AoD is a good game and its qualities have nothing to do with its self-imposes grittiness so usual of slav devs. You can play it 50 times and every time it will feel different, that's its main strength and success, and only for that it deserves a place in the CRPG canon as no other RPG has achieved such roleplaying width. You might dislike things like certain streamlining aspects like teleportation, or the minmaxing approach, but it's still a good game for CPRG autists. Also it's not that hard as long as your build is specialized. Its spinoff Dungeon Rats, however...
10-09-2023, 08:58 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-09-2023, 09:01 AM by Unformed Golem.)
My experience with AoD was very similar to Anthony's, although I played a bit longer -- I was less bothered by the Grittyness than by the necessity to minmax + grind along with the need to compulsively save and reload before every single interaction in case I get REALISTICALLY shanked.
I've had good experiences with D&D in the past although it attracts deviants.
Since I'm posting again I'd also like to address another point: "why isn't this a VN?" From what I can tell, AoDecadence is a great example of failure here -- text heavy game with generic combat and "choices matter!" with lots of different endings (paragraphs of text). What is the point of grinding stats to read different endings? Western RPGs are heavily simulationist -- D&D for instance evolved from a wargame. "What would happen if a wizard fought a knight", "how can I equip my paladin and friends to defeat the lich", actually running the simulated reality is just as important or more so than a "narrative". This is another reason Gritdom is so bad -- it can basically turn into a schoolmarm lecturing you that wizards aren't real or that you didn't spend enough time digging latrine pits.