I'm definitely late to this party - I wish I had played this much sooner. After completing Colony Ship (from the same developer) and loving the story, lore, and choices in that game, I decided to play this game. I really liked a lot of aspects of this game as well and it was a pretty unique experience.

The biggest difference for me was the difficulty. For most of my first two playthroughs, I was constantly thinking "this is so difficult!" My third playthrough was significantly easier. And my final three playthroughs were pretty easy. I also did a few partial playthroughs to complete all the achievements. The game's difficulty level didn't change. I just had to get used to how the game does things. Now I think of it more as a real-life DM who constantly says "I'll allow it". You CAN try just about anything you want in The Age of Decadence. Even incredibly stupid things. And they can fail spectacularly. But the game rewards thinking things though and making intelligent decisions.

The next big difference is the factions, with seemingly even more possibilities than Colony Ship. One major faction that rules each of the three major cities. Other factions that have ties to all three cities. Different levels of leaders and people who want to be leaders in all the factions. There are a LOT of important NPCs and the fates of those people can play out in a LOT of different ways.

One of my favorite aspects of the game is how much the player controls what is actually important. Maybe the important thing is helping one or more of the major factions. Maybe the major factions are basically insignificant because the other factions are what the player focuses on. Or maybe they are all just tools to be used as the player explores the ancient history of the game world, because it still has meaningful tendrils into the current game world. All of those are perfectly valid ways to play the game, and they are all VERY different experiences. There IS a main plot destination. But the player has a massive amount of agency in controlling the paths to get there and how important everything is. All of my playthroughs had a lot of differences and felt genuinely different from each other.

A lot of care has gone into providing many possible solutions to quests and there is a lot of balance. Even after six full playthroughs, I thought all attributes and skills had value. I had preferences, but nothing was anywhere close to useless. There are always difficult decisions to make when creating the character and when increasing skill levels. Maybe you wouldn't want more than a couple weapon skills in a particular playthrough, but besides that, everything has value. Only one playthrough did I really feel like I could truly handle anything at the end. Every other one I had to try to play to the character's strengths and avoid the character's weaknesses. I was able to complete nonviolent playthroughs, but I wouldn't recommend it until you feel you understand the game fairly well. I think the game is significantly easier when the player uses at least SOME combat, especially in the arena or against former arena participants. And at the other end of the spectrum, pure combat playthroughs are pretty tough. There's an achievement for beating 200 opponents in combat. The very most I hit was about 220 in a single playthrough. And that was trying to do as much optional combat as possible, even when there was no reason besides the achievement to do so.

There are a lot of potentially cool moments in the game, based on the player's choices. Many times I thought "I really wasn't expecting that" and "I can't believe that worked". Everything from completely destroying cities to a fifteen-minute timespan in a single playthrough where I completely betrayed the leaders of the only two factions I had worked with & also killed the leader of a third faction. Sometimes I had to pause and think what I would do next just from a roleplaying perspective. Speaking of betrayals and killings, just about anyone can be betrayed or killed. In the game world, such things are expected. Embracing that brings a fun freedom to playing the game. You can work with whomever you want at the beginning and have a lot of flexibility to change.

There weren't a lot of negatives for me. The biggest one was that I was constantly fighting the camera. It would always zoom in on its own. Sometimes it would rotate on its own. Sometimes it would quickly move way away from everything, despite no key being pressed and the cursor being well away from the edge of the screen. I had a few crashes, but none ever repeated. The number of times the player's equipment was unequipped (not lost or stolen) seemed excessive and it was always annoying having to constantly re-equip everything. The graphics are definitely a weakness. It was sometimes tough to find entrances/exits and it was tough to tell characters apart based on their non-portrait appearance.

But overall I had a lot of fun playing. If you want a game with a massive amount of replay value, where choices definitely matter, where you have a lot of flexibility in building your character, give this a try. If it seems difficult, stick with it or try a different playthrough - it does get easier.

Edited to add:
I forgot to write this in the original review. Another of my favorite parts of the game was the "sliding doors" approach it takes to events. Say that a NPC gets killed early on. In one series of choices, the player will be the killer. In another series of choices, the player will be the guard trying to prevent the killing. In another series of choices, the player will be the investigator afterwards. In another series of choices, the player helped to set up the meeting where the killing happens. But every time there are NPCs filling the other roles. SOMEONE set up the meeting. SOMEONE was guarding. SOMEONE tried to do the killing. If the killing happens, SOMEONE investigates it. So as the player plays, they encounter other characters that they could have been playing, with different choices. It is done really well. It really breathes life into events by showing that the player isn't the only character that matters.

It's likely not a terrible game, but I would recommend playing the demo before purchasing. Unless you're into clunky,difficult game play, Age of Decadence is probably not the game you want. The first thing that stood out to me is how poorly geared you are, and how enemies are nothing but damage sponges. It caused me to uninstall the game before it ever really started. The game may be as "great" as other users claim, but I can tell you that unless you're a player who has the patience with dying multiple times during most encounters, this game is not for you.

Extremely outdated, not very intuitive design, the story is okay, but the age of the game really shows, besides the technical problems it really isn't that engaging or fun the longer you play it.