Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

I love this game. You can customize your characters in such a way that it envelops your character in individual storylines seen differently if you chose a different character type. However, many of the more complex and tasty storylines are unfinished or creepily absent once you get into the meat. nevertheless, an excellent game featuring the awesome, rare, uneasy melding of magick and tech. An epic buy if you don;t mind deep stories that finish fantastically but leave you hanging. ;) love this game.

Most underrated RPG I know. Fell in love with the world and story. Complete freedom of playing style. If you can live with the old-fashioned graphics and like complex RPGs with fascinating worlds you will love this game!

My first of genre. My best of all. My greatest weakness. This game is my childhoods monster. One of the best at it's time. Atmosphere is so good, combat could be better, but it doesn't matter, when you're having so much fun. Character variety is huge, choices are huge, plot is huge. I was totally grabbed by games looks (didn't played Fallout series at the time). The entire Arcanum idea is good. Tech vs magic, elves vs dwarfs, good vs evil, and your most loyal companion - the Dog. Sorry, i'm a total fanboy...

This game was allegedly made by the developers of the original Fallout games, so it has that Fallout look and feel. It's set in a very unique setting, a fantasy world on the brink of an industrial revolution. You get to make your character (8? races to choose from), specialize their skills (magic, tech, swords, thievery, persuasion... the combinations are endless), and go along for the ride in the amazing story. The game offers so much in gameplay. If your character has a low intelligence, it limits your responses (and having an EXTREMELY low intelligence makes the responses hilarious!) and the choices you make impact the world. It's one of those rare gems that just make you come back for more to try and find all of the things you could have missed before. Even when you've played the story and you know what's going to happen next, you still just want to come back and experience it all over again. It's one of my favorite games of all time from any genre. Sure the camera is a little bit troublesome (you can't center it and have to manually move it), and the combat can be a little bulky at times, but these minor setbacks can't ruin the experience of this gem of a masterpiece of a game.

Arcanum is not for everyone, but those who enjoy the carefully crafted design that made the original Fallout a masterpiece will not find a game as ambitious. Arcanum is a steam-punk role playing game set in a Dungeons & Dragons style world in the grip of an industrial revolution. Science, industry and capital enable men women and ogre to achieve what one - only magicians could do. Arcanum is a complex world of political upheaval, class struggle, rampant racism, religious reform and social changes. There is a big bad guy, yes. There is a fresh hero destined for greatness. There are ancient secrets and people losing their wedding rings in the sewer. But at it's heart it's a breathing world that is ready to be changed by your actions. And indeed few things are as rewarding as reading about your own exploits in the local news paper. It has it's flaws. Chief among them is the battle system. It can be played in turns or real-time but each of those lack something. The Turn-based combat is cumbersome and too few combat animations make it dull. Real-time is useful for battles where you have a melee weapon and the enemy is another rat. But I wouldn't recommend it for battles that require even a little more tactic. The opening is another big hurdle. It's filled with creatures ready to mince you if you are not playing a combat centric character. Sometimes it's better to just run away and reach the next town rather then spend an agonizing hour trying to outfight a wild boar. Level cap is a double edged sword in Arcanum. Every NPC is scaled on a level between 1 and 50. And your character is not exempted. If you build a character that is invested in too many areas, you might discover that the game is becoming more and more difficult. A purely magical or technological character will have an easier time then a jack of all trades. This is not a game where you can wander around doing random battles to surmount every obstacle. Despite it's flaws, Arcanum remains one of my favorite games. Every npc is a character, every quest is well crafted. Every companion has a story to tell and everyone can die. But there are few games where one of the ways to beat the end boss is a existential debate. Few games where you are offered so much REAL freedom. Few games where you can roam through trash to build an arsenal of grenades. Few games where the designers are waiting for your every action with a prepared response. If you loved Fallout for more then it's exploding head combat, give this a shot.