age of decadence has such missed potential. like i want to go back to it and get a satisfying playthrough, but the railroading is so bad that i can't even play the character i want to play without cheating at some point. i wouldn't mind the skill checks being what they are if i had more freedom to use my skills in different ways, but there's just not enough leeway for different skillsets to make getting through the game very fun.
i get what they're going for, but there's not enough of interest to compel me to play the game on their terms. the writing is only okay, the setting is so dry, and there's not really a great cast of likable characters present to invest me in the choices i'm asked to make. so many of the decisions seem so arbitrary, too? like it has a similar tone to shadowrun, except none of the parts of the world compel me enough to care about what happens, so when i hit a scenario i don't like, it's hard not to just quit to desktop and find something else to do with my time.
and at this point... i think i'm just going to look elsewhere. this game just didn't do it for me.