The only thing I care at this moment is, if COLONY SHIP is one of these modern Games with a gynocentric and/or feminist agenda (e.g. by implementing a gender-quota for companions or superiors/questgivers etc)
One of my favourite moments in AoD is when you try to heal a man who was cursed by the Evil Wind. A guard tells you about his symptoms and they're very clearly acute radiation poisoning, but only you the player know that - the game plays it straight.
Yeah, if you are a loremaster, there's multiple cases when you can warn people to not haul around anything that glows in the dark, but even your "smart" lore dude can't exactly say what's wrong with glowy things, it's just "they are cursed, everyone who owns them dies mysteriously".
it doesn't really take a PhD in theoretical physics to do some basic pattern recognition along the lines of "when this object is nearby people fucking die"
I love Master Fang's character. His personality is the exact opposite of the stereotypical depiction of a Chinese wiseman yet he is somehow wise in his own way.
@@WTFisTingispingis And then he would say there was a lesson in it, never just do something because someone tell you to, it’ll always serve their purpose and not yours.
I love how casual Miltiades is to meeting the closest thing to a god left on the planet. He's 2 steps away from offering Meru a beer and turning on Breaking Bad in the throne room.
I love how you inserted another cultist into the 'certain death god-dimension wall' the same way you would insert a second coin into a vending machine because it wouldn't satisfy you on the first one.
It's closer to the real gladiator arenas, most of the fights didn't end in death, gladiators were mostly slaves and criminals but they were worth a lot to their owners and patrons so they had to fight many battles to make a profit, and the more they won the more influential they and their bosses became. So neither of the "bosses" would like to see their very expensive slave die or be put out of comission due to grave injuries
The idea an ancient advanced civilization made nukes, power armor and tech to go into other dimensions but basically still only had designed simple mechanical machines like ballistas to use nukes is really funny, it's like putting square wheels on an upside down cart before a dead horse
our nuclear heads look abt the same and if you described them to a roman they would probably think a large balista fires them since they have no fucking idea what a rocket is
And apparently they did not invented firearms at all, not even some high-tech ones, so their tactics still were on levels of Rome. In one excerpt about rogue gods and war there's a passage about "to bring down one of the gods, 4 Tumens (10k people) perished that day". Such huge concentrations of manpower in one place were made impractical with invention of gunpowder, and in game you never find anything like normal firearm (the one relic you can construct by the looks of it is just a repurposed nailgun.) So yeah, their tech level is all over the place (because of magic, duh)
Improvement to firearms made old tight formations obsolete, pike & shot was already grinding men down fast enough but automatic fire would destroy anyone not in cover. That's why modern armies don't advance on enemy positions in big blocks.
@@benjaminsente7430 I'm not sure it can easily be modded because I don't know about the engine it runs on. As for whether or not it even needs it, most of the experience is from the narrative and how events play out. The graphics are good enough for this reason. Gameplay is as Warlockracy described: you either min-max every system the game has or you die. You are expected to leverage every encounter to gain as much money and exp as possible, but you will still be operating in different niches with different characters based on the narrative beats. Meta-gaming is the gameplay, and I don't know if mods would alter that much.
Although mid-to-endgame combat can be so trivialized by your skill and gear (if you pick crafting) that you can still have plenty of skill points in charisma skills as a fighter.@@chowder130 Min maxing is only necessary in early-to-mid game.
I love the character arc with Miltiades. You're character getting roped in with this con man's schemes culminating in unwitingly helping him gain a god's support is an amazing ending.
I personally like the "Become A God" ending. All throughout this story, your character has largely been a pawn in the games of others, and has been intelligent enough to see through it and is clearly unhappy with it. He has demonstrated that he thinks that things should be better, demonstrating a selflessness that no one else in power demonstrates. You, with the powers of a god and retaining your humanity, are the perfect person to end The Age Of Decadence, and hopefully begin an age of enlightenment.
@@RuSosan Anything greater than the sum of its parts, or the resources risked for investment. Civilization, for example: A large number of people have to invest large amounts of time, resources, and labor, all at the risk that what they build will fall apart within a generation. Nothing is ever guaranteed, and all of human achievement has started with someone rolling the proverbial dice and saying "Let's see what happens".
What I find interesting is that this is not a party-based RPG. That makes a lot of sense, given the title: An age of decadence is an age of everyone for themselves. Everyone's philosophy is "F--k you, got mine". The small handful of times that you're fighting in a group are either because you're helping a faction make a power grab or fighting off a genuine existential threat like an invading army. You can't form a party because anyone who has your back has a dagger in their hand. Honesty, that is appropriate for this kind of world. This is the post-apocalypse. You think the emperor is from a long line of rulers? No, he's Immortan Joe wearing Imperial Purple, ruling from the bombed out ruins of Rome, with his Warboys dressed as Roman legions. Everyone is the descendant of scavengers who survived the fall of civilization by adopting the ways of the cockroach and rat to live another day, with the ruling class now being the descendants of the best rats and roaches. The rulers don't seek a better world, because that, practically by definition, would be a world where they don't hold power. There's no politics in Age of Decadence, just gangs of thugs who live in ruined palaces and dress up in fancy clothing while fighting for scraps of power and pretending that they're any better than the thugs in the slums. Petty men, ruling over pitiful city-states.
ehh not really the problem is humans group up easily f--k you got mine usually refers to you and your pals hell even your all bastards who plan on betrayal even at it's worst you would still kinda like them almost as much as you hated them my point is human nature at it's worst still respects the tactic of group up and hit it till it dies
Except that 95% of the encounters are againist multiple enemies. It never feel like a word where people not cooperate. People don't cooperate with you and only with you not for every "lore" reason, but because the devs did not want charisma builds to clear combat encounters. If most combat encounters where 1v1 i'd have agreed with you.
@@noukan42 yeah dev antagonism is just kinda obvious and lame hence why I hate this style of rpg it's dumb for the sake of making life hard at least brigand oaxa has the balls to make your character and setting in such a way people treating you like scum makes sense here it's just everyone selectivly hates you and you never meet anyone who is not a bastard
@@noukan42 Well, that's the thing, isn't it? A lot of the groups you're fighting are part of a faction, people who, as Warlockracy put it, are people who stick to those with power like a remora on a shark. They're working for their faction, so they've got the support of that faction. When you're working for your chosen faction, you'll often have the support of fighters from that faction as well. That makes sense, because you're all working together for your own common interest. However, since you're often working on your own individual projects, no one is coming with you because it doesn't serve their interests. When you're made Legatus and say you're going to go looking for this lost temple, no one goes with you because everyone sees it as a fool's errand and likely to get you killed. Your second in command literally tells you "You will be missed". No one sees any benefit in it for themselves, and if you get yourself killed chasing ghosts of the past, there will be no point in attaching themselves to you just to get killed themselves. In a different world with more idealistic and less cynical people, a world where loyalty actually means something, a party would be possible. Friendship would have meaning and you could appeal to peoples' better nature, because they'd actually have one of those. However, this is a world of post-apocalyptic ruin, and all the idealists are long dead, fighting for the cynics who were able to dupe them into throwing their lives away for nothing. Depending on how you play him, your character may be the last idealist left on the planet, the last member of an near-extinct species.
@@FirstLast-cg2nk but you are on solo mission just because the game says you do. You work on factions that either send just you or send 5 people to a job. Wich can be seen explicitly when you play the same encounters from different factions. Somehow now the people that could only send you can now spare a 6-men team to deal with you. Even if you want to argue that they see you as expendable, isn't bandit #3 or soldier #5 just as expendable? But those are sent in big teams. It just don't check up if you think about it, it is clearly a gamey construct because they wanted to nerf charisma builds compared to games like FO1-2.
what i found the best about this game was that a pure charisma build works, you can talk/ think your way out almost any issue or encounter, even in playthroughs that you might expect to be more combat focused there is room for diplomacy and smarts.
i like when games allow you to tell the final boss to cope and seethe and after being embarassed of being portrayed as a soyjak he has no choice but to self destruct and you get the best ending
@@davdav1370 At least most of the time, if you align with the merchents expect a lot talking and tricking other people to get what you want. Alao even in the legion quest you can talk around issues like the mongal looking guys, you can pretend to be an aurellian agent and offend the them into no longer backing aurellian and fucking off back home
"Combat in Iron Tower games tends to cause a strong polarizing reaction in people: You either love it, or hate it. If you look at the footage of the Age of Decadence, you can see that it *superficially* resembles a strategy game. There are turns; action points, a square grid. This is all *fake shit* - the truth is, there is almost no meaningful decision making. You execute the same plan over and over, until the dice rolls in your favour." - Warlockracy, May 29, 2023
In ColonShip combat is much more tolerable because of some changes in system. In AoD too many things are stacked against you, to a point that combat encounters in starting area are almost unwinnable even for pure combat characters until you invest heavily in crafting and make some decent weapon with hefty to-hit bonuses.
As Warlockracy pointed out when talking about Colony Ship, the other game by this developer, if the company stays in business, we are most probably getting Colony Ship II: Evangelicals showing Jesus to Medieval Aliens. If you want that game made, give many moneys to Vince D. Weller and IronTower by buying Age of Decadence, Dungeon Rats and Colony Ship. Such premise deserves to be made into a videogame. The developer has not discussed a kickstarter or anything (albeit their games go to early acess), but I would definitively back that endeavor.
I bought AoD and Colony Ship after warlocks videos and dungeon rats after finishing AoD. Here's hoping for another game in the ludography relatively soon!
@@ab-wx3or To be fair, I don't think Vince and the other devs are surprised by the sales. Quite the opposite, it's within expectations. Their games are passion projects - so they make them because it's what they want to do. The point is, either there are enough people interested in this style for them to continue... or there aren't. It's a simple equation.
I fell into a trap when I tried playing this game where I figured out that all tests were based on thresholds, so I kept trying to make new characters to figure out exactly how I could get the results I wanted. The game is pretty good about never giving you everything that you want and making you a bit of a flunky in a lot of cases unless you try really hard.
I would be honestly surprised if that "turn based = Zzz" statement came from Kieron himself. Back in the ancient days when PC Gamer UK magazine wasn't just actually useful (IE before the internet made magazines worthless), it was actually brilliant, funny and did actual journalism (for example, they were, to my knowledge the first people in the west to draw serious attention towards Stalker. Long before the game's release, and the location becoming a tourist destination, they flew a member of their writing staff out to Pripyat where they received a tour in addition to showcasing the quality of the mapping and such magic as a, at the time, mostly functioning A Life system). Anyways during this wonderful period Kieron was one of the main writing staff for the magazine. And besides his love for Deus Ex (and his involvement with The Nameless Mod) he (though bare in mind this is based on 20+ years of memory) had quite the hardon for RPGs of all types. However having said that, him being involved with a group of priggish journos trying to define the zeitgeist of the RPG genre does seem like something that he would do. So maybe I am talking out of my arse.
@@francesco3772 I love rpgs but I suck at turn based combat I much prefer a sort of ARPG combat like the witcher with crpg DNA like bg3 this is probably why dragon age origins is my favorite it's just the best of both worlds to me. I just don't get turn based combat even tho I've played bg3 for over 30 hours at this point and has played other turn based combat RPGS like pillars of eternity 1. I think I just can't handle crowds in turn based combat anytime there's a crowd I just fold
I enjoy turn based, but I totally understand why a lot of gamers don't. Way too many turn base games bog the player down with low level encounters that don't pose a challenge, but still take up time of course. Many also have painfully slow movement and / or animations. Turn based doesn't have to be slow AF. I'm glad cheat engine exists. I use it's game speed enhancement to play many RPGs that I otherwise would ignore due to their slowness.
Finally, this is the one I've been looking forward to most. You sold me on the game even before you made a review of it, with all the references you put in your other videos. Those hours were well spent.
I don't think I have ever played a game that was harder to squeeze everything out of in a single play through, they really committed to stats mattering and not giving you enough to exploit them. I will say that my best run with a min-maxed character was a Loremaster with good social skills that unlocked the Ancient armor later on and got regeneration, plus the select few boosts scattered throughout the game. Made her a decent fighter, so you could experience some of the fighting, but never managed to go through the whole of the arena with her. You review, as I listen to it, reminded to check up on Colony Ship (their next game) and it came out in November, so I bought it. Wish me luck.
Mortismal Gaming really likes Colony Ship, yet I never heard him speak of this game... As he plays older games whn he's got time, might be worth putting it on his radar (again?)
Colony Ship was... pretty good. I enjoyed it. There was some stuff I missed, I reloaded a few times, but I dont find it nearly as hard or nearly as "locked out of stuff," as people say. Faith is a skill monkey, PC is speech/handguns, every other party is purely combat. I experienced near everything. Could talk or shoot my way out. It was a good game, but it didnt seem as reactive as AoD, and some of the factions needed more time to cook, I think. A few times I felt I didnt have nearly enough information to really choose a side aside from one convo and tertiary information, but it was enjoyable.
I like that they keep civil skill points and combat skill points separate in this game, so you don't sacrifice roleplaying skills for combat skills, or vice versa. It has always rubbed me the wrong way that games force you to choose between being able to fight well and being able to interact with people well. History books are filled with the stories of people who were both statesmen and soldiers, warriors and intellectuals, philosophers and generals.
Absolutely! My main gripe with practically any RPG. Also, most WILL force you into fights that you then won't be able to win if you didn't choose the correct type of playstyle (i.e. a murderous sociopath).
I deeply agree with this. especially in TTRPG and/or core videogame systems I feel like there needs to be a separation between "civil" skill points and combat ones. 100% right
What's even worse is when social skills aren't good for anything more than lowering vendor prices and maybe giving you a couple extra lines of dialog (looking at your games, Todd). If I'm going to dump points into charisma, at least let me talk my way out of a fight or something.
@@samvimes9510 This, I actually wouldn't mind being forced to pick between social and combat skills if the social skills had any merit. A lot of times it feels tacked on because it'd an rpg of course we need to havr those skills.
I was amazed that the treasure map was actually genuine: I'd written it off as a red herring after Feng started waxing lyrical about how valuable it was.
I love that if you have TONS of charisma, you can convince everyone that you are The Chosen One, preparing them along all the game, and when you speak to Agathoth, you could tell him to be his chosen and rule the world and he accepts
I played this game a long time ago. It took a lot of trial and error, but I made it through to the end with a full combat character but since I did some political hijinks at points the Imperial Guard exiled me to the wastes with a legion, but instead of finding his end their he lost half his men but due to his combat skills being extremely high he was able to survive and the rest of his men were stronger and hardier for it. I really hoped that they would release a sequel and allow save import so I can role-play as Julius Caesar.
I’m not surprised that very few people know of the Militades ending. Considering most people kill him on the spot after he tricks them (logically). But for what it’s worth, it’s easily the funniest ending, even more than the Nuke ending. This 50 year old con man tricks and stabs his way to becoming the right hand of the closest equivalent to a god in the setting, only through the mercy of the murder hobo protagonist.
This video showed me that Militades is a major character. I always killed him immediately after the two thugs. It's incredible; he even has his own ending!
Weirdly since you mentioned Kieron Gillen, a few years ago when he was still a game journalist (before he started writing comics), he made a Deus Ex mod called The Cassandra Project. You might want to take a look at it.
Back when Rockpapershotgun didn't go woke, fired their best writers for their political views and declined in quality. Somehow, kind of an AOD-thing to do.
A big reason why I love this game so much is its relatively short length allows you to actually experience all its content and have fun replaying it. Mechanically it's so simple but every one of my runs with it has been vastly different - the mark of an honest to god RPG.
Hey Warlockracy, I was wondering if you had heard of a very interesting RPG made in the 2010s by a college professor called *Brigand: Oaxaca*? It has decent quest design, packaged in a very Morrowind-ish presentation, taking place in post apocalyptic Mexico. It seems right up your alley!
I have played this game to completion thrice. First as a merchant, then an assassin, and finally a thief that specialized in lying and lore. None of my games were like this. It's incredible to me how dense and varied this game can be.
I'm convinced the adherrence to real time with pause that has been losing traction since the start of the CRPG renaissance helmed by games like Pillars of Eternity and Divinity was just some vestigial Stockholm syndrome of autism born from taking DnD's rule set waaaay too literally in that, while DnD combat is turn based, it is supposed to take place "in real time". The limitation of the tabletop format simply cannot allow for it.
Neverwinter Nights does rtwp really well. And there's psuedo-mmo multiplayer servers that, for obvious reasons, are only real-time,and that works really well too
I love this game for two reasons: the intriguing post-apocalyptic Roman swtting, and the ability to talk yourself into, and then out of trouble without necessarily improving your odds (as my first Daratan Praetor playthrough proved, when I failed end game skill checks and came back to Antidas for the "I got nothing, boss" ending).
I have been keeping an eye out for proof of the Miltiades ending for 5 years. Every year or so I'd try out a new build and remember to try for that ending, but could never get Miltiades and Meru in the same room together. Thank you
Writing this before I watch the video. I followed the development of AoD very closely back in the day and when it finally came out, I hated playing it and I can pinpoint _exactly_ what happened to make it that way: The Combat test build. Somewhere in the early 2010's Iron Tower released a partial version of AoD that was mostly just the combat system, fighting various enemies in an arena. The idea was to test out the combat around the feedback from this version so that Vince could achieve his desired goal of making combat challenging, but not impossible if you had the right strategy. The problem: When you release a version of the game that's just the combat system, people are going to build characters exclusively for combat. Which means that the release version of Age of Decadence had combat that was balanced to be challenging, but winnable, for characters that _were built to be maximally efficient at fighting_ and that means that any combat that wasn't just meant to be easy was unwinnable for a character that was merely competent at combat. Which is a problem when even the quest lines for character paths that are more focussed on non-combat skills feature some amount of forced combat to progress. I know this got revised a little in later patches and now you can get away with engaging in combat with a character not built purely for combat as long as they have some amount of competency, but that whole situation and the fact that Vince was initially an asshole about it (telling people who felt the combat balance was off to go play Bethesda games if they didn't want to be challenged) soured me on AoD.
Did you tried play as a loremaster/extremly charismatic diplomat/total asshole? Because I was playing this build for my first time and had an absolute blast.
You could always get away with engaging in combat with character not built entirely for combat, patches actually added more late game combat content if anything (IIRC arena ended earlier before, they added those extra challenging arena fights later). You just couldn't max out specific storylines (like aforementioned arena) and had to actually pick your battles. (even imperial guard storyline has options for people who cant mow down endless hordes of enemies and it's the most murder heavy line) Hell, the non imperial guard storylines specifically reward diverse hybrids that can talk and fight when things hit the point where just talking isnt impossible (usually as a result of betrayal overload). The game also heavily incentivizes you to use consumable items for hard fights. I think it's actually, unironically a problem on your end and Vince was right to tell the game isnt for you.
Disco Elysium is fantastic. I think of it more as an adventure game with some light RPG elements. The story is already set, the fate of Martinaise already decided by bigger players than one alcoholic detective. The player controls only what combinations of traits Harrier Du Bois uses to stumble through his investigation and what kind of new life he salvages from the wreckage he's made of the old.
Honestly thought this was gonna be a wizardry 8 video or a planescape torment video. Still love this regardless. One day we will have wizardry and planescape
Honestly would love to see Warlockracy tackle Sirtech's last game to an old series they made. And its a shame Wizardry 8's style hasn't been replicated by other Wizardry titles that came after.
@@angrybitternerd1832 Legit, I wouldn't mind seeing Warlockracy take a quick dive at Cleve Blakemore after seeing brief mention of that guy in the Jagged Alliance 2 video.
Holy shit, I barely see anyone talk about this game. When I saw you covered colony rpg I hoped you would cover this game, and you delivered before the new year! I loved arriving in Maadoran as apart of the merchant’s guild and rigging elections while being the arena champion. I remember also the dev being fairly open to any questions about the game or lore on the discussion boards. Truly no other rpgs have scratched the Roman post apoc itch that this game has.
So what was the deal with the guy claiming he can kill people with a look? Can he actually do it? WHY can he do it? Isn't there a way to obtain the awesome power? Now this was the real questions that kept me invested.
Faelan, according to Vince, is "a gifted human", akin to a powerful hypnotist. He never killed anyone with his gaze directly - these people cut their own throats. A person with sufficiently strong will who thinks with zero doubt Faelan is a charlatan could probably withstand a staring contest without taking LTG's advice, but his powers are real, though unexplained.
Judging by the game's world, he's a naturally gifted psionic, maybe a descendant of one of the Magi. The game makes you think that Magi were just an engineers who built incredible machines, but no, they were literally wizards who summoned monsters from different realms and bound them with glyphic wards. In some questlines (Boatmen of Styx) you need to assasinate him, and before the fight you need to prepare (one of options is to eat hallucinogenic mushrooms and fight four copies of him but he can't do his mind shit on you because you're high as fuck.) The game treats his talent as ultra-rare, I think there's only 3 characters in the entire game who can do mind tricks like him (two of them being GODS.)
As a fun fact: if you don't mind the consequences of awaking and unleashing the creature from Maadoran's Abyss it would grant you the "Mind Shield" ability, which helps you with both Faelan and Agathot's psychic attacks
You really are a great storyteller. Wish I knew more people that speaks english so I could recommend you to them, if nothing for how entertaining the way you narrate is. Full disclosure, I watch all of your videos at 1.5 speed. It's become alien for me to hear your voice at normal speed.
I’ve heard so much about this game, especially from this channel, so I’m really excited to see this video and see what all the hype’s about. I’m thinkin’ I’ll pick it up if I like what I see :D
As a Stargate SG-1 fan I loved that ending, very awesome. THanks for showing this because would never have been able to finish that game, I loved watching other people play Monkey Island games and help out with tips from time to time, but problemsolving these type of games makes my brain hurt, sorta playing the old Goblins click adventure games, love them but prefer watching other people play them, save with this. So thanks. Also finally at the end I understand why you said Miltiades was the real main character, what a delight that character was, his interaction with the alien god king was epic.
I love your videos my guy my dude! I've said this before but something about your voice, and I mean this as a compliment, lulls me to sleep. It's very relaxing. But then I start busting a gut because in that same tone you say "My vision is augmented" and it's fucking hilarious.
Long awaited video, I played this game a couple years ago, I tried a Charisma build and it worked fine until I had to cross a lava river and get past some giant scorpions and I almost got softlocked, felt pretty dumb after making bunch of bombs and using them as a total crutch lol
I love how you can beat this game without fighting anyone even once. Killing people via talk-fu or just talking them down is a lot more fun for me than an overcomplicated combat system. Praetor and loremaster FTW.
Thank you Warlockracy! I'm enjoying my last two days at the family cottage and sat down on the porch with a drink and a smoke, but alas the CZcams feed was sorely lacking in interesting content. So this video dropped with impeccable timing! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to ya!
I remember my first time playing the game, all it wanted to talk about was how hard the combat was. “Combat in AoD is very hard! Try to talk your way out of situations!” “AoD is not a fighting game!” Naturally, my first character was a mercenary who joined the guard. What followed next was a dumb idiot bumbling his way through combat interactions and conversations and only managed to survive through blind luck. What an amazing game.
Thank you Warlockracy for playing through all these games. Your playthroughs and storytelling are immensely satisfying to listen to, and it saves me the months and years it would take my scrub butt to play through these games.
I remember bouncing off this hard, because it seemed to require hardcore minmaxing in every aspect and pure specialization in a perfect build. Otherwise you were fucked. Nowadays I'm hesitant to go back, I guess because of how popular the game is on certain "forums" as you call them. Looking back, it's also impressive how the character art looks a bit like AI generated art looks now, slightly uncanny.
Yeah, it's a damn shame _metagaming_ is just a core gameplay element no matter what. Same issue with Underrail. 10/10 settings with _eh meh_ game mechanics execution.
I've seen ads for this game and the art style immediately made me write it off as a facebook/Mobile game. Something about the art is just bad enough to look second rate
Projects made by unsupervised narcissist autheurs tend to be unplayable for normal people. Besides making a classice roguelike center around a story is a weird and contradictory design doc.
@@RuSosan UnderRail on Normal-Classic can be finished on poorly designed builds (my first char was 8 PER melee-thrower; I also picked Ninja Looter and proceeded to never pickpocket anyone, lol). My main complaint regarding meta-gaming would be towards trap placement. Some places at least have a level of logic when it comes to traps, but Junkyard is a dumbfest where enemies placed mines in tight corridors where they themselves reside. Another feat of ingenuity is some NPC who has a mine placed right next to a footlocker with an important quest item. It's really difficult to know that the spot is trapped to begin with without dying and reloading
I played this because of how much weight you put on it... totally worth playing once... and then twice. It's fantastic and the power armor is so boss, everyone that likes crpgs should give it a shot! Also, you should murder Miltiades at your earliest convenience imo
Warlockracy: makes green cross move on the map Me, automatically: You have been waylaid by enemies and must defend yourself. AoD is a very strange game, as in it somehow feels very strange. And I'm not even talking about the CYOA bits. It is as you say - Vince and Irontower thought that if they throw numbers and choices in there, the game will assemble itself into a great RPG. Not exactly. The best way I could describe it is that I really liked AoD, but didn't enjoy playing it much. Which sounds somewhat contradictory, but that's how it is. The jank of the Torque adds to this as well. Throughout the whole game you constantly feel the pressure of the numbers. You can roll with whatever, but it is very easy to miss content like that or make the game harder. It's like a test of will how soon you will just go full metagaming mode, researching how much points where exactly do you need and when. Still, this is a must play for any RPG connoisseur, at least once. I did that in.. 2017 I think, used the community patch to improve the game, and in the end succumbed to metagaming and made an optimal build and leveling sequence that allowed me to successfully complete as much content as possible. Not saying that I'm exactly happy to do this, it's much better to explore everything using in-game methods only. But this game really likes its numbers. It's like Bloodlines, but multiplied by 1000.
Honestly, this might be the best RPG i have ever seen. Prologue/tutorials based on the class you picked, using both crafted and bought weapons are viable, you are encouraged to use every resource at your disposal, and you can basically do whatever you want and the ending will be different accordingly. The issue i often find with RPGs is that at certain point, you simply have too much of something to the point you'll have plenty to use even after the game is over. In my case, i focus a lot on earning money, and i earn so much of it through quests and selling that i often empty entire shops and still have too much money! But here, it seems that as much as you spend money on materials and equipment, you have to spend as much money on healing or maintenance. And finally, the concept of a post-apocalyptic society behaving exactly as the pre-apocalyptic one, only with less technology is fascinating, and it would be interesting to see the Roman Empire with nukes, like a weird game of Civilization. This was a great video to end a year on, i look forward to see what you planned for the next!
Post apocalypse and Post-post apocalypse are heavily underutilised and even misunderstood IMO. There is so much potential for both of these ideas, as games like AOD and FNV show, but we so often fall into the same familiar trappings.
@@havok2579 yeah, it's really misunderstood not only how society can recover after an apocalyptic event, but just how resilient people are. I think there is one post apocalyptic game based off the Toba Catastrophe Theory... a game based on Bronze Age Collapse, or even post WW2 ruined Europe would be great settings. Think Fear and Hunger 2, only without the Lovecraftian thing
@@murisbukvic2496it's not an RPG, but Metro 2033 and its sequel Last Light feature a post-apocalyptic society that works just like the previous one. People in Moscow fled to the metro after a nuclear war and formed city-states in each station, pretty interesting
@@JoJo-gt7ty I'm sure Exodus did portray the post apocaliptic society the best of the bunch. like the people outside Moscow weren't just in a stasis, and how each region dealt with it's problems. yes, it wasn't perfect either, but it was something.
I'm one of the players you mentioned early in the video: played through the first part, appreciated it, but ultimately found it too archaic. As always, your videos have turned me around on my philistine tendencies toward boomer RPGs and their inheritors. Great video as always. I especially like how you interjected quotes from your character's mentor, Feng, with points salient to the narrative you present us. It adds symmetry to your character's story - nicely done. Can't wait for your book!
I belong in the same category but probably for different reasons. While I COULD have dealt with the jank, I quickly realized this required very highly fine tuned and optimized builds that I am absolutely unable to do (evn on repeat playthroughs), as well as any money making strats in the book when all I can really manage is "scrubby starter quests".
yeah after achieving 3 easier endings, it makes more sense to just read the lore (probably incomplete) in the guides, rather than playing 5 other precision crafted characters just to experience certain parts of the story. still AoD writing is better than colony ship (subjective opinion)
Something that should be said about vincegames, Vince is active on steam etc, if you complain about a bit being impossible/broke, he will ask for the save, he will play it. Though for most that usually results in the response of a) you have trash build b) trash rolls, try again C) you just play the game badly D) theres an actual bug and Vince will fix it asap; typically delivering a fixed save. That still doesn't take away from the thw ball kicking difficulties of vincegames though.
A slim window of optimal play being required for progression is not difficulty, in a game with no twitch skill requirement. It is merely a narrow possibility space. Also known as shit design.
another banger video. I think you always put a lot of intelligent analysis in every game you talk about. You're a really smart man and I appreciate all the things you put out for us. Thank you!
Genuinely one of my favorite RPGs of all time, there are some brilliant things here that even Colony Ship didn't fully replicate. They are both fantastic games, though, so it's hard to complain. Been looking forward to this one for a while, love to hear your thoughts on this modern classic
I finished dungeon rats with the escaped prison ending on tough bastard, this was after getting invested in a AoD play through :D. All thx to this video!
Games using every item and trick to succeed are called adventure games, they feature lot's of puzzles which require you to use all obtainable items in the game. ;p
Brother, recently found your content every video seems to get better and better. So glad you covered this game because you talk about it so much in other videos.
I like this game as someone who plays enjoys playing the ass kissing charisma character. You can essentially wormtongue your way through the story and it feels more rewarding than most games with charisma rolls. It feels like an actual mechanic with relationship consequences rather than the [skip content] button charisma usually acts as. Politicking in the desert city was probably my peak of enjoyment in this game because you feel like a side character trying to work your way into the main roster of a Dune book. Being a leech is such an accurate take. This is a ramble rant but you just reignited my love for a game I havent played since lockdown. Im definitely going to do another run as a fighter boi. Thanks warlock))
A nice, the perfect finisher for this evening. I hope next year we get daily videos. You need to make more videos, because this is a sad world and your videos make it a little better.
Maybe it's all of the Starfield nonsense that has me primed for some quality dunks at Todd's expense, but every time you flashed his face in this video made me burst out laughing. This is the first video I've ever seen from you, and I gotta say, it's prime stuff. Can't wait to watch more.
Thumbnail artist: x.com/yurseinhower
A valuable artefact that’s worth a lot to the right collector: store.steampowered.com/developer/irontowerstudio
Now do Dark sun
@@SerbianSpark19 if only wizards let dark sun exist again..
Love ur videos
He did it! Finally, he did it! Age of Decadence review is here!
The only thing I care at this moment is, if COLONY SHIP is one of these modern Games with a gynocentric and/or feminist agenda (e.g. by implementing a gender-quota for companions or superiors/questgivers etc)
One of my favourite moments in AoD is when you try to heal a man who was cursed by the Evil Wind. A guard tells you about his symptoms and they're very clearly acute radiation poisoning, but only you the player know that - the game plays it straight.
Yeah, if you are a loremaster, there's multiple cases when you can warn people to not haul around anything that glows in the dark, but even your "smart" lore dude can't exactly say what's wrong with glowy things, it's just "they are cursed, everyone who owns them dies mysteriously".
Ngl that’s cool world building to me
@@quint3ssent1amakes you wonder what artifacts irl were thrown away cause they were "cursed"
it doesn't really take a PhD in theoretical physics to do some basic pattern recognition along the lines of "when this object is nearby people fucking die"
Pattern recognition is antisemitic, you know.
I love Master Fang's character. His personality is the exact opposite of the stereotypical depiction of a Chinese wiseman yet he is somehow wise in his own way.
Given the setting his advice is spot on, so just wise of the regular kind of wise.
Street wise?😅
@@julianjanczyk9041the best kind of wise miss me with mr miyagi give me an old head puffing on a swisher wearing cheap shades and counting bills
I can see him asking you to wash his car and playing it off later as a bullshit training exercise, and it's really just "I wanted a car wash."
@@WTFisTingispingis And then he would say there was a lesson in it, never just do something because someone tell you to, it’ll always serve their purpose and not yours.
I feel like I should play this with the name "Tiberius Rancor".
Don't you mean "Swastikus Caesar-Lover?"
I love how casual Miltiades is to meeting the closest thing to a god left on the planet. He's 2 steps away from offering Meru a beer and turning on Breaking Bad in the throne room.
I love how you inserted another cultist into the 'certain death god-dimension wall' the same way you would insert a second coin into a vending machine because it wouldn't satisfy you on the first one.
a dimensional gacha machine
I think the "shame" of being turn based as a game in 2008 really stems from the post-9/11 trauma in America.
I’m stealing this take
The phenomenon of the eternal september. Normies like action combat even when it is completely uninvolved
Most turn based combat is even more uninvolved. The "harder" it is, the less choice you actually have in what to do.
190 iq take
W A K E
M E
U P
W H E N
S E P T E M B E R
E N D S
I really like the idea of the arena not being the standard "make money kill stuff" place, and instead be what gives you fame and unlocks side quests
No Adoring Fan, no arena.
It's closer to the real gladiator arenas, most of the fights didn't end in death, gladiators were mostly slaves and criminals but they were worth a lot to their owners and patrons so they had to fight many battles to make a profit, and the more they won the more influential they and their bosses became.
So neither of the "bosses" would like to see their very expensive slave die or be put out of comission due to grave injuries
The "my next game will be EYE divine cybermancy" guy actually did fool me a wgile back. Glad they're still doing their thing.
The idea an ancient advanced civilization made nukes, power armor and tech to go into other dimensions but basically still only had designed simple mechanical machines like ballistas to use nukes is really funny, it's like putting square wheels on an upside down cart before a dead horse
I mean it isn't that far off from real-life. PIAT launchers were anti-tank nerf guns, for instance.
our nuclear heads look abt the same and if you described them to a roman they would probably think a large balista fires them since they have no fucking idea what a rocket is
And apparently they did not invented firearms at all, not even some high-tech ones, so their tactics still were on levels of Rome. In one excerpt about rogue gods and war there's a passage about "to bring down one of the gods, 4 Tumens (10k people) perished that day". Such huge concentrations of manpower in one place were made impractical with invention of gunpowder, and in game you never find anything like normal firearm (the one relic you can construct by the looks of it is just a repurposed nailgun.) So yeah, their tech level is all over the place (because of magic, duh)
@@quint3ssent1a"Big concentrations of men were made impractical by gunpowder"
????????? Citation needed
Improvement to firearms made old tight formations obsolete, pike & shot was already grinding men down fast enough but automatic fire would destroy anyone not in cover. That's why modern armies don't advance on enemy positions in big blocks.
Every second of the 50 hours I spent playing this felt like a fever dream. Sometimes I check my Steam library just to make sure it's actually real.
Would you say this games deserves graphics- and gameplay-upgrades? Can this game even be modded?
@@benjaminsente7430 I'm not sure it can easily be modded because I don't know about the engine it runs on.
As for whether or not it even needs it, most of the experience is from the narrative and how events play out. The graphics are good enough for this reason.
Gameplay is as Warlockracy described: you either min-max every system the game has or you die. You are expected to leverage every encounter to gain as much money and exp as possible, but you will still be operating in different niches with different characters based on the narrative beats. Meta-gaming is the gameplay, and I don't know if mods would alter that much.
I see, thanks @@chowder130 .
this man entered the arch without wearing protection
Although mid-to-endgame combat can be so trivialized by your skill and gear (if you pick crafting) that you can still have plenty of skill points in charisma skills as a fighter.@@chowder130
Min maxing is only necessary in early-to-mid game.
I love the character arc with Miltiades. You're character getting roped in with this con man's schemes culminating in unwitingly helping him gain a god's support is an amazing ending.
I personally like the "Become A God" ending. All throughout this story, your character has largely been a pawn in the games of others, and has been intelligent enough to see through it and is clearly unhappy with it. He has demonstrated that he thinks that things should be better, demonstrating a selflessness that no one else in power demonstrates. You, with the powers of a god and retaining your humanity, are the perfect person to end The Age Of Decadence, and hopefully begin an age of enlightenment.
But it comes with a stroke and a _subdued_ eldritch entity inside your head waiting for you to trip up.
@@RuSosan True, but when has anything great been accomplished without risk?
@@FirstLast-cg2nk
Define *_great_* first.
@@am-ranth8955
Ah, Papa Emps simulator. Lovely.
@@RuSosan Anything greater than the sum of its parts, or the resources risked for investment. Civilization, for example: A large number of people have to invest large amounts of time, resources, and labor, all at the risk that what they build will fall apart within a generation. Nothing is ever guaranteed, and all of human achievement has started with someone rolling the proverbial dice and saying "Let's see what happens".
What I find interesting is that this is not a party-based RPG. That makes a lot of sense, given the title: An age of decadence is an age of everyone for themselves. Everyone's philosophy is "F--k you, got mine". The small handful of times that you're fighting in a group are either because you're helping a faction make a power grab or fighting off a genuine existential threat like an invading army. You can't form a party because anyone who has your back has a dagger in their hand.
Honesty, that is appropriate for this kind of world. This is the post-apocalypse. You think the emperor is from a long line of rulers? No, he's Immortan Joe wearing Imperial Purple, ruling from the bombed out ruins of Rome, with his Warboys dressed as Roman legions. Everyone is the descendant of scavengers who survived the fall of civilization by adopting the ways of the cockroach and rat to live another day, with the ruling class now being the descendants of the best rats and roaches. The rulers don't seek a better world, because that, practically by definition, would be a world where they don't hold power.
There's no politics in Age of Decadence, just gangs of thugs who live in ruined palaces and dress up in fancy clothing while fighting for scraps of power and pretending that they're any better than the thugs in the slums. Petty men, ruling over pitiful city-states.
ehh not really the problem is humans group up easily f--k you got mine usually refers to you and your pals
hell even your all bastards who plan on betrayal even at it's worst you would still kinda like them almost as much as you hated them
my point is human nature at it's worst still respects the tactic of group up and hit it till it dies
Except that 95% of the encounters are againist multiple enemies.
It never feel like a word where people not cooperate. People don't cooperate with you and only with you not for every "lore" reason, but because the devs did not want charisma builds to clear combat encounters.
If most combat encounters where 1v1 i'd have agreed with you.
@@noukan42 yeah dev antagonism is just kinda obvious and lame hence why I hate this style of rpg it's dumb for the sake of making life hard at least brigand oaxa has the balls to make your character and setting in such a way people treating you like scum makes sense here it's just everyone selectivly hates you and you never meet anyone who is not a bastard
@@noukan42 Well, that's the thing, isn't it? A lot of the groups you're fighting are part of a faction, people who, as Warlockracy put it, are people who stick to those with power like a remora on a shark. They're working for their faction, so they've got the support of that faction. When you're working for your chosen faction, you'll often have the support of fighters from that faction as well. That makes sense, because you're all working together for your own common interest.
However, since you're often working on your own individual projects, no one is coming with you because it doesn't serve their interests. When you're made Legatus and say you're going to go looking for this lost temple, no one goes with you because everyone sees it as a fool's errand and likely to get you killed. Your second in command literally tells you "You will be missed". No one sees any benefit in it for themselves, and if you get yourself killed chasing ghosts of the past, there will be no point in attaching themselves to you just to get killed themselves.
In a different world with more idealistic and less cynical people, a world where loyalty actually means something, a party would be possible. Friendship would have meaning and you could appeal to peoples' better nature, because they'd actually have one of those. However, this is a world of post-apocalyptic ruin, and all the idealists are long dead, fighting for the cynics who were able to dupe them into throwing their lives away for nothing. Depending on how you play him, your character may be the last idealist left on the planet, the last member of an near-extinct species.
@@FirstLast-cg2nk but you are on solo mission just because the game says you do. You work on factions that either send just you or send 5 people to a job. Wich can be seen explicitly when you play the same encounters from different factions. Somehow now the people that could only send you can now spare a 6-men team to deal with you.
Even if you want to argue that they see you as expendable, isn't bandit #3 or soldier #5 just as expendable? But those are sent in big teams.
It just don't check up if you think about it, it is clearly a gamey construct because they wanted to nerf charisma builds compared to games like FO1-2.
when warlockracy finally reviews EYE divine cybermancy i really hope theres a 3 minute segment on the smg that shoots full-auto and fuller-auto
Shut
It
Don't listen to the other comments, you do you my man :)
Holy weed.
"fuller-auto"
Auto-er.
followed by the inevitable sequel: Auto-est.
what i found the best about this game was that a pure charisma build works, you can talk/ think your way out almost any issue or encounter, even in playthroughs that you might expect to be more combat focused there is room for diplomacy and smarts.
not only that, but can hire mercenaries (better charisma+speech=easier to convince good ones) that use better builds than ~90%+ players in AoD....
Can you finish game in a pacifist playthrough ? (I haven't played AoD at all, but have plans in future)
@@davdav1370if being pacifist involve bloodied someone hands and keep yours clean then, yes you could
i like when games allow you to tell the final boss to cope and seethe and after being embarassed of being portrayed as a soyjak he has no choice but to self destruct and you get the best ending
@@davdav1370
At least most of the time, if you align with the merchents expect a lot talking and tricking other people to get what you want. Alao even in the legion quest you can talk around issues like the mongal looking guys, you can pretend to be an aurellian agent and offend the them into no longer backing aurellian and fucking off back home
"Combat in Iron Tower games tends to cause a strong polarizing reaction in people: You either love it, or hate it. If you look at the footage of the Age of Decadence, you can see that it *superficially* resembles a strategy game. There are turns; action points, a square grid. This is all *fake shit* - the truth is, there is almost no meaningful decision making. You execute the same plan over and over, until the dice rolls in your favour." - Warlockracy, May 29, 2023
In ColonShip combat is much more tolerable because of some changes in system. In AoD too many things are stacked against you, to a point that combat encounters in starting area are almost unwinnable even for pure combat characters until you invest heavily in crafting and make some decent weapon with hefty to-hit bonuses.
As Warlockracy pointed out when talking about Colony Ship, the other game by this developer, if the company stays in business, we are most probably getting Colony Ship II: Evangelicals showing Jesus to Medieval Aliens. If you want that game made, give many moneys to Vince D. Weller and IronTower by buying Age of Decadence, Dungeon Rats and Colony Ship. Such premise deserves to be made into a videogame. The developer has not discussed a kickstarter or anything (albeit their games go to early acess), but I would definitively back that endeavor.
I bought AoD and Colony Ship after warlocks videos and dungeon rats after finishing AoD. Here's hoping for another game in the ludography relatively soon!
>our games aren't for everyone
>in fact they are almost for no one
>wtf why aren't people buying my game
@@ab-wx3or there are dozens of us! Dozens!
@@ab-wx3or To be fair, I don't think Vince and the other devs are surprised by the sales. Quite the opposite, it's within expectations. Their games are passion projects - so they make them because it's what they want to do. The point is, either there are enough people interested in this style for them to continue... or there aren't. It's a simple equation.
@@ab-wx3or Mainstreaming cuuuuccc
I fell into a trap when I tried playing this game where I figured out that all tests were based on thresholds, so I kept trying to make new characters to figure out exactly how I could get the results I wanted. The game is pretty good about never giving you everything that you want and making you a bit of a flunky in a lot of cases unless you try really hard.
I would be honestly surprised if that "turn based = Zzz" statement came from Kieron himself. Back in the ancient days when PC Gamer UK magazine wasn't just actually useful (IE before the internet made magazines worthless), it was actually brilliant, funny and did actual journalism (for example, they were, to my knowledge the first people in the west to draw serious attention towards Stalker. Long before the game's release, and the location becoming a tourist destination, they flew a member of their writing staff out to Pripyat where they received a tour in addition to showcasing the quality of the mapping and such magic as a, at the time, mostly functioning A Life system).
Anyways during this wonderful period Kieron was one of the main writing staff for the magazine. And besides his love for Deus Ex (and his involvement with The Nameless Mod) he (though bare in mind this is based on 20+ years of memory) had quite the hardon for RPGs of all types.
However having said that, him being involved with a group of priggish journos trying to define the zeitgeist of the RPG genre does seem like something that he would do. So maybe I am talking out of my arse.
Turn based is turn cringe
I love this channel for anecdotes both in the video and in the comments
@@francesco3772 I love rpgs but I suck at turn based combat I much prefer a sort of ARPG combat like the witcher with crpg DNA like bg3 this is probably why dragon age origins is my favorite it's just the best of both worlds to me. I just don't get turn based combat even tho I've played bg3 for over 30 hours at this point and has played other turn based combat RPGS like pillars of eternity 1. I think I just can't handle crowds in turn based combat anytime there's a crowd I just fold
@@TJHistories The combat in Witcher games is atrocious, i wasn't even an hour over the tutorial on Witcher 3 and was already bored to death with it.
I enjoy turn based, but I totally understand why a lot of gamers don't. Way too many turn base games bog the player down with low level encounters that don't pose a challenge, but still take up time of course. Many also have painfully slow movement and / or animations. Turn based doesn't have to be slow AF. I'm glad cheat engine exists. I use it's game speed enhancement to play many RPGs that I otherwise would ignore due to their slowness.
Finally, this is the one I've been looking forward to most. You sold me on the game even before you made a review of it, with all the references you put in your other videos. Those hours were well spent.
I don't think I have ever played a game that was harder to squeeze everything out of in a single play through, they really committed to stats mattering and not giving you enough to exploit them. I will say that my best run with a min-maxed character was a Loremaster with good social skills that unlocked the Ancient armor later on and got regeneration, plus the select few boosts scattered throughout the game. Made her a decent fighter, so you could experience some of the fighting, but never managed to go through the whole of the arena with her. You review, as I listen to it, reminded to check up on Colony Ship (their next game) and it came out in November, so I bought it. Wish me luck.
Mortismal Gaming really likes Colony Ship, yet I never heard him speak of this game...
As he plays older games whn he's got time, might be worth putting it on his radar (again?)
Colony Ship was... pretty good. I enjoyed it. There was some stuff I missed, I reloaded a few times, but I dont find it nearly as hard or nearly as "locked out of stuff," as people say. Faith is a skill monkey, PC is speech/handguns, every other party is purely combat. I experienced near everything. Could talk or shoot my way out.
It was a good game, but it didnt seem as reactive as AoD, and some of the factions needed more time to cook, I think. A few times I felt I didnt have nearly enough information to really choose a side aside from one convo and tertiary information, but it was enjoyable.
I like that they keep civil skill points and combat skill points separate in this game, so you don't sacrifice roleplaying skills for combat skills, or vice versa. It has always rubbed me the wrong way that games force you to choose between being able to fight well and being able to interact with people well. History books are filled with the stories of people who were both statesmen and soldiers, warriors and intellectuals, philosophers and generals.
Absolutely! My main gripe with practically any RPG. Also, most WILL force you into fights that you then won't be able to win if you didn't choose the correct type of playstyle (i.e. a murderous sociopath).
I deeply agree with this. especially in TTRPG and/or core videogame systems I feel like there needs to be a separation between "civil" skill points and combat ones. 100% right
What's even worse is when social skills aren't good for anything more than lowering vendor prices and maybe giving you a couple extra lines of dialog (looking at your games, Todd). If I'm going to dump points into charisma, at least let me talk my way out of a fight or something.
@@samvimes9510 This, I actually wouldn't mind being forced to pick between social and combat skills if the social skills had any merit. A lot of times it feels tacked on because it'd an rpg of course we need to havr those skills.
@@samvimes9510 not just todd, bioware too with mass effect and the ilussion of choice.
I was amazed that the treasure map was actually genuine: I'd written it off as a red herring after Feng started waxing lyrical about how valuable it was.
"infiltrator, terminator, kingslayer, centurion. gaius is an 80s metal band in a trench coat."
10/10 video
I love that if you have TONS of charisma, you can convince everyone that you are The Chosen One, preparing them along all the game, and when you speak to Agathoth, you could tell him to be his chosen and rule the world and he accepts
I played this game a long time ago. It took a lot of trial and error, but I made it through to the end with a full combat character but since I did some political hijinks at points the Imperial Guard exiled me to the wastes with a legion, but instead of finding his end their he lost half his men but due to his combat skills being extremely high he was able to survive and the rest of his men were stronger and hardier for it. I really hoped that they would release a sequel and allow save import so I can role-play as Julius Caesar.
They wanted to release a prequel but it was cancelled
I’m not surprised that very few people know of the Militades ending. Considering most people kill him on the spot after he tricks them (logically).
But for what it’s worth, it’s easily the funniest ending, even more than the Nuke ending. This 50 year old con man tricks and stabs his way to becoming the right hand of the closest equivalent to a god in the setting, only through the mercy of the murder hobo protagonist.
This video showed me that Militades is a major character. I always killed him immediately after the two thugs.
It's incredible; he even has his own ending!
always happy seeing a new warlock drop 🔥 ❗
Said every Lovecraftian deity ever.
Weirdly since you mentioned Kieron Gillen, a few years ago when he was still a game journalist (before he started writing comics), he made a Deus Ex mod called The Cassandra Project. You might want to take a look at it.
Back when Rockpapershotgun didn't go woke, fired their best writers for their political views and declined in quality.
Somehow, kind of an AOD-thing to do.
@@Jajalaatmaar this mofo thinks RPS was at any point not cringe
A big reason why I love this game so much is its relatively short length allows you to actually experience all its content and have fun replaying it. Mechanically it's so simple but every one of my runs with it has been vastly different - the mark of an honest to god RPG.
Hey Warlockracy, I was wondering if you had heard of a very interesting RPG made in the 2010s by a college professor called *Brigand: Oaxaca*?
It has decent quest design, packaged in a very Morrowind-ish presentation, taking place in post apocalyptic Mexico.
It seems right up your alley!
Considering TehSnakerer's video on it, it is the kind of oddball thing i want more people to know of.
I have played this game to completion thrice. First as a merchant, then an assassin, and finally a thief that specialized in lying and lore. None of my games were like this. It's incredible to me how dense and varied this game can be.
I'm convinced the adherrence to real time with pause that has been losing traction since the start of the CRPG renaissance helmed by games like Pillars of Eternity and Divinity was just some vestigial Stockholm syndrome of autism born from taking DnD's rule set waaaay too literally in that, while DnD combat is turn based, it is supposed to take place "in real time". The limitation of the tabletop format simply cannot allow for it.
Neverwinter Nights does rtwp really well. And there's psuedo-mmo multiplayer servers that, for obvious reasons, are only real-time,and that works really well too
I love this game for two reasons: the intriguing post-apocalyptic Roman swtting, and the ability to talk yourself into, and then out of trouble without necessarily improving your odds (as my first Daratan Praetor playthrough proved, when I failed end game skill checks and came back to Antidas for the "I got nothing, boss" ending).
Went on the whole journey just to say
"Sorry got nothin"
I have been keeping an eye out for proof of the Miltiades ending for 5 years. Every year or so I'd try out a new build and remember to try for that ending, but could never get Miltiades and Meru in the same room together.
Thank you
Writing this before I watch the video.
I followed the development of AoD very closely back in the day and when it finally came out, I hated playing it and I can pinpoint _exactly_ what happened to make it that way:
The Combat test build.
Somewhere in the early 2010's Iron Tower released a partial version of AoD that was mostly just the combat system, fighting various enemies in an arena. The idea was to test out the combat around the feedback from this version so that Vince could achieve his desired goal of making combat challenging, but not impossible if you had the right strategy.
The problem: When you release a version of the game that's just the combat system, people are going to build characters exclusively for combat. Which means that the release version of Age of Decadence had combat that was balanced to be challenging, but winnable, for characters that _were built to be maximally efficient at fighting_ and that means that any combat that wasn't just meant to be easy was unwinnable for a character that was merely competent at combat. Which is a problem when even the quest lines for character paths that are more focussed on non-combat skills feature some amount of forced combat to progress.
I know this got revised a little in later patches and now you can get away with engaging in combat with a character not built purely for combat as long as they have some amount of competency, but that whole situation and the fact that Vince was initially an asshole about it (telling people who felt the combat balance was off to go play Bethesda games if they didn't want to be challenged) soured me on AoD.
Did you tried play as a loremaster/extremly charismatic diplomat/total asshole? Because I was playing this build for my first time and had an absolute blast.
You could always get away with engaging in combat with character not built entirely for combat, patches actually added more late game combat content if anything (IIRC arena ended earlier before, they added those extra challenging arena fights later). You just couldn't max out specific storylines (like aforementioned arena) and had to actually pick your battles. (even imperial guard storyline has options for people who cant mow down endless hordes of enemies and it's the most murder heavy line)
Hell, the non imperial guard storylines specifically reward diverse hybrids that can talk and fight when things hit the point where just talking isnt impossible (usually as a result of betrayal overload). The game also heavily incentivizes you to use consumable items for hard fights.
I think it's actually, unironically a problem on your end and Vince was right to tell the game isnt for you.
Warlockracy needs to do Disco Elysium at some point. The anecdotes and interpretations would be fascinating
Disco Elysium is fantastic. I think of it more as an adventure game with some light RPG elements. The story is already set, the fate of Martinaise already decided by bigger players than one alcoholic detective. The player controls only what combinations of traits Harrier Du Bois uses to stumble through his investigation and what kind of new life he salvages from the wreckage he's made of the old.
beurk
Not an RPG tho.
And if you want to play Visual Novels at least play one with scantily-clad anime girls. 😏
@@LuvboneXNo anime girls can compare to Kim Kitsuragi.
Stalker is not an rpg either, and yet that has 4 videos
Honestly thought this was gonna be a wizardry 8 video or a planescape torment video. Still love this regardless. One day we will have wizardry and planescape
Honestly would love to see Warlockracy tackle Sirtech's last game to an old series they made. And its a shame Wizardry 8's style hasn't been replicated by other Wizardry titles that came after.
@@Chinothebad yeah. But there is grimoire by blakemore
I'd also like for him to do a video on might and magic 6, 7 and 8. With the merge mod@@Chinothebad
@@angrybitternerd1832 Legit, I wouldn't mind seeing Warlockracy take a quick dive at Cleve Blakemore after seeing brief mention of that guy in the Jagged Alliance 2 video.
rpg youtubers need to get redpilled on Ogre Battle 64
Holy shit, I barely see anyone talk about this game. When I saw you covered colony rpg I hoped you would cover this game, and you delivered before the new year! I loved arriving in Maadoran as apart of the merchant’s guild and rigging elections while being the arena champion. I remember also the dev being fairly open to any questions about the game or lore on the discussion boards. Truly no other rpgs have scratched the Roman post apoc itch that this game has.
So what was the deal with the guy claiming he can kill people with a look?
Can he actually do it? WHY can he do it? Isn't there a way to obtain the awesome power?
Now this was the real questions that kept me invested.
Faelan, according to Vince, is "a gifted human", akin to a powerful hypnotist. He never killed anyone with his gaze directly - these people cut their own throats. A person with sufficiently strong will who thinks with zero doubt Faelan is a charlatan could probably withstand a staring contest without taking LTG's advice, but his powers are real, though unexplained.
Judging by the game's world, he's a naturally gifted psionic, maybe a descendant of one of the Magi. The game makes you think that Magi were just an engineers who built incredible machines, but no, they were literally wizards who summoned monsters from different realms and bound them with glyphic wards. In some questlines (Boatmen of Styx) you need to assasinate him, and before the fight you need to prepare (one of options is to eat hallucinogenic mushrooms and fight four copies of him but he can't do his mind shit on you because you're high as fuck.)
The game treats his talent as ultra-rare, I think there's only 3 characters in the entire game who can do mind tricks like him (two of them being GODS.)
As a fun fact: if you don't mind the consequences of awaking and unleashing the creature from Maadoran's Abyss it would grant you the "Mind Shield" ability, which helps you with both Faelan and Agathot's psychic attacks
You really are a great storyteller. Wish I knew more people that speaks english so I could recommend you to them, if nothing for how entertaining the way you narrate is. Full disclosure, I watch all of your videos at 1.5 speed. It's become alien for me to hear your voice at normal speed.
FINALLY someone giving love to this miserable artistic piece
I’ve heard so much about this game, especially from this channel, so I’m really excited to see this video and see what all the hype’s about.
I’m thinkin’ I’ll pick it up if I like what I see :D
whenever i hear that note in the travel world map i think the kenshi ost is about to start, then it doesn't and i take psy damage
There is nothing that can make my day like a new Warlockracy video.
As a Stargate SG-1 fan I loved that ending, very awesome. THanks for showing this because would never have been able to finish that game, I loved watching other people play Monkey Island games and help out with tips from time to time, but problemsolving these type of games makes my brain hurt, sorta playing the old Goblins click adventure games, love them but prefer watching other people play them, save with this. So thanks. Also finally at the end I understand why you said Miltiades was the real main character, what a delight that character was, his interaction with the alien god king was epic.
I love your videos my guy my dude! I've said this before but something about your voice, and I mean this as a compliment, lulls me to sleep. It's very relaxing. But then I start busting a gut because in that same tone you say "My vision is augmented" and it's fucking hilarious.
Love how you tell stories of your adventures.
You just keep walking down that lonely road, warlock, the long road of sublime arpegger.
Long awaited video, I played this game a couple years ago, I tried a Charisma build and it worked fine until I had to cross a lava river and get past some giant scorpions and I almost got softlocked, felt pretty dumb after making bunch of bombs and using them as a total crutch lol
Nah that's awesome,mate. You found a way past an unwinnable fight with ingenuity.
I love how you can beat this game without fighting anyone even once. Killing people via talk-fu or just talking them down is a lot more fun for me than an overcomplicated combat system. Praetor and loremaster FTW.
Thank you Warlockracy!
I'm enjoying my last two days at the family cottage and sat down on the porch with a drink and a smoke, but alas the CZcams feed was sorely lacking in interesting content.
So this video dropped with impeccable timing!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to ya!
I remember my first time playing the game, all it wanted to talk about was how hard the combat was. “Combat in AoD is very hard! Try to talk your way out of situations!” “AoD is not a fighting game!”
Naturally, my first character was a mercenary who joined the guard. What followed next was a dumb idiot bumbling his way through combat interactions and conversations and only managed to survive through blind luck. What an amazing game.
Thank you Warlockracy for playing through all these games. Your playthroughs and storytelling are immensely satisfying to listen to, and it saves me the months and years it would take my scrub butt to play through these games.
Found your channel this year, looking forward to many more years. Cheers m8.
I adore how much work you put into your scripts, comparisons and analyses.
I remember bouncing off this hard, because it seemed to require hardcore minmaxing in every aspect and pure specialization in a perfect build. Otherwise you were fucked.
Nowadays I'm hesitant to go back, I guess because of how popular the game is on certain "forums" as you call them.
Looking back, it's also impressive how the character art looks a bit like AI generated art looks now, slightly uncanny.
Yeah, it's a damn shame _metagaming_ is just a core gameplay element no matter what. Same issue with Underrail. 10/10 settings with _eh meh_ game mechanics execution.
I've seen ads for this game and the art style immediately made me write it off as a facebook/Mobile game. Something about the art is just bad enough to look second rate
Projects made by unsupervised narcissist autheurs tend to be unplayable for normal people. Besides making a classice roguelike center around a story is a weird and contradictory design doc.
Forums?
@@RuSosan UnderRail on Normal-Classic can be finished on poorly designed builds (my first char was 8 PER melee-thrower; I also picked Ninja Looter and proceeded to never pickpocket anyone, lol). My main complaint regarding meta-gaming would be towards trap placement. Some places at least have a level of logic when it comes to traps, but Junkyard is a dumbfest where enemies placed mines in tight corridors where they themselves reside. Another feat of ingenuity is some NPC who has a mine placed right next to a footlocker with an important quest item. It's really difficult to know that the spot is trapped to begin with without dying and reloading
I played this because of how much weight you put on it... totally worth playing once... and then twice. It's fantastic and the power armor is so boss, everyone that likes crpgs should give it a shot!
Also, you should murder Miltiades at your earliest convenience imo
militiades makes you rich so no dont kill him let him keep getting you into situations to make some bodies and dolla bills
Militiades the "how many times we need to teach you a lesson, old man"
Miltiades is the most honest person I know
Thanks for the content/videos, it's super appreciated. Always look forward to the undiscovered treasures you manage to unearth.
Warlockracy: makes green cross move on the map
Me, automatically: You have been waylaid by enemies and must defend yourself.
AoD is a very strange game, as in it somehow feels very strange. And I'm not even talking about the CYOA bits.
It is as you say - Vince and Irontower thought that if they throw numbers and choices in there, the game will assemble itself into a great RPG.
Not exactly. The best way I could describe it is that I really liked AoD, but didn't enjoy playing it much. Which sounds somewhat contradictory, but that's how it is. The jank of the Torque adds to this as well.
Throughout the whole game you constantly feel the pressure of the numbers. You can roll with whatever, but it is very easy to miss content like that or make the game harder. It's like a test of will how soon you will just go full metagaming mode, researching how much points where exactly do you need and when.
Still, this is a must play for any RPG connoisseur, at least once. I did that in.. 2017 I think, used the community patch to improve the game, and in the end succumbed to metagaming and made an optimal build and leveling sequence that allowed me to successfully complete as much content as possible. Not saying that I'm exactly happy to do this, it's much better to explore everything using in-game methods only. But this game really likes its numbers. It's like Bloodlines, but multiplied by 1000.
The most fun playthrough I had of this game was when I cheated in the opening to max my stats and basically did whatever I wanted.
> nuclear-tipped ballista missile
Jesus fucking Christ, if that's Vince's idea of ultimate weapon, then this game is even more bonkers than I thought.
Honestly, this might be the best RPG i have ever seen. Prologue/tutorials based on the class you picked, using both crafted and bought weapons are viable, you are encouraged to use every resource at your disposal, and you can basically do whatever you want and the ending will be different accordingly. The issue i often find with RPGs is that at certain point, you simply have too much of something to the point you'll have plenty to use even after the game is over. In my case, i focus a lot on earning money, and i earn so much of it through quests and selling that i often empty entire shops and still have too much money! But here, it seems that as much as you spend money on materials and equipment, you have to spend as much money on healing or maintenance. And finally, the concept of a post-apocalyptic society behaving exactly as the pre-apocalyptic one, only with less technology is fascinating, and it would be interesting to see the Roman Empire with nukes, like a weird game of Civilization.
This was a great video to end a year on, i look forward to see what you planned for the next!
Post apocalypse and Post-post apocalypse are heavily underutilised and even misunderstood IMO. There is so much potential for both of these ideas, as games like AOD and FNV show, but we so often fall into the same familiar trappings.
@@havok2579 yeah, it's really misunderstood not only how society can recover after an apocalyptic event, but just how resilient people are. I think there is one post apocalyptic game based off the Toba Catastrophe Theory... a game based on Bronze Age Collapse, or even post WW2 ruined Europe would be great settings. Think Fear and Hunger 2, only without the Lovecraftian thing
That is why I prefer money to be controlled like XP. I enjoy how Shadowrun Hong Kong handles money.
@@murisbukvic2496it's not an RPG, but Metro 2033 and its sequel Last Light feature a post-apocalyptic society that works just like the previous one. People in Moscow fled to the metro after a nuclear war and formed city-states in each station, pretty interesting
@@JoJo-gt7ty I'm sure Exodus did portray the post apocaliptic society the best of the bunch. like the people outside Moscow weren't just in a stasis, and how each region dealt with it's problems. yes, it wasn't perfect either, but it was something.
I'm one of the players you mentioned early in the video: played through the first part, appreciated it, but ultimately found it too archaic. As always, your videos have turned me around on my philistine tendencies toward boomer RPGs and their inheritors.
Great video as always. I especially like how you interjected quotes from your character's mentor, Feng, with points salient to the narrative you present us. It adds symmetry to your character's story - nicely done. Can't wait for your book!
I belong in the same category but probably for different reasons. While I COULD have dealt with the jank, I quickly realized this required very highly fine tuned and optimized builds that I am absolutely unable to do (evn on repeat playthroughs), as well as any money making strats in the book when all I can really manage is "scrubby starter quests".
yeah after achieving 3 easier endings, it makes more sense to just read the lore (probably incomplete) in the guides, rather than playing 5 other precision crafted characters just to experience certain parts of the story. still AoD writing is better than colony ship (subjective opinion)
Something that should be said about vincegames, Vince is active on steam etc, if you complain about a bit being impossible/broke, he will ask for the save, he will play it.
Though for most that usually results in the response of a) you have trash build b) trash rolls, try again C) you just play the game badly D) theres an actual bug and Vince will fix it asap; typically delivering a fixed save.
That still doesn't take away from the thw ball kicking difficulties of vincegames though.
A slim window of optimal play being required for progression is not difficulty, in a game with no twitch skill requirement. It is merely a narrow possibility space. Also known as shit design.
Love your work, Walockracy. After the colony ship video, been hoping for this.
I really love your vids and can listen to and watch them multiple times. Have a nice new year.
another banger video. I think you always put a lot of intelligent analysis in every game you talk about. You're a really smart man and I appreciate all the things you put out for us. Thank you!
Genuinely one of my favorite RPGs of all time, there are some brilliant things here that even Colony Ship didn't fully replicate. They are both fantastic games, though, so it's hard to complain. Been looking forward to this one for a while, love to hear your thoughts on this modern classic
Imagine what they could have achieved with large sum of money behind their game. This dev team really understand RPG genre
Now if only they understood that metagaming isn't supposed to be an enforced part of core gameplay.
Double edged sword, with more money comes the Pozzing and marketing expectations, its why Baldurs Gate 3 is a wokefest of romancing options
@@j.2512
Wokefe- _having romance options in a party-based RPG is "woke" to you?_
Pffthahaha! 🤣
I was just looking for a warlockracy video yesterday, love your vids bro
I finished dungeon rats with the escaped prison ending on tough bastard, this was after getting invested in a AoD play through :D. All thx to this video!
Dude, I literally say „Fuck yes“ out loud when you upload lol
Love your work!
Happy new year warlock, thank you for what you do.
Finished this video just in time for New Years. Thanks for a fantastic year, weird dear skull man.
Games using every item and trick to succeed are called adventure games, they feature lot's of puzzles which require you to use all obtainable items in the game. ;p
A belated Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year, Based Boomer RPG man
A new video before new year? And on AoD? Truly blessed.
Didn't know what to watch for the evening but it seems all my questions had been surprisingly answered!🎉
Brother, recently found your content every video seems to get better and better. So glad you covered this game because you talk about it so much in other videos.
Followed development since 2008ish and bought day one. Glad to see this gem get more exposure.
I’ve heard so much about this game, it’s good to see Warlock making his way through it. You should do disco elysium! Love ya work!
I like this game as someone who plays enjoys playing the ass kissing charisma character. You can essentially wormtongue your way through the story and it feels more rewarding than most games with charisma rolls. It feels like an actual mechanic with relationship consequences rather than the [skip content] button charisma usually acts as. Politicking in the desert city was probably my peak of enjoyment in this game because you feel like a side character trying to work your way into the main roster of a Dune book. Being a leech is such an accurate take. This is a ramble rant but you just reignited my love for a game I havent played since lockdown. Im definitely going to do another run as a fighter boi. Thanks warlock))
"Wormtongue", huh? Back in my days we called it cunnilingus
It's always a pleasant suprise seing a video from you.
Babe wake up new Warlockracy video just dropped
Finally: a Stargate RPG set in post-apocalyptic Rome
this was so entertaining.. i haven't laughed so much in weeks :D thanks! i loved it!
This is it. This is the game, and this is the reviewer to do it. Peak Warlockracy.
Bought this game not too long ago, have yet to play it so I’m happy that you made this video so I can prepare myself
A nice, the perfect finisher for this evening. I hope next year we get daily videos. You need to make more videos, because this is a sad world and your videos make it a little better.
Maybe it's all of the Starfield nonsense that has me primed for some quality dunks at Todd's expense, but every time you flashed his face in this video made me burst out laughing.
This is the first video I've ever seen from you, and I gotta say, it's prime stuff. Can't wait to watch more.
I was just thinking about when you'd upload. Hell yeah.
Yeeeeeeeeees, it's finally here! AoD really should come with a warning label. "You need to be this much of a boomer to get this", something like that.
This is probably the best ever puzzle game made doing stuff a certain way. Having so many alternate routes on top of it makes it even better
Another Warlockracy video, my day is complete.
I have to play The Age of Decadence soon;thanks for the video,i haven't found enough info about the game functions anywhere online.
Because it doesnt
Happy New Year! Great video!
happy new year Warlockracy _!!_
Oh man one more 2023 warlockracy video? What a treat
Новогодний подарок! Thanks so much for another thoroughly enjoyable and thoughtful essay, hope the new year is good to you and yours!