Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Arcanum might be the greatest game I've ever played, in terms of role playing. It seems like every role playing game boasts that you can play as the kind of character you want to play, and that you have all of these choices that have different consequences. Arcanum is one of very few games I've played that comes close to delivering on this promise. The setting of a fantasy world that's going through an industrial revolution is something I really like. The generic fantasy setting that plagues so many role playing games gets boring, but Troika have put an interesting twist on that that keeps the world interesting. From early on in the game, you can see the polarity of science/technology and magic, and you must choose whether you intend to side with science or technology, or become a jack of all trades. This choice will open up various options for you, but close off others. Character creation offers a lot of choices, which can be quite daunting at first. In addition to choice of race and gender, you can also pick an optional background, of which there are many, and they are varied. A couple of examples would be Beat With An Ugly Stick, where you are so hideous that you get a negative reaction from everyone, but a lifetime of fending off attackers who apparently believe you're a monster gives you a bonus to Strength, Dexterity and all combat skills, and Special Person, where you have congenital brain damage, so suffer a massive penalty to intelligence, but people praise you more often when you perform good deeds. Another interesting one is Idiot Savant, where you gain a massive boost to intelligence, but speak as if your intelligence was much lower. Most of your choices in the character creation have consequences, some fairly big, and some that are minor. Some races simply don't get on, a gentleman's club is no place for a woman, and if you're ugly people are going to have a low initial reaction to you. Your character's story throughout the game will be quite unique. Most quests have multiple solutions, some good and some evil. It's worth noting that this might be the best game I've played when it comes to playing an evil character. Even my favourite game, Fallout, is a bit lacking in that respect, as while you can commit evil deeds, there aren't many evil quests, and the evil quests that are available often close off bigger parts of the game. Arcanum has more than a few evil quests, one of which is fairly big and story changing. There are characters who will only join your party based on your alignment (and how magical/technological your character is), characters will leave your party (or attack you) if you do things that they disapprove of, and one NPC's personality can be changed (for better or worse) based on your influence on him. Another thing worth mentioning is the soundtrack, which is gorgeous. A very melancholic collection of tunes played by a string quartet, with minimal percussion (barring the combat music). Unfortunately, outside of the pure role-playing side of the game, there are some flaws. The combat in this game is frustrating – I imagine that Troika were forced to include both real and turn-based combat in the game, and because of that the combat feels a bit broken whichever you use. Magic and technology are not balanced at all (especially in combat, where knowing a few key spells will result in you being able to easily slay most enemies). And while your character's individual story is intricate and interesting, the over-arching key plot is simple and clichéd. But if you can get past the frustrating combat, it's a massive game where you will feel that your character is having his or her own unique story, that you probably won't have again the next time you play it. And the brothel in one town has a sheep. I felt this was important enough to mention, but it didn't fit anywhere else.

Arcanum has got to be one of my favorite RPGs ever. It just has so much to offer. Unfortunately, when the game came out, it had about 9001 bugs and issues in it; some of these were as benign as a misspelled word or a misused comma, and others could occasionally prevent you from completing sidequests--or even the main quest. A pack of psychos latched onto ths game and slogged through all the files and coding to eventually fix most of the bugs and even restore some content that was inexplicably removed from the final game. Now, the game itself . . . my God. There's almost too much to do. Your character can progress in any way you want, without regard to the background or race you chose. Magickal dwarves who speak like morons? Sure. Eloquent, gentle half-ogres? Absolutely. You could even have sex with a sheep if you wanted. The main story, unlike many open-ended RPGs, is actually pretty interesting, and they're about a million endings. Throughout this story, you will inevitably become sidetracked by one of the plethora of sidequests, almost all of which can be completed with the use of combat, persuasion, or stealth; this level of freedom holds throughout almost all of the game, with the exception of a few quests that are more geared towards certain types of characters. The loss of one star comes from a couple different things. First off, stealth-based characters, though possible, feel severely gimped in comparison to fighters or mages, or even talkers. It is incredibly hard to manage some of the stealth specific quests--look out for one involving a gem and a path surrounded by monsters--and even the quests that can be optionally completed with stealth are difficult. Second, there's the real-time combat, which is almost useless. Most characters are going to end up with scores of spells or items to use in combat, and the overly-frantic real-time mode completely negates the use of most of these. Luckily, there is turn-based combat available. The main reason for removing that fifth star, however, is because of the presentation. The hand-drawn sprites are rather nice, but there aren't that many of them: monsters often look very similar, and half-elves and half-orcs have the same sprite. Armor and weapons do display, of course, but all swords look the same, all axes, all hammers, all suits of chainmail, all plate; the only difference is an occasional palette swap. Helmets, hats, boots, and gloves don't even show up; your character's appearance is based solely on race and armor. The HUD, too, is kind of annoying, and is probably my biggest qualm with the game; it takes up a huge amount of space and is a little bit clunky, what with text in the chat box appearing and instantly disappearing, requiring you to page back up to find it, and with the rather odd layout of the buttons along the bottom. The sound, on the other hand, practically makes up for the rest of the game's presentation issues. Voice acting is actually quite good, though only the most important characters have voices. Spells, guns, hits, deaths, howls, growls, screams . . . these things all come through pretty good in combat. The best part, however, is the music, which just HAS to be heard. Arcanum is great, and I really wish that Troika were still around to make a real sequel. A lot of people compare this to Fallout 1 + 2 and say that they're better than Arcanum, but I disagree. The Fallout games laid the foundation, but Arcanum really took advantage of the system.

Commentar for the first: I do not review the GOG-Version. Arcanum could have been a great game if the developer had invested more time to wellwrought the game. There are many great elements in the game, which was the best of their time. Arcanum was one of the earliest game with a nonlinear story, a crafting system and it has a very good character system. When i first played the game, i was fascinated of all of the elements, which were even better as other great RPGs (for example BG2) But then there are the problems of this game... First, Arcanum has its bugs. There are not very bad bugs, but they are there. Then the system is kind of unbalanced. Playing a charismatic leader is like wanting remain stupid. Every kill of your friends won't give you XP. You will be much better in the end without friends. Furthermore you have only limited ways to control your friends. And they really will act stupid. So they can get stuck following you and you have to go back then to help them out. You have multiplayer, what doesn't really work if you don't have the time to travel between the cities over many many hours. Outside of the towns and some singular points there is nothing. In single player you have a fast walk option to skip the travel between these singular points. In multiplayer you really have to walk all the way with nothing important and use several real-time hours for that. So multiplayer is not really useable for the story. Nevertheless there are is a small scenario which you can use for multiplayer. But this scenario is even more unbalanced than the main game... But i like this game. Arcanum tries to give you a feeling you can do everything. You will be released to the world and you can work on your own. (Compared to all other games, which did exist in 2001). Many quests do have different ways to solve them. The world is fascinating, has its believable history and all in all the world seems to be more than only to wait for you as a hero. Arcanum is an unpolished diamant. It could have been a brilliant but the developer didn`t cut it.

Arcanum is a very fun and admirable, close to great, isometric RPG filled with choice and consequence, however some serious flaws detract it from reaching the high levels of classics such as Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 2 and Fallout 1-2. The steam punk setting is really great and unique, I very much enjoyed the idea of advanced technical progress happening to a medieval-style world and reading about it in the game's dialogues and books. Travelling and exploring the world map is a lot of fun, the idea of coordinates for locations is something I whish more CRPGs would adopt. Character creation here is awesome, you can create so many interesting builds. Crafting was pretty good too and increases the replayability fun factor. The biggest flaw of the game is the combat. A significant part of the game is combat and many encounters are mandatory, which would have been absolutely fine unless it had been so boring to play. The turn based combat system in this game is poorly implemented compared to e.g. Fallout 1-2. Combined with the fact that many of the encounter locations and dungeons being quite uninspiring, it falls flat on its face. There's also a real time mode which is even worse. The second big flaw is that many aspects of the game seem hastily designed and implemented - it's unbalanced, some things in the game world don't seem quite finished, and the final third of the game was not as rich an experience for me the early game was. If the game had been in development for another 12 months it would likely have ended up a masterpiece. It aspires to be a "ultimate CRPG" but would have needed more fun combat and polish to reach there. Recommended to: - CRPG fans in general who likes the idea of a game with lots of choice & consequence and who likes to mess around with different character builds in a very unique and memorable steampunk setting. - Fans of the "old school" style of isometric CRPGs (P:T, Fallout, Temple of Elemental Evil, Baldur's Gate).

The best part about Arcanum is that you can do well with any build you dream up, as long as you play to that build's strengths. That idea should be central to any ROLE PLAYING game, but it's usually lost in favor of a few OP'ed combat skills, or buffing intelligence to pick one of two dialogue options. Or, instead of a few obviously more important skills, you have a game where any build works but you'll be a game breaking demi-God by the tenth level... I'm thinking of Bethesda games where you don't have to abide by your thief build constraints, because you can out-magic or out-melee anything anyway, completely ignoring your thiefly abilities for most of the game. Not here. Pick a diplomatic character, talk your way out of most things, and when you can't, have your party of allies fight it out for you. Or be an incredibly evil mage that everyone hates and just blow up all of your obstacles. You get the idea. Your character choices will also impact your experience of the game. There aren't any stupid mini-games or percentile chances of succeeding with a skill you haven't developed... you simply won't be able to do it. The story is a clever twist on the chosen one angle. The side quests and optional stuff usually feels just as well developed as the main plot, although there are some plain fetch quests and such. Now the bad: the stupid, horrible, lame level cap! There is a mod to remove it, but I wanted the vanilla experience, so I ended up hitting the level cap a third of the way into the game, and from that point on, I rushed through to the end. I ignored all side quests at that point, there was no need to do them. I was as rich and as powerful as I needed to be, many times over in fact. I was indestructible until the very end, where I was mildly challenged again. There's no universal loot chests, so you have to store everything in some random cabinet. Also, merchants don't all sell or accept every item. This makes sense logically, but it can be frustrating.