"Back where I came from, fighting rats in cellars is a time-honoured tradition. It's how boys become men."

The Age of Decadence can be loosely described as a blend of Game of Thrones and Indiana Jones in spirit, structured as an unhinged choose-your-adventure book. It's not boundless, working within a stiff frame, so don't expect to be able to jump everywhere or kill anyone you want. The kind of freedom The Age of Decadence provides isn't explicit. I hope this review will shed some light on this game's beauty. On its clear intentionality, freeform progression, puzzle-like elegance, and the power to keep your restless ass irrevocably immersed.

The 2D art is amazing and sets the tone, but the rest is outdated by a quarter of a century. The game looks sullen, gratingly bleak, yet by no means distasteful. It presents you with a cohesive image that reflects the dreary state of its world, inhabited by disillusioned people. On the bright side, populated locations like markets and slums seem lively. Where the eyes fail, the sound design plays a big part in evoking the atmosphere of Arabian Nights through the pleasant Middle Eastern folk music and rich ambience. Everything's dripping, chanting, ringing, and whispering, creating authentic soundscapes of lived-in or desperately desolate places. It's a memorable aspect, albeit, it's only set dressing.

The low-fantasy setting takes the cake. The stated decadence reigns supreme over the rotten carcass of this post-apocalyptic world. I see a grain of Dark Sun in its sands. With no food or water, cities get founded on desperation and go out with a whimper. People's will to survive in these circumstances is the biggest miracle there is. Not a rat or a roach have the same capacity for prolonged suffering. The setting is extremely Roman in its aesthetics, carrying a restoration of Reich throughline while critically scrutinising it in the process. Clinging to the past glory, the inhabitants speak of magi and gods, science came down to performing rituals and reciting mantras. Like an inverted version of the Old Testament, the story starts with a cargo cult, then sprawls into a web of cosmically political intrigue.

You'll rise from dysfunctional ignorance to active participation in events beyond human comprehension, find signs of technologically developed civilizations existing in the past, see who's who and eventually learn their secrets. I usually don't go out of my way to piece together any lore, but AoD's history told through adventuring and hearing personal stories had me hooked. It's an interesting game, a rare one where I dare not to skip a word, and where my purely conversational playthrough was just as exciting as my psychopathic one. Here, philosophical debates on the nature of power and the snares of hope are tackled with grace and insightfulness, putting the dev's literary erudition on display.

The writing is genuinely wise. It's crass and direct, keeping the tone consistent throughout. Some would call AoD's sassy dark humour cynical, I'd say it's sobering and immersive. Through words alone, it excels at making you feel like a total badass or the most pathetic wimp in existence. One important detail I must mention is that there's no such thing as unimportant detail. Even minor events are written as vividly as your big plot revelation. To put so much effort into a description of a pickpocket scam that most of the players wouldn't even see! Such acts of good faith managed to gradually build up my respect towards this game. In my eyes, there, on top of the mountain of selfless dedication, resides true talent.

You have many ways to solve or cause problems via the skillcheck-based progression system. Instead of levelling up, after accomplishing diplomatic feats, committing crimes, or completing quests, you get respective social, combat, and general skill point types right on the spot. Skills are your means of expression in this world. Points can be invested in mastering stuff like the art of impersonation, streetwise, weapons, crafting, petty thievery, and more. When all else fails, you have access to vast tactical options. The game offers quite an arsenal, but alchemy fire, bombs, nets, bolas, and poison were my rather expensive weapons of choice.

AoD loves to extort you on every corner, cutting you down to size at every opportunity, and it's rewarding to learn how to confront it in style. The secret often lies in forming conga lines of death by taking advantage of bottlenecks like a stubborn cork they just can't scrape out. Despite location-based damage adding strategic depth, combat is based on exploits and wouldn't hold on its own, but its turn-based modesty complements other enigmatic mechanics. The combination of dire clashes, ample dialogue checks, and the munchkin gear hassle folds together neatly, allowing you to tear what's yours from the hands of one cranky world that doesn't let go of its possessions easily.

But one has to meet its rigid rules to reap its dormant freedoms. It was designed in such a way intentionally, in turn, providing you with an intense risk-reward system that forces you to take your limited set of skills and resources into careful consideration at all times. By design, the same tactic goes for every prominent mechanic, heavily relying on savescumming since good plans are usually born when you're already drawing your last breath in a puddle of blood and piss. This game is like an adventure book, so keep separate bookmarks at the ready, conserve unspent skill points, and don't spread your stats thin. Accept your losses, pick your fights, roll back when you get stuck. You can't have it all.

Can't fully explore the game with one class either. Classes are distinctive tools at your disposal, having different starts and bonuses to initial reputation with the world's factions, opening and locking away possibilities for getting certain questlines. While you encounter recurring characters and visit the same hubs on repeated playthroughs, AoD's many variables always leave you guessing. It accommodates your playstyles, notes your merits and mistakes like you're being watched by some cruel gods. And it's so satisfying to see palatable consequences of your actions! I've never played an RPG to let me use my body count as leverage. Or take the word of honour. It's lucrative to break your word, but it also means some other stranger wouldn't confide in you.

And these strangers matter. You don't have to be strong or intelligent if you have the right associates. Fictional as it is, people are useful and it's often beneficial to be on their good side. A thief girl I'd shown mercy helped me develop my social skills, sweet-talking a group of zealots led to them dying for my egotistic ass. Once, I made a thug cut off his finger for messing with me. Such power trips only worked because I had to suck a lot of c#cks to earn my indisputable authority in a reactive world that generously allowed me to take part in sophisticated conspiracies and tomb-raid for valuable relics while systematically fooling, robbing, and eviscerating me in the process.

It's hard to win fights, hard to parley, hard to get rich. But it's a blast to earn your right to walk around like you own the place. You can become a ruler or rise above the board altogether. Watch cities bloom and whither in front of your eyes, decimate your first crowd of hostiles, cut off the head of your first legendary folk hero. After killing more than 100 people, I opted for a pacifist run. By the end of it, amazed, I've been standing on such unfathomable crossroads no meagre man of the sword would dare to imagine. See, this game isn't a hidden gem, it's a sleeping god. Perhaps it won't ever awaken from its slumber, but you can take a sneak peek at its dream.

My curator Big Bad Mutuh

[quote]"Back where I came from, fighting rats in cellars is a time-honoured tradition. It's how boys become men."[/quote] The Age of Decadence can be loosely described as a blend of Game of Thrones and Indiana Jones in spirit, structured as an unhinged choose-your-adventure book. It's not boundless, working within a stiff frame, so don't expect to be able to jump everywhere or kill anyone you want. The kind of freedom The Age of Decadence provides isn't explicit. I hope this review will shed some light on this game's beauty. On its clear intentionality, freeform progression, puzzle-like elegance, and the power to keep your restless ass irrevocably immersed. [h3]Setting[/h3] The 2D art is amazing and sets the tone, but the rest is outdated by a quarter of a century. The game looks sullen, gratingly bleak, yet by no means distasteful. It presents you with a cohesive image that reflects the dreary state of its world, inhabited by disillusioned people. On the bright side, populated locations like markets and slums seem lively. Where the eyes fail, the sound design plays a big part in evoking the atmosphere of Arabian Nights through the pleasant Middle Eastern folk music and rich ambience. Everything's dripping, chanting, ringing, and whispering, creating authentic soundscapes of lived-in or desperately desolate places. It's a memorable aspect, albeit, it's only set dressing. The low-fantasy setting takes the cake. The stated decadence reigns supreme over the rotten carcass of this post-apocalyptic world. I see a grain of Dark Sun in its sands. With no food or water, cities get founded on desperation and go out with a whimper. People's will to survive in these circumstances is the biggest miracle there is. Not a rat or a roach have the same capacity for prolonged suffering. The setting is extremely Roman in its aesthetics, carrying a restoration of Reich throughline while critically scrutinising it in the process. Clinging to the past glory, the inhabitants speak of magi and gods, science came down to performing rituals and reciting mantras. Like an inverted version of the Old Testament, the story starts with a cargo cult, then sprawls into a web of cosmically political intrigue. You'll rise from dysfunctional ignorance to active participation in events beyond human comprehension, find signs of technologically developed civilizations existing in the past, see who's who and eventually learn their secrets. I usually don't go out of my way to piece together any lore, but AoD's history told through adventuring and hearing personal stories had me hooked. It's an interesting game, a rare one where I dare not to skip a word, and where my purely conversational playthrough was just as exciting as my psychopathic one. Here, philosophical debates on the nature of power and the snares of hope are tackled with grace and insightfulness, putting the dev's literary erudition on display. The writing is genuinely wise. It's crass and direct, keeping the tone consistent throughout. Some would call AoD's sassy dark humour cynical, I'd say it's sobering and immersive. Through words alone, it excels at making you feel like a total badass or the most pathetic wimp in existence. One important detail I must mention is that there's no such thing as unimportant detail. Even minor events are written as vividly as your big plot revelation. To put so much effort into a description of a pickpocket scam that most of the players wouldn't even see! Such acts of good faith managed to gradually build up my respect towards this game. In my eyes, there, on top of the mountain of selfless dedication, resides true talent. [h3]Progression[/h3] You have many ways to solve or cause problems via the skillcheck-based progression system. Instead of levelling up, after accomplishing diplomatic feats, committing crimes, or completing quests, you get respective social, combat, and general skill point types right on the spot. Skills are your means of expression in this world. Points can be invested in mastering stuff like the art of impersonation, streetwise, weapons, crafting, petty thievery, and more. When all else fails, you have access to vast tactical options. The game offers quite an arsenal, but alchemy fire, bombs, nets, bolas, and poison were my rather expensive weapons of choice. AoD loves to extort you on every corner, cutting you down to size at every opportunity, and it's rewarding to learn how to confront it in style. The secret often lies in forming conga lines of death by taking advantage of bottlenecks like a stubborn cork they just can't scrape out. Despite location-based damage adding strategic depth, combat is based on exploits and wouldn't hold on its own, but its turn-based modesty complements other enigmatic mechanics. The combination of dire clashes, ample dialogue checks, and the munchkin gear hassle folds together neatly, allowing you to tear what's yours from the hands of one cranky world that doesn't let go of its possessions easily. But one has to meet its rigid rules to reap its dormant freedoms. It was designed in such a way intentionally, in turn, providing you with an intense risk-reward system that forces you to take your limited set of skills and resources into careful consideration at all times. By design, the same tactic goes for every prominent mechanic, heavily relying on savescumming since good plans are usually born when you're already drawing your last breath in a puddle of blood and piss. This game is like an adventure book, so keep separate bookmarks at the ready, conserve unspent skill points, and don't spread your stats thin. Accept your losses, pick your fights, roll back when you get stuck. You can't have it all. Can't fully explore the game with one class either. Classes are distinctive tools at your disposal, having different starts and bonuses to initial reputation with the world's factions, opening and locking away possibilities for getting certain questlines. While you encounter recurring characters and visit the same hubs on repeated playthroughs, AoD's many variables always leave you guessing. It accommodates your playstyles, notes your merits and mistakes like you're being watched by some cruel gods. And it's so satisfying to see palatable consequences of your actions! I've never played an RPG to let me use my body count as leverage. Or take the word of honour. It's lucrative to break your word, but it also means some other stranger wouldn't confide in you. [h3]Crossroads[/h3] And these strangers matter. You don't have to be strong or intelligent if you have the right associates. Fictional as it is, people are useful and it's often beneficial to be on their good side. A thief girl I'd shown mercy helped me develop my social skills, sweet-talking a group of zealots led to them dying for my egotistic ass. Once, I made a thug cut off his finger for messing with me. Such power trips only worked because I had to suck a lot of c#cks to earn my indisputable authority in a reactive world that generously allowed me to take part in sophisticated conspiracies and tomb-raid for valuable relics while systematically fooling, robbing, and eviscerating me in the process. It's hard to win fights, hard to parley, hard to get rich. But it's a blast to earn your right to walk around like you own the place. You can become a ruler or rise above the board altogether. Watch cities bloom and whither in front of your eyes, decimate your first crowd of hostiles, cut off the head of your first legendary folk hero. After killing more than 100 people, I opted for a pacifist run. By the end of it, amazed, I've been standing on such unfathomable crossroads no meagre man of the sword would dare to imagine. See, this game isn't a hidden gem, it's a sleeping god. Perhaps it won't ever awaken from its slumber, but you can take a sneak peek at its dream. My curator [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35305390-Big-Bad-Mutuh/?appid=262060]Big Bad Mutuh[/url]