Yeah, it should be like one third conversation, one third rewarding exploration and one third fighting, imo.

It´s beddy bye time and I go for ... Age of Decadence! Thanks for all your advice. PoE has to wait until next sale.

Yeah, its designed with multiple playthroughs in mind. There's generally a main quest thread which every character gets, various side quests that can be solved in any number of ways, and lastly character-specific content. The latter makes up the bulk of quests for the whole game. As an assassin, I'm taking jobs others character don't have access to, delving into the history of my guild and deciding its future. Some of these questlines even seem to criss-cross, so with each successive playthrough you end up getting a bigger picture.

Age of Decadence can feel like Skillchecks: The Game. Most of the time you'll wanna horde stat points until the requirements of the next skillcheck are revealed, load a save, and them pump points into the appropriate stats. Fighting can also be brutal, as this video demonstrates:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JSV1ei6OjY

Really enjoying the game though. The writing is stellar, and I love the setting. It's a fall of the Roman Empire kinda deal. The mighty civilisation has fallen and a lot of people are convinced they're living the end times.

I know it is not "on sale"

BUT

UnderRail might actually be more interesting to you for what you're going for
oops, just saw this!!!

it is a different beast than anything else - make sure you ROLEPLAY, really get into how your character would be and try to execute the game from how your character would be

That's true. In my post it might have come across as if the writing is bad in general, which it isn't. It's just a bit uneven (e.g. I think they had different writers work on different characters, and it shows), and at times it's a bit too much (mostly regarding the chats with your companions). And the setting is not as different from the average fantasy RPG as I had hoped it would be. Same tropes, same races, same monsters, only under different names and slightly modified. Felt more like fanservice than anything really new and interesting.


I can't give you exact figures, but just because there is a lot of reading in Pillars of Eternity doesn't mean there isn't a lot of exploration and combat, too. It might actually fit your requirement.

PoE has real time with pause combat (even if they somehow included attacks of opportunity), and so did Baldur's Gate.

@OP, I haven't played Age of Decadence yet, but as a IE fan, I found Pillars to be very underwhelming. Other than the area graphics, the game had very little else going for me.

Pillars of Eternity is an "Epic Quest" type RPG, with questing and adventuring. The usual stuff.
It's one of those games where you kind of know what it's all about if you've already played a bunch of Fantasy RPGs.
It feels very much traditional and orthodox. It does what it does really well.
I thought it was a fun game, but I did not find it unique.

Age of Decadence is very much unique though. It has an extremely intricate system of choices/actions. The game very much centers around the choices you do, the actions you take. In games like Pillars of Eternity I've never been that obsessive about choices, I'm more like 'sure, this will do', but in Age of Decadence it became much more important to pay attention to what you are doing, and contemplate what the consequences might be.

What's unique about Age of Decadence is that you can focus on combat if you will, or you can focus on back-stabbing, conniving, and scheming. It has more room in how you can play the game. It feels abit like a Guild game mixed with a cRPG.

In terms of game-design I think Age of Decadence is more interesting to experience. It was more unique to me.

Got ya...still appreciate the post X-com

Me too. Specially when I am going to play it in few hours.

Good choice. Though i would've went with Pillars because it's longer but AoD is a very good (albeit at points very hard RPG). I think the peaceful way is the easiest in AoD, combat can be pretty tough.

This thread piqued my interest and I downloaded the Age of Decadence demo. I guess I will see a lot of the character building screen as I try out what builds will work for me.

it's less about what builds work and more about how you want to play the game

read the things and decide "hmmm, I think I'll play it like this" and then choose the skills that go with how you want to play

Yep, I have played rpg's before but thanks for reminder :-)

Ok, I pulled the trigger now and bought it...you happy? ;-) I'm not sure when I'll start playing yet, have a couple of games I am working through atm, and am hoping to finish, before starting another. If you get the chance, plz leave us a quick comment (or longer if you like) about your first impressions of the game....would love to hear it :-)

I think your response to Themken is what finally pushed me off the fence and "forced" me to open my wallet (and the 75% off). While this sounds potentially frustrating, I do enjoy a challenge, and reminds me of the RPG elements of the King Arthur game, where your choices in dialog can sometimes lead to beneficial outcomes, or possible disaster. While I have been seriously trying to work through my backlog, I think this one will now be on the top of the "Next to Play" list.

Also a quick thanks to the OP. Without your inquiry, I probably wouldn't have purchased anything this sale, due to attempting to reduce my backlog before adding more to it. So much for the plans of mice and men, ehh?