Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

This is a great RPG for the price if you patch it with the unofficial patch V091225 which can be seached for on the internet. There are prior unofficial patches out there but the above listed one is the latest as of this posting. Patch fixes hundreds of issues. A must have. Playable without patch - but becomes a solid RPG with Patch. Runs great on vista

This one will linger in my memory for a long time. I purchased from GOG because I am too lazy to dig up my CDs and deal with the copy protection even though I had this game at full price years ago. This game sets tone PERFECTLY. Right from the start, you're greeted with music from a string quartet that's evocative of a bygone era, and jumping right into the character selection screen, you're faced with a collection of adorable Victorian-style portraits. From conversations about tea to the antiquated use of magic, Arcanum just oozes atmosphere. It's only unfortunate that it was rather buggy upon release and never gained a wide audience. I would have liked to have seen a sequel or two.

i know, it has bugs. i know, combat could be better. to be honest, probably would have given this game a 3 or 4, but the fact that it was the first game i played seriously, the fact that the story, setting, music, deep character creation and outstanding characters (along with incredible dialogue), and the fact that i have never been satisfied by an RPG (except for, perhaps, es3 Morrowind ) quite like this one, gives it a 5. also, Payne rocks.

It is possible to play this game as a "special needs" ogre... and the dialog changes accordingly! How cool is that? Fun crafting, magic is a bit overpowered but play technology for added challenge if you think it's too easy. Great settings and sandbox feel. Love the story, and lets you be as good or evil as you want. In fact, the characters you can have join you check your alignment first. I haven't played this in years because it's a royal pain in the a$$ to get running on Windows XP and higher. But GOG did it for me! Yay!

This is my Arcanum story. Back in the day, 2001 or 02, I played a demo of Troika's Arcanum. Two things came into my mind: a) for a 200X game the graphics were horribly outdated, even back then, b) my computer back then was barely able to run the game. I played the demo for some time, but then, after a few bugs and crashes, some produced by my low-end computer, some by the game itself, I lost interest in Arcanum. About half a year ago, I picked this game up from gog.com, but being swamped with a bunch of other games and a stressful time at work, I never got around to actually playing it. Checking out gog's holiday calender thingy, my interest in Arcanum was finally reinitiated, and now, more than nine years after its release, I used this very boring day to set the game up and, well, finally play it. What can I say? This is, despite of the awful graphics, one of the most complete and addictive RPGs I have ever played. I have played now for twelve hours straight and I am completely sucked in. For those of you hungry for a game world that is NOT world war 2, post-apocalypse, Afghanistan or... Farmville, this is the game for you. You will quickly look beyond its obvious shortcomings, be it the sub-par presentation or the clunky (but functional) interface. Arcanum shows how much more impact a game can have if most of it has to happen in your head, in your imagination. Arcanum does exactly that and it is still up there with some of greatest RPGs of the past few years, even if i looks and feels like something your grandma would have coded. Get all the neccessary patches and start your own adventure in Arcanum now, I guarantee, you won't regret it! Signed, an Arcanum newbie.