Dead Age II

Review

It has been ten years since the Zombie apocalypse surfaced on earth. A small group of survivors managed to create an antidote which renewed their faith in humanity and gave them some breathing time until now. It was impossible to eradicate the Zombification, and they knew that. This time around, they have to make allies with factions in order to survive the new peril in Dead Age II!

Dead Age II is an adventure/turn-based strategy game with roguelike and choice matters elements developed by Silent Dreams and published by Headup Games on the 17 of July 2020 on Steam. The game is currently under development and was released as an Early Access.

I had the pleasure of playing the previous game, which was released in 2016, and I must say it was great (I didn’t manage to go too far, but it was good)! It is always a challenge for the developers to produce a sequel, especially when the original game was positively embraced by many players. There are some great features in this sequel, along with some improvements that the developers really need to look at rather quickly.

Dead Age II graphics are definitely superior to its predecessor, and in terms of the story, it's not bad at all as you have a bit of betrayal in the air, which is always a good thing to have in a story.

After customising your character's appearance and deciding in which level of difficulty you'd like to play (casual, normal or hardcore), the game will start with a tutorial that will last for around 45 minutes. The story will be introduced, and you'll learn how to use the combat interface. You can bypass the tutorial if you want, but it’s worth proceeding with it in my opinion.

Then you'll reach your base camp, which you have to defend on a daily basis, and where you can craft valuable items for your next day out in the land infested with zombies. Your base has seven rooms and two outside areas. Six of the seven rooms can be upgraded as long as you have gathered the right number of resources. And in these rooms you can craft items such as ammunition, medic packs (difference strengths), weapons and gears (pants, vests, hats etc). In the cantina, you can talk to people, add people to your party and accept quests. The two outdoor areas are in front of the camp and can be upgraded with further fortifications and guards during the day or night. The other area is at the back of the camp where you can go hunting or plant seeds and create a garden; both will produce food for the next day. In terms of water, you need to go out into the world to find it, as it’s a vital resource not only for surviving, but for producing food and upgrading the rooms.

After delegating tasks to your characters (such as making ammunition or other items), you’ll be ready to go out into the world by clicking on the icon map on the top right corner of your screen, and the day begins. Each day lasts for seven hours. As you are on the map screen, you'll see dots or icons scattered around the proximity of your base camp. You'll have to click on either a dot and/or an icon to move your party (maximum of three characters) to that location. It will take 30 minutes of your day each time you move to a new place, and you'll be able to discover or revisit 14 destinations per day. As you move to a location, new ones will appear on the map, on so on and so forth. As you arrive at a location for the first time, you'll have a few zombies to fight, and you may encounter a few on your way to a destination also. You might need to save a civilian or help a trader, for example. If there are Zombies in the vicinity, you’ll have to fight, but you might also be facing survivors of different factions. In that case, you might decide to bribe or threaten them, or simply engage in a fight. But your ability to intimidate them will depend on your character’s skills, as well as how well-armed they are.    

The turn-based combat is enjoyable as you can use melee and ranged weapons, smoke grenades, Molotov cocktails and even gun turrets (assuming you have enough ammunition and the right skills). I enjoy the different types of zombie you encounter during each fight. Some will be harder to eliminate, such as the police and army zombies, as they will most likely wear protective gear and take time to bash up. Some will be able to heal others, and there are also smart zombies that can throw grenades at you. The other interesting point is that they may frequently activate the survival mode which will allow them to block some of your attacks and therefore receive minimal damage during your character’s attack. I don't mind that at all, and I do think it's great that you have to regularly change your tactics in order to win a fight.  After winning each encounter, you'll receive a few items and experience points for your characters. Each time your characters level up, they'll gain ten skill points which can be used to further develop their combat and job skills.

There are three factions with which you can interact in Dead Age II, and you'll come across them as you move through the map. You'll increase your influence with the factions as your party completes quests on their behalf or helps some of their survivors in battles.

There are a lot of great aspects to this game, and I like what I see so far. But I encountered a significant issue with Dead Age II (it is an early access game, and it is expected that we’d run into some bugs and crashes, but this one is quite surprising). As I run a Pentium I9-9900k with 68GB of Ram and an MSI GeForce RTX 2080 TI (11GB  GDDR6) with all the latest drivers, I would not expect a game to slow down to the point that the animation stops and the game crashes every 30 to 45 minutes.  That’s what happened here, and it's a shame because I like what I see, but the game needs to be optimised rather quickly! My score has been heavily affected by this issue. I will revise my review and score when I can pass the 2-hour mark without this problem. Having said that, the developers are listening to the community and working hard to rectify all the issues that have been reported. I commend them for that.

Great Graphics and the soundtrack is good. There is plenty of content already, and I like the combat phases, the story, and the fact that there are plenty of quests.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com!