We're going to be playing catch-up with what happened in the PC world when we were away for a while. One of the bigger indie thrills was Iron Tower releasing their long awaited combat demo. Then they had a tweak and released another one with some bugs removed. While I'm excited about this as ever, I haven't actually had a chance to the demo yet, so I'll direct you at Vince for his Combat Survival Guide to ease you in. And an internet video of it in - er - action.
]]>It's a name which is already on the lips of many who pine after a classical school of RPGs. But not nearly enough, for our reckoning. The last time we talked to designer Vince D. Weller, he proved himself the indie-RPG equivalent of the early Manic Street Preachers in a I-hate-dumbed-down-RPGs-more-than-Hitler sort of way. Is he similarly angry today? Not really. But he's still more outspoken than any forty other given developers and takes time to shares his and his team's vision of what the RPG should be.
]]>While I'd been following Fallout-but-in-fallout-of-Roman-Empire indie-RPG Age of Decadence's development at a comfortable distance, its world collided with Rock Paper Shotgun when Walker posted a little combat teaser the team behind this indie-RPG had released. The thread exploded with readers rejecting its turn-based formality, and then there was a counter-reaction to that. It basically turned into a debate about what the RPG should be in the modern age, and so when outspoken Lead Designer Vince D Weller started chatting behind the scenes, we decided an interview may be a worthwhile thing.
The results are a slowburn towards something incendiary. Vince is angry at many things, from the industry to the modern RPG, from the expectations of audiences to... many things. In fact, it's somewhat appropriate for a man who steadfastedly believes in multiple-possibilities in the role-playing game, that there's multiple targets for his ire. In fact, there's a good chance that Vince is angry with you, specifically, but his J'accuse ranges further than that. Fireworks are lit beneath the cut.
]]>I cannot think of a time when I've seen more polite combat.
Gametrailers, it is toward you that we aim our thanks cannon.
I find this is a lot more fun to watch if you narrate it with comments like,
"Ouch, do you mind?" "Gosh, your sword came awfully close to striking my face there old chap." "Goodness me, I'm quite exhausted from all this. I'm going to have a bit of a lie down."
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