Welcome to an industrial revolution in a world of magic! Imagine a place of wonder, where magic and technology coexist in an uneasy balance, and an adventurer might just as easily wield a revolver as a flaming sword. A place where great industrial cities house castle keeps and factories, home to Dwarves, Humans, Orcs and Elves alike. A place of arcane runes and steam-works, of magic and machines, of sorcery and science. Welcome to the land of Arcanum!
In this one-of-a-kind cRPG the world adapts to your decisions! Whether you choose the path of magic or technology, good or evil, characters will react differently to your character. You can finish each quest in many ways – bribing, dueling, negotiating and more! With a huge map, more than 300 unique characters and monsters, plus many different endings to unravel, this game will keep you busy for a long, LONG time.
Age requirements: ESRB Rating: MATURE with Blood, Mature Sexual Themes, Violence. PEGI Rating: 12+ with Violence.
Minimum system requirements: Windows XP or Windows Vista, 1 GHz Processor (1.4 GHz recommended), 256MB RAM (512 recommended), 3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 7 (compatible with DirectX 9 recommended), Mouse, Keyboard.
Average customer rating 4.5 out of 5.0
A Pocket Full Of Troika Bugs And A Whole World Of Freedom
(by
robobrien)
So you wanna a play a Frankenstein monster with a head full of magic? An escaped lunatic? A child of a hero trying to forge your own destiny? Pick which ever background takes your fancy, or don't, choose a suitable moody looking portrait and 'find the boy'. Or don't.
Arcanum is a fantastic rpg. If you enjoyed Fallout 1&2 then the chances are you have... full review already purchased this game. The world is big and interesting, full of characters and dialogue that stand out, with multiple solutions to any (and maybe all) the games many quests. The choice of creating a technical character or magical is great and the amount of character skills/spells/schematics makes a great meaty sandwich of adventuring goodness.
As with Troika's TOEE, Arcanum relied very much on the kindess of strangers and is now patched to the hilt and benefits from a few more locations and quests. On the downside the characters do lack some detail and a wider variety of models would have been nice, although when you switch armor type the change will be shown on your character. The lack of animations however and the combat is for me the games biggest failing and a lack of balance between a spell slinger and gunslinger is also a real shame.
Yet Arcanum has way more in it's favour than not and has so much ambition and such a wonderful story to tell, with many unexpected avenues of adventure, that make it one of my all time favourite rpg's. Like TOEE, the soundtrack is original and different, whilst TOEE had a murky tonal quality, Arcanum soothes with all string arrangements and some of them are really quite beautiful.
Buy Arcanum and enjoy one the great rpg's. And spare a thought for Trokia will you, and all those amazing games they never had the chance to make.
The Closest Thing To A Fallout-Style Game Since..Well..Fallout
(by
phanboy4)
Created by ex-Fallout devs, Arcanum is an RPG in the same vein as Fallout, in that it is a plot-and-quest-based, open-ended romp through a very interesting world which reacts and shapes itself to your actions.... full review
First off, let me say that this game has one of the best plots of any CRPG I've played, second only to games like Planescape. I know, at the beginning it seems like the creators went for an old, tried and true plot but trust me, nothing could be farther from the truth. This game has some of the best, most interesting and thought-provoking quests out there, pretty much all of which have the trademark "multiple solutions" of the Fallout guys. If for no other reason, you should play this game to see the killer quest design and plot.
Combat can be in either turn based (The original mode as designed) or real-time (An unplanned mode forced on the devs by Sierra execs leery of TB combat), your choice. Unfortunately, thanks to Sierra, the real-time mode is more or less broken, and what's more, it becomes obvious to the experienced player that the time spent on the RT mode would have been put to much better use refining the game balance.
It's not that the game is unplayable, or combat is no fun; it isn't, thanks to the varied and interesting ability system. But tactical positioning of your characters becomes much less important in this game than in Fallout, and some weapons and types of weapons are simply too over/underpowered.
But you should interpret these quibbles as the rantings of a Fallout zealot. If what you love are meaty quests and balanced, tough moral choices that actually have an impact, set against a great story and in a great world, play this game. Actually, unless you break out in hives every time you see the acronym RPG, you must experience this game.
One of the great games of my childhood.
(by
ShmenonPie)
I nearly had a heart attack when I looked at my RSS feeder and saw that GOG had released Arcanum! I've been hoping for this to be released more than any other game I can think of, as it's one of my fondest memories of years gone by.... full review
Sadly, being no longer in possession of the original disc version, I've been unable to experience the wonderful universe of Arcanum for some time. Arcanum was somewhat heavily criticised by reviewers at the time for petty things like its graphics, which were, on my PC, very nicely designed. Arcanum has a lot of style flowing through it, and the steampunk elements are visually still great to look at.
There are so many choices in Arcanum, that it would be almost impossible to ever see all that the game has to offer. There are so many different ways to advance your character that the character creation screen is at first quite mind-boggling - magic, technology, stats, all sorts of goodies! There are tpms pf different locations to explore, people to meet, companions to drag around, and even a brothel!
I would honestly recommend this game above all others on the site, as it is truly a Good Old Game.
The only thing that would top this is System Shock 1 and 2. Do it, GOG!
robobrien)
phanboy4)
ShmenonPie)