The Age of Decadence: Great RPG, or Greatest RPG ever made?

[Irwin John Finster]

I haven't tried spears in Age of Decadence but every weapon is supposed to be viable if the character is built appropriately.

Spears are pretty good in UnReal World but that's a pretty niche game lol.

 

[0wing]

Spears are pretty good in UnReal World but that's a pretty niche game lol.

It's not perfect though, the niche/or not is insignificant question.
I'll rather wait for Colony Ship RPG/The Sunless World, looks more interesting so far.

 

[PlanHex]

A spear build can be quite hilarious.
Put all your combat skills into spear only with no defence, then use a little poison and watch as no one can stand against your might. (unless they have bowmen, then you die)

 

[0wing]

Put all your combat skills into spear only with no defence, then use a little poison and watch as no one can stand against your might. (unless they have bowmen, then you die)

In addition you can throw greek fire and push any coming enemy out into the fire. Or at least I remember it's possible...

 

[mrchaos]

I´ve tried doing a combat focused playthrough, but the combat is so frustating for me that I just gave up trying.
Maybe it´s because my first character was a loremaster focusing on social skills making it has useful has blind armless person in a fight, so I learned very early to avoid all combat.

Playing has a thief was also fun. Sneaking into the palace was an interresting experience.

 

[Black Angel]

I´ve tried doing a combat focused playthrough, but the combat is so frustating for me that I just gave up trying.

Iirc there's a video on YouTube focusing solely on combat build. It's an Ironman playthrough, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[mrchaos]

I´ve follow guides for combat builds but it´s still frustrating. Doesn´t help that the game puts the pc in numerical disadvantage everytime.

 

[Dead Guy]

I played a hammer and shield Imperial Guard with heavy armor, lighter until I could hit while wearing heavier and eventually one of the heaviest ones crafted from whatever the best material is called.

The two primary rules of engagement, apart from positioning, target prioritizing and using items are:
If the target is using a shield, hit him in the head and arms.
If the target isn't using a shield, hit him in the legs until his dodge is low enough that you can hit him somewhere else.

Even if shield guys manage to block your attack, all it does is that they get to use shield absorption and armor absorption, so you'll hit them in the head most of the time, except when the get one of those glances off blocks, and their helmet usually has fairly low armor and the shields rarely have super high armor, so most of the time you'll do damage to the head.

Dodge guys are defenceless if you get a few hits in on their legs, especially if you get them crippled. You can use a net to get those first hits in that allow you to keep landing more leg and arm hits.

Use positioning to even the odds numerically when possible. Like the gang in Teron, you can fight them one at a time at a choke point while the others try to run all around the building. Some other fights are trickier. When you have friendly guys on your side, try to cripple whoever they're fighting so they can be more effective, gang up on someone.

 

[Black Angel]

I´ve follow guides for combat builds but it´s still frustrating. Doesn´t help that the game puts the pc in numerical disadvantage everytime.

Here it is

I'm sadly haven't played Age of Decadence since I don't have money to throw at it, and I planned to buy it at full price too. But from what I saw in that video, at least the guy kind of breeze through the earlier combat like they are piece of cake (haven't watch it pass 3 minutes mark).

 

[Lucas9]

This would be the perfect game if not for the horrid performance and the extremely long loading times, which coupled with the easy deaths make this unplayable for me.

 

[mrchaos]

Here it is

I'm sadly haven't played Age of Decadence since I don't have money to throw at it, and I planned to buy it at full price too. But from what I saw in that video, at least the guy kind of breeze through the earlier combat like they are piece of cake (haven't watch it pass 3 minutes mark).

That helped. I made a mercenary and went has a full combat-oriented character. Most fight were actually easy and my character won the arena. Still needed a bit of luck in some fights. The final boss is still a problem. He(It?) just bitch slaps me to death.

 

[Crni Vuk]

That's what bosses do :p.

this is so true, you could even do rolling and even carrying a great sword with that.

and so the myth "knight require crane" to lift him to his horse.


but still, it just bother me that spear or polearm never made itself into best weapon in any games. >.<

Yeah, realistically speaking, the best weapon against armored oponents like knights with swords, would be weapons with spikes, like the warhammer or mace. Those are relatively easy to use - compared to a sword - and the force of the blow is usually enough to puncture the armor. A spear and polearm of course has also the advantage of reach and that it was easy to manufacture, so you could equip a lot of troops with a cheap and yet effective weapon. Hammers and maces, and to some extend axes, had also the advantage of breaking bones and damaging tissue, due to the blunt trauma, even if you don't manage to penetrate the armor. Infact, blunt traum was so effective in taking out armored oponents, using of the hilt and guard of a sword have been very common in combat and training, known as half-swording.



There really is a lot of missconceptions about armor and weapons, not just in RPGs, but movies as well, where you see swordsman cuting of limbs, penetrating armor left and right, like it's not even there. What I hate the most in RPGs though, is how they try to balance armor, by making you incredibly slow and tanky. But, the real disadvantage of armor, is awareness. Or least the helmet. Hearing is very muffled and your vision extremly limited, it's always a question of protection versus awareness. It would take also a lot of practise to make effective use of armor in combat.

Or this idea that the bigger the sword is, the slower it must be. A two hand sword, is huge. It must be slow as fuck! Right? Wrong. The weight difference between a two-hand sword and a simple one-hand sword, isn't very large. In combat both weapons had more or less the same speed, particularly as many swords could be effectively used with both hands. I think Dark-Souls has a very nice system here, where you can use weapons either with one or two hands, depending on what ever if you have a shield or not.

 

[eissa]

Or this idea that the bigger the sword is, the slower it must be. A two hand sword, is huge. It must be slow as fuck! Right? Wrong. The weight difference between a two-hand sword and a simple one-hand sword, isn't very large. In combat both weapons had more or less the same speed, particularly as many swords could be effectively used with both hands. I think Dark-Souls has a very nice system here, where you can use weapons either with one or two hands, depending on what ever if you have a shield or not.

its doable, check this HEMA instructor. And yes it lacks killing blow and tire your arm easily.

 

[valcik]

(unless they have bowmen, then you die)

With heavy armor, one handed spear, and huge tower shield you can survive a lot of hits by arrows! The bowmen would hit you, since you can't block many hits with zero blocking skill, high damage threshold granted by heavy armor and shield would protect you from any serious damage though. (crafting helps a lot, custom armor made out of advanced materials FTW!)

 

[Dead Guy]

The "last boss" squashed me like a bug with a 200+ kills murder machine of a character that breezed through everything except the very last extra arena encounter more or less. IIRC PlanHex said killing him involved saving a bunch of ebolas just for that specific encounter.

 

[PlanHex]

Nah, it only takes one bola. And that was my crossbow build. Mostly the bola just changed the chance to hit from ~30% for a normal shot to 100% for arterial strikes, suddenly making it very easy to kill him because I had near 100% crit rating too.
For more fun ways to kill him, eyestabber from the codex (the guy who made the iron man video) got you covered:

 

[valcik]

Eagle eye neurostims would do the trick too, raising the chance to hit significantly. Another good thing is that he can be weakened:

Spoiler

There's old medical container left in the mountain facility accessible through the well in Maadoran slums. You can take it with decent lore skill (6?) and use it for poisoning the boss before he awakens.