Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

5 Stars. Game is always fun to start up and play through. I still have the retail disc but picked this up on sale so I don't have to dig it up every few years. The mechanics have some quarks and aren't always balanced if you take the right (or wrong) builds, but it doesn't take away from how well made and written the game is. Also there is plenty of support for high-resolution mods available.

Best Endings in any RPG I ever played.

For me, the best RPG I have ever played. Set in an original, yet very well thought out universe, Arcanum lets you walk a path between the opposing forces of technology and magic. Character development is very rich, but you can make it as easy or complicated as you want. It is set in an open world with near infinite freedom, although you can just follow the story to guide you through it. Each town and area you enter has its own history and a diverse set of quests, with some very extensive side quests. Because of the rich story and many actions that will affect the world during gameplay and after you finish the main story (multiple endings!), it is a highly replayable game. Have fun

played it back in 2003 i think and just loved it. its like playing witcher or dragon age back than.sadly troika is no more.hope someone will release a remastered hd version.

There's a few immediate disappointments that need to be said: -It looks awful. It was released in that awkward period of time where isometric games started to use high res renders of 3-D models for characters while the backgrounds were still done the same as ever, leaving it to look like you're playing with poorly painted action figures on top of a paper playmat. Animations are DREADFUL. The UI looks half-baked, like it's still in development. Speaking of the poor UI... -Combat is more of a chore than ever. I'm gonna be doing some more direct comparison to Fallout 1/2, since there's a lot of shared staff between the games and Arcanum. Combat was kinda the weakest part of any isometric Fallout game, but it was servicable enough and had its fun moments. In Arcanum, combat happens suddenly and feels like a fever dream. While in Fallout there was a pretty clear aggro range that combat would trigger at, Arcanum surprises you out of absolutely nowhere by aggro range being absolutely TEENSY WEE. Real time combat moves WAY, WAY too fast for it to be enjoyable. Turn based is an awful slog. -What am I supposed to do? When Morrowind, a game (in)famous for giving you next to no direction on what do to next, has a better journal system than you do, you're in trouble. With a lacklustre dialog system in comparison to Fallout, Arcanum gives its quest information in a very vague way, and then doesn't record it ANYWHERE within the game besides "I was told to do this". That's fine if the game is interesting enough to make you want to explore, but Arcanum isn't. The ideas are cool, but the excruciating way in which you explore the world does not make you want to explore the world. I really want to like Arcanum, but I can't. There might be a hidden gem in this game, maybe I'm too dumb for this game, I don't know, but I just can't like this game no matter how hard I try. It's a shame, because it sounds like something I'd love.