Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

- Sadly the fixed and low resolution didn't age well, there's a mod helping a bit by basically upscaling it. - The control scheme is mediocre. - Playing a female MC comes at a disadvantage which can be mitigated but then you lose out on backgrounds, only male MCs do not have any reduced max attributes and can choose between backgrounds. +/- Many lengthy dialogues paired with the information you get to not being neatly compressed and accessible presented to the player for later reminding oneself (though you basically get all the info in your ingame journal that journal is badly organized). You might want to keep a doc or something outside of the game. +/- The MC can be developed freely not bound by classes, but that freedom comes at a cost and results in several possibilities for soft locks, where earlier decisions are creating problems with progressing the story. Raising the level cap does help with that (there are mods for that), though if you run too deep into one of those dead ends you'd have to grind quite a bit to get the game flow running again. + interesting mechanics around the main conflict around magic and traditions against technology and progression. + there are few decisions between clearly morally good or bad choices, but often decisions will matter later. SPOILERS AHEAD The game starts with explaining how magic and technology are mutually exclusive. Hence there are 3 major routes of developing the MC: going more or less all out magic or tech OR trying to balance both ways. There are things you'll need for the story that are either magic or tech, in my opinion it's basically impossible to go totally exclusive either way, especially as the npcs are mostly useless, and at least some even become adversaries (or can become it). Often you'll have to compromise to further the story, sometimes that'll lead to problems, many decisions aren't good nor bad but rather somewhere in between.

One of my favorite CRPGs of all time. It can be on the difficult side, but the replayability is high with the varying builds you can make and NPCs you can ally with. Definitely look for the fan patches to bring it up to date, but I had no trouble on Windows 10 with vanilla.

I can't stand how long it takes to go from one place to another. There are bugs. Tech is too weak compared to magic. But I have to speak to the truth. There are many gems among all the stories, landscapes, and characters. If you LOVE rpgs, then you should try Arcanum. With multiple mods.

One of the handful of games I remember from that far back. Its really stuck with me. I remember having tons of fun and getting lost in the world. I would love to see a MMORPG set in this type of world. Sort of a Steampunk Fantasy or Fantasy Industrial Revolution time period. Very cool.

Welcome to the land of Arcanum; a land of magic, technology, intrigue, and betrayal. You come from far away; escaping a past that either promised much more adventure abroad or one that threatened to consume you if you stayed in your old life. In the end it didn’t it matter; you picked the wrong blimp and ended up coming down in a fiery blaze that was seen for miles around, far from your destination. Upon stumbling from the wreckage you are approached by what appears to be a monk babbling about you being the reincarnation of some dead god and he needs to get you to his mentor so you can fulfill some prophecy. Of course the blimp didn’t crash by itself and you seem to be attracting the attention of some people who would be rather happy if their were no survivors of the crash. With your slightly confused companion , Virgil, you begin the long trek to discover who is trying to kill you and why everyone seems to think that you will either bring a new age of peace to Arcanum or usher in its destruction. Despite it’s age this is still a pretty good Crpg if your looking for an interesting story to play through. The writing is pretty decent and there are some interesting twists and turns. The graphics are what you would expect for the time and do the job. The music is also decent and does the job. The one thing to keep in mind is that this game is a little clunky in the combat department and it is not always clear how you are supposed to accomplish what you need to do and it is possible to miss whole chunks of the backstory if you aren’t paying attention and exploring. The other side is that this game is a bit buggy and there probably wasn’t much gog could do about it considering that's how the thing was made. Thankfully fan patchs do exist and are very easy find with a search. They fix most of the old problems and even add back in some cut content. If you like these types of games its worth picking up.