Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

One of my favorite games from the golden age of RPGs. It has it's quirks, but once you get going it's a great game. Good story, simple mechanics, interesting setting. Although the base game is good, look into the UAP patch, it's mandatory for the best Arcanuam experience. In a similar category as Planescape: Torment, BG 1 & 2, among others. Definitely a good value at five bucks.

The excellence of this game overwhelm its shortcomings, it still deserves 5 stars. The worldbuilding, role play and reactivity to your character are all absolutely amazing. I'm a combat -junkie gamer, being enthusiastically into a game without good combat is something that just doesn't happen. The fun factor is still there, it's not *just* interesting and well written. I burn hours without noticing every day. The biggest flaw and missed opportunity is magic consisting of a small handful of useful to totally broken spells and a ton of impractical to completely useless ones, you have to learn them in order for each college's 5, forcing you to waste level ups with spells you won't ever use to get to the few you'll always use. Tech has a similar problem, and of course those are the things I bought the game for and probably why you're considering it, so it should be a deal breaker, right? But it's not, and that's the caliber of worldbuilding and RP we're talking about here.

This game gave me one of the greatest gaming memories of my childhood. I watched my dad complete it multiple times, but only recently did I finish it myself. I remember getting so much enjoyment just from exploring and LIVING in its world. I even recall being on a family vacation and, instead of enjoying it, i was DAYDREAMING about all the things i’d do in Arcanum once i got back home. And don’t even get me started on what i truly believe is one of the GREATEST gaming soundtracks ever composed. It adds so much to the atmosphere and immersion of the world. The fact that you can just exit the borders of one location and seamlessly (albeit slowly) travel into another without using map travel is as insane today as it was back then. Unnecessary but cool details like that are one of the reasons I keep revisiting older games. I’m not sure how easy it would be to get into this game nowadays, especially if you don’t have the nostalgia for it. But if you’ve enjoyed any classic CRPGs from that era and haven’t tried Arcanum, you definitely should. It’s a hidden gem - overshadowed by more popular titles like Fallout or Baldur’s Gate, but no less important because of that. Also, from what i’ve heard, the GOG version is better than Steam one, so i’d buy it here if I could. Nevertheless, you’ll still probably need to download some fan patches to get the best experience

Waiting for Arcanum 2: Revolution

Arcanum combines fantasy and steampunk aesthetics into an interesting world with many things to explore and accomplish. If you are into Baldur's Gate or Planescape Torment style top-down turn based game play, then give this a shot. However you can tell this game is less polished in general especially towards the end of it, so I would highly recommend installing the community patch that adds things which were left out on release but doesn't change core game play.