Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

A Fantastical Industrial Revolution, a combination yet to be seen anywhere else. Absolutely loved it and would recommend it to everyone who likes crpgs. But be sure to play with Unofficial Arcanum Patch by Drog Black Tooth, that will greatly improve your experience in many ways, as with other Troika Games releases the game on its own came out very buggy.

Fully customizable (but challening) hero build. Unforgiving combat. Enigmatic party members. Deep story and character developement.

Ah another year and another attempt to finally play this game. It's been in my library forever, and I every so often I install it and try to get into it. This year is probably my fifth attempt and it still hasn't pulled me in. This is of course very old school, so unless you cheat and pull up a walkthrough, you're going to spend a lot of time wandering around, talking to NPCs trying to figure out what to do next. I just don't have the patience, but cheers to those who do. It seems like very interesting take on the CRPG genre and very different than other similar games of its time, so I want to like it but this game requires a high amount of player time and effort to enjoy and I'm not certain it's worth it. I'd rather play similar games that provide a more rewarding experience.

Having finished Fallout (and loved it), I thought Arcanum would be a logical next step to play. Having gotten accustomed to Fallout's basic graphics style, I was looking forward to playing something with a bit more evolved visual style and a novel RPG framework, pre-Baldur's Gate. While I enjoyed the story and much of the NPC interactions, I could not finish the game due to its interface and design frustrations. The combat system is horrid - I thought this wouldn't mean all that much (I'm more interesed in story/RPG elements), but that combined with my character build meant that much of the play was reduced to grinding and reloading. I mean, a system which punishes you with permanent maiming damage is bad enough, but when there's a 10% chance of that happening every combat round, it's ridiculous. If you want to do a power build for a character and go through the game, it appears doable, but the fun factor is much less than other RPGs with similar plot and NPC depth. Too bad.

Complex RPG system, tons of quest, turn-based/realtime combat, lot of companions, hundreds NPC, thousands enemies, unique universe, good plot. What else do you need?