Dead Age 2 Review (Steam)
The successful indie survival RPG “Dead Age” is back with a vengeance! No other game offers this mix of role-playing, rogue-like, fast-paced turn-based combat, and survival all in one. Inspired by Darkest Dungeon, Fallout 1+2, This War of Mine, and The Walking Dead.
Pros:
- Cool graphics.
- 6. 61GB Download size.
- Steam achievements.
- Controller support.
- Graphics-fullscreen, borderless windowed, v-sync, and quality preset.
- Strategy gameplay.
- Combat-turn based on actions and movements dictated by A-action points.
- 3 save slots.
- 3 difficulties-casual, normal, and hardcore.
- Stats screen.
- Character creator-hair, hair color, and ethnicity. You get 3 medals to upgrade your stats. Talent selection is multiple-choice sections like starting guns, weapon proficiency, etc.
- Four factions that give perks, buffs, weapons.
- Opening tutorial fights with menu pop-ups.
- Really good comic book style cutscenes and story moments.
- The story is written in a way very reminiscent of the choose your own adventure books.
- World map level select.
- Damage and status effects pop up in battle.
- Earn EXP and level up to get medals to use in your stats upgrades, get proficient to trigger special events or rendezvous.
- Loot drops from enemies.
- Day/night cycle with the zombies getting stronger and bigger in numbers at night.
- Base camp- can freely go between the rooms and gather supplies, trade, craft, etc. It looks and plays a bit like a Fallout Shelter type of game.
- Scouts-hire them to look for particular supplies and they will fill in locations on the map for you to travel to.
- Choices matter and do affect the game.
- Food and drink mechanics-you need water for your characters as you play and food is needed for the camp.
- Areas on the map will specialize in resources like the Woods-food rivers-water type of thing.
- Areas will have a rating on how many zombies you may encounter.
- Saves upon exiting the game.
- Characters are permadeath.
- EXP earned from playing and leveling up will increase stats.
- Enemy stats pop up as you highlight them.
- Enter other bases and play as your main character as you explore, chat and take on side missions and use their merchants.
- Combat can involve a separate scenario whereby you have members do other tasks as you fight.
- Challenges-these can be done by natural gameplay, earn medals from them that are used to increase your proficiency traits.
- At the end of the day, you get taken back to the base of operations.
- Death-you gets bonus medallions to start a new character with better stats and if you do enough can get bonus faction allegiance.
Cons:
- No female character choices.
- Loading times are quite long.
- Menu navigation with the controller is the left stick that acts as a mouse.
- You have to click a certain part of the screen to advance the text.
- A lot of reading and text pop-ups.
- The controller doesn’t always work, it gets recognized but doesn’t do anything.
- No voice acting.
- Menus are awkward and fiddly to use with the controller.
- Slow-paced.
- Very busy screens and menus.