Age of darkness - Horrific Difficulty, No Pause

Playing the new Age of Darkness (early access) game on horrific difficulty.
Patreon: / kenseitv
Twitch: / kenseitv
Discord: / discord
Twitter: / kenseitv

[@razzyrazberries]

Yay, I'm glad you gave the game a try. I been wanting to see some actual good gameplay of it.

[@KenseiTV]

Hope you enjoy it!

[@danielworden]

Totally agree with your comment. I've just tried to watch 5 other people try to play this and had to stop each of them after a few minutes because they obviously had zero clue what they were doing, and that in turn made the game look/review far worse than I expected it to be. KenseiTV totally redeemed it for me (thankfully).

[@MDrepairsLLC]

@@danielworden all

[@astarael09]

This game looks great despite a few things needing to be worked on. The music is very dark and tense which compliments this grim setting.

[@Stick2xYourGuns]

I've been waiting for something like TaB. I had a good time with it and I'd like to see more games like it

[@QuentinStephens]

That looked like an interesting variant of They Are Billions. While it's clearly incomplete, I do like the line-of-sight building limitation: it does make a lot more sense than 'tesla towers'. Have you looked under the hood? Is it just a re-skin of TAB? If not, how does it work with CPU, RAM, GPU, and VRAM usage? Game-wise, I found the lack of AI disappointing: there were clearly undefended areas left unattacked but the nightmares just kept attacking the same old way. That said, I watched another video by Verowak and with her the AI did switch to the undefended path.

[@glennjanot8128]

Well, that depends on how intelligent the monsters are lore-wise. In TAB, zombies waved also attacked in a straight line, even if another area was undefended. Only if there were so many zombies that they "overspilled" into the other area did they move around the rock, for example.

[@christianzilla]

It's like a cloned reskin. Even the ui is the same layout.

[@bdute7890]

It's better than TAB honestly

[@danreyes6354]

I was hoping to see you play this game, nice!

[@davidevans7477]

I like your approach to this game. Subbed

[@randomidiot8142]

In the midst of the chaos and destruction, the monotone voice saying 'our defenses are under attack' is amusing and deserving of a 'ya think!?' response 🤣

[@ozean4392]

Great Game, i m still stuck at this difficulty. Cannot imagine how Nightmare mode. I wish the horde route can be a bit random or unpredictable. Predictable route make it easy to defense. Thank you for the Vid.

[@mathspodethemighty3484]

this game would be so hard without this lol

[@NB-TB]

The veterans you are looking at are horrified (purple) big movement/damage debuff, moving any horrified units near to the town keep removes the debuff

[@serrael-182]

"Theres a strong zombie there". I love how youre still in the they are billions mode. :D

[@Sandblaze1]

Funny enough i rebound the keep build menu to the middle mouse button and that helps alot with quick defense building while microing troops and putting up fire towers all over the map

[@deezed9491]

Hi Kensei. How do you think this game compare to They are Billions? Saw a lot of mixed review in other channels. I saw more They are Billions content in your channel than this one.

[@NB-TB]

When your troops are feared (purple) you can send them to the town hall to remove the debuff

[@ostkaka8397]

I think the issue you have with balistas not firing is that they are trying to move to the place you told them to move to, but pathing is jank. tell them to hold position, should solve it.

[@kiwidude68]

Thanks for the video - I have over 1,800 hours in TAB so was interested to see how this would compare but definitely a pass for me in it's current state, nice to see what it has to offer though. One suggestion for your videos - I find it exceptionally difficult to hear your voice with the high volumne of game sound. Which is a shame as I would love to hear more of your insights!

[@KenseiTV]

Thank you for the feedback. I'll look into it

[@mitchellgeorge9622]

Last night was amazing.

[@filippocorsini6024]

When will you give us more gameplay of this game?

[@imandra7]

i like that RTS games are a thing again!

[@xMaouSama]

is this game only a survival no campaign like warcrafT?

[@Crazy_Diamond_75]

What did you rebind the keep hotkey to? It looks like "1," but I'm not sure.

[@KenseiTV]

You are correct. It's a habit from playing Starcraft 2 were I bound my nexus to 1.

[@syntex9630]

can you play a round with meele only ?

[@pureplay7071]

Can that screenshake be turned off ?

[@BNuttSack]

My main issue with the game is the human unit path finding and just their movement especially during combat can be glitchy

[@TanAnhTran]

this guy is jesus, i cant even beat easy

[@adamszalai6797]

OK.. please tell me how.. at 1:31 you have 1900 gold income thats high one but ok.. then after the wave ending u still have same pop.. 1002 nothing changes your hause s you built before are already done.. and your gold income goes to 3800 in one sec.. ??????????? HOW? :D

[@RealWild0ne]

Could I convince you to make a run here with the game in its current state? Some of your complaints and the storehouse cheese have been fixed/nerfed. The storehouse seems to have a much larger radius now, which makes it impossible to surround your keep with storehouses. Also, that makes capturing multiple resource points a possibility so placement and planning come into play a little more. Don't get me wrong, it still needs work, but I'm a bit shocked at the difference in 3 months - shows signs of a good dev that listens to their community.

[@KenseiTV]

I just uploaded another run. It's good to see them working on the game.

[@way-rp4pi]

This game is impossible yet you make it look easy

[@jbinnerpeace]

seems like it needs a market so u can buy stuff you need. cool looking game tho and you did amazing.

[@KenseiTV]

A market would be very helpful indeed

[@aloneinthedark5422]

Кто красавчег??? KenseiTV красавчег!!!

[@Kholdaimon]

It looks and sounds so clunky... Units move ridiculously slowly and seem to respond really slowly, filling towers with the Arbalests seems even worse then filling tower in TAB... And every building sound is a different variation of CLUNK, the sounds are just terrible and really grate on my nerves. And everything is so small and hard to differentiate, including the mini-map, as Kensei said. But it is the Dota2 engine and to me all the games I have seen with that engine feel like this, everything is tiny and hard to distinguish from other things. Seems like a game that still needs a lot of work...

[@architectsxiii5379]

sounds like a you problem

[@Kholdaimon]

@@architectsxiii5379 I am sure there are people that think this game is already awesome, but considering that Kensei doesn't seem to like the game either in its current state and there are others that criticise it, I is definitely not just a me problem... But your asinine remark shows you don't understand the nature of criticism in general. If someone critics something then most of the time it is on personal tastes, the reader of the criticism has to decide if he feels the criticism sounds like something he should take to heart or that the criticism is about things he doesn't care about. So in general, most of the time, criticisms are "me problems", but that doesn't make them worthless, it informs people about things that are bad in your opinion and it gives developers/entrepreneurs an idea on what they might improve to make their game or service sell better. So grown up or troll somewhere else...

[@architectsxiii5379]

@@Kholdaimon Sounds like a you problem, get gud.

[@No_Moo_Hyun]

this is zoomed out

[@M.L.official]

​@@Kholdaimon You are right on most things, I think the biggest annoyance for me was target selection and hitboxes. Before the patch that was released a day or 2 ago, it was so hard to target the big zombies in waves (the huge ones that decimate your walls), i spent like 5 seconds zooming in and out trying to select it amongst all the other zombies. It's easier now, which means they are taking feedback on board. I think the stone/iron RNG sucks sometimes, in my current horrific playthrough I'm nearing the 3rd crystal and i only found 4 iron deposits, 2 of which provide me with 3 iron which means i have to commit more storehouses to get anything out of it lol. As for hitboxes, so many times the ranged AoE attack from the 4 legged enemy - i can clearly see my units are out of the purple ring, but they take the damage regardless. Again, they have made the hitboxes more logical now. Same with tower range. I hope they can make a bind to units that can garrison (archers/arbalests) where you press the auto-garrison button and they garrison the nearest tower. Manually doing it takes so much time and if you are doing a no-pause run, you need to play pretty well to find that time come the end waves, especially since they've shortened the final wave prep time from 16 to 10 mins, and the time between crystal 4 and 5 has been reduced.

[@jayleyy]

This game would be really fun if you can play with 1 or 2 friends to defend against the horde. I'm way past those competitive games filled with hackers, time for some cooperative game.

[@FurlowT]

I was excited to try this out, but I think needs a lot more work to make it interesting for me personally. It feels way too slow and a lot of clunkyness to mechanics.

[@michaptak4314]

i find this more interesting than bilions

[@colinclement2752]

This looks like TAB with A fantasy skin

[@muruks007]

Just got the game....last wave is insane in normal difficulty

[@KenseiTV]

The final waves are quite scary

[@htetnaingaung929]

I cheesed by sitting on the fissure and defend there with 30 sentinels and surround the fissures by 30 crossbower, 10 big arrow with wheels in a circle for each fissure. Works like charm.

[@muruks007]

@@htetnaingaung929 I broke the crystals early so I died..now I am using the strategy you mentioned

[@darenabryant9100]

IIf there's anything I see when watching this that I feel he's doing wrong, it's pressing on with his hero in the early game to the very brink of killing them every time. I know a hero that's not fighting isn't gaining EXP, but every time I see him doing this I recall the first video of him playing this I watched, where he had the female hero fighting, wandered off to do something else, and she died because he wasn't watching her health, and she had only just reached level 2. I feel like he either needs to pay closer attention to them, at least in the first few levels, or give them more troops to support them.

[@M.L.official]

Think they should up the movement speed of the player's units. They are all super slow lol

[@BionicAir]

Its going to be difficult trying to wait for the full release before buying this. Im hoping the campaign for it isnt crap like the one in TAB

[@federicomedinauy]

One game session is way too long omg. Great run, tho!

[@KenseiTV]

I agree, I hope they speed up the game so we get faster runs

[@mitchellgeorge9622]

Arrgh stop being better than everyone. I'm kidding please teach me to not be noob.

[@BrazHos]

What's this, a TAB knockoff?

[@KenseiTV]

I would say TAB inspired. Still early access and needs some work.

[@derekwfrazier]

eit her im sleepy or it is

[@derekwfrazier]

cool tho

[@CountingStars333]

Edgy age of empires?

[@SuiSideex]

Try game now, after big nerfs to food and gold spots, as a normal player not a pro masochist, its going to be pretty boring, definitely needs more settings for players who have just fun. And the mechanic where u need to spam a lot of stuff + take almost full map its pretty lame to, TAB is better for me atm, sadly cuz i prefer no tesla towers and those climates, swords etc.

[@No_Moo_Hyun]

It's a pity that there is no automatic search attack like 'TheY ARE Billions'. You have to find and attack monsters one by one, so it's very tiring and takes a lot of worthless searching time.

[@IcyMantaray]

its still a WIP which means it could come

[@No_Moo_Hyun]

@@IcyMantaray Since it's early access, I hope a lot of things will be added. But please release it soon....

[@muruks007]

Also the game is looong

[@awemowe2830]

1:31:40 - 10% chance for double damage is literally just 10% more damage, but very unreliably so.. 10% more damage for basically only the big guys where it matters, and at that point it doesn't really matter anyways! 10% more defenses or 10% more units at the same spot would achieve the same thing - but you could have had DOUBLE xp gain for the hero. It seems basically everytime so far (1hr 31mins in) it was your Hero that saved you, yet you always skip the hero XP buffs? It would seem if you focused more on the hero (and didn't let him die to random bs :P) he would carry the game massively. (assuming the hero can get above lvl 4.. which he would have been in the first 30-50 minutes i think, if he wasn't sacrificed :P

[@Chase-vq6eq]

After lvl 4 he doesn't get any further upgrades I believe

[@stespin]

The potential of this game is huge. I literally spent my life on Tab (⁓900 hours) and i'm so excited to try this. I think i'll wait a few patches and updates to fix some of the biggest issues and then i'll dive into it. I like the idea of the crystals, the day-night cycle, the animations and sounds of the waves. It all contributes to your immersion in this dark, creepy, almost undead world. For sure it seems clunky and not perfectly refined at times, but i mean, it literally came out yesterday. I'm not as hyped as when i saw They are billions for the first time, i feel a lot more pressure and "anxiety" when waiting for a zombie wave, and also i'm much more into the steampunk theme rather than the medieval one, but it's not bad to finally have some variety in this RTS PVE genre. I'm honestly curious to see where this goes.

[@oranechaos]

I'm at over 500hrs, the longest I've ever played in any game ever after completing the main story. Hopefully we will get auto fill tower,better pathing and few fixes in TAB2

[@KenseiTV]

I think giving it some time is a good idea. It has potential but definitely needs some work for now

[@SwordWieldingDuck]

Get Spellforce 3 if you want a really good RTS.

[@PKensington]

Did you end up purchasing the game? How did you like it? Would you recommend tab to someone who likes this game esthetic a lot? I haven't played tab, but I'll take a look since this dude said it was better

[@stespin]

@@PKensington No to be honest I kinda forgot about it XD TAB is definitely worth it imo, it has its cons (and some big ones at that), but if you like a good RTS, kinda well balanced, with TONS of additional (free) workshop content buy it on Steam. I really like many RTS, but the multiplayer component ruins it a bit for me, I don't like the competitiveness of games like AOE, or being rushed all over the map in the first 2 minutes. I like to take my time, work my eco and build impenetrable defences (which in the end are NEVER impenetrable). If you like to turtle and mainly play on defense, TAB is a blessing.

[@edinborogh]

First to comment!!

[@loceyar3254]

wins the ....

[@KenseiTV]

:)