During a turn, it's possible to choose from a number of actions such as various attack types, movement, and item usage, all of which are governed by action points. The player has only control over one character, while allies and enemies are controlled by the game's AI. Murderous Rampages The Age of Decadence utilizes a heavily stat and gear-based turn-based combat system. In the end, whether it was intentional or not, the game punishes players that can't divine its rules right away. Even with that additional option, though, there are only so many crafting materials available through the game and no real way to make up for choices that are bad only in hindsight. The developers were clearly aware of this problem, as evidenced by the option to dismantle existing armors and weapons into their basic components. But there is a limited amount of materials in the game and not a lot of room for experimentation.
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It's also possible to apply different techniques to weapons and armors, further enhancing their properties. A crafter can craft various weapons based on schematics, and do so by choosing one of several different possible materials that will determine the final quality. They're very robust and in-depth by themselves. This is also evident in the crafting and alchemy systems. To be fair, a lot of those flaws aren't really inherent to the systems design in a vacuum, but are due to how it interfaces with the game's content. A bad build is punished very heavily by the game, though, and that experimentation will be punished with several deaths and unfinishable playthroughs. Extreme combat-focused or civic-focused builds tend to work really well and are straightforward enough to build, but more hybrid builds need some experimentation to be figured out.
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And, as mentioned earlier, figuring out how to allocate the initial points is also important. There are no random encounters or other systems that hand out experience in The Age of Decadence, for example, and there are very few optional side quests. It can be argued that a similar playstyle is encouraged by any game that uses skill checks, and to a degree that's true, but the vast majority of those games don't punish failure as harshly as The Age of Decadence and feature far more bountiful resources for character development.