Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Picked this one up after casting around for something to whet my 2d isometric RPG appetite after the Baldur's Gate, Fallout series and Planescape Torment. The setting looked promising; magic struggling to coexist alongside technology in a Victorian-styled world. I remember perusing the wide range of backgrounds, wondering whether my Ogre should be Beat Up With A Ugly Stick (thus adding strength at the expense of Beauty) was worth it. The storyline follows the good old 'find this ever so important person to find out more about your place in this world Mr Chosen One' - which basically sets up the plot for all manner of fetch/kill/investigate and report back quests. What's interesting here is the setting - besides investigating mines for ghostly spectres and ridding a town of its resident bandits, you get to do things like sabotage steam engines to earn favour with the local hedge wizard, trap a mythical monster and solve all manner of domestic crimes! Levelling up confers points which can be spent on your core attributes - which then opens up more skills (barter, charm, lockpick etc) and recipes (spells, weapon schematics, potion recipes, techie schematics etc) to be learnt. Skills can also be taught by various people you meet throughout the game, for a price. Likewise recipes can also be found/bought - and the rarer ones which make some of the most powerful guns in the game are well worth looking for! Combat is one of the downsides, as those used to the Bioware games can attest. A mixture of turn-based/realtime, neither of which works particularly well - the action can be paused but since you have no direct control over your teammates actions there's little strategy to be had. Sure you can tweak their behavious but they still often rush in to close combat where they should be plugging away with their spell/bow and worse, if you lose favour with your teammates (ostensibly if you make decisions that they do not approve but also seemingly determined at random), they may attack you/run away and refuse to fight! Teammates - you can have a party tag along with you and they will add to the storyline satisfyingly enough, but not to the depth of Torment's Morte. So there you have it - a fairly engaging RPG which is good for a whirl if you're still hankering after the isometric viewpoint and a fairly interesting setting to boot. Just don't go in expecting the next Fallout 2/Torment and you'll be pleasantly surprised!

I should start by saying that I have not gotten very far in the game yet. I've got a lot of faith in the developer and in the opinions of folks who've had nothing but good to say for this game, but I just can't help feeling a little disappointed so far. The game starts out with a (very dated, but no complaint here) cut scene of a zeppelin being shot down. You are told that your character is on board. Somehow you survive the crash and pull another survivor from the wreckage. He gives you a very mundane sounding quest, but I'm sure there's more to it that I haven't discovered yet. It's just jarring the way it gets thrust onto you and how little it would actually matter to my character. Then, apropos of nothing, this Jar Jar Binks type walks up and thinks you're some kind of reborn elf god or something. Then somebody else comes up that Jar Jar Binks doesn't like and you have to kill him. The problem is that you have ostensibly just created your character. In my case, a handlebar mustache-wearing cowboy type named Courthouse Connelly - but before you get the opportunity to play your character, he gets drowned in exposition from unsympathetic weirdos and a bunch of fighting that has nothing to do with him. The tone presented in the opening cinematic is so exciting and original that it's just that much worse when you are denied the possibility of experiencing the world as fully as you might like, as a character that you might like. Also, anyone purchasing this title should know that it is extremely bug-ridden, and the lack of an auto-save makes that all-the-more frustrating. If I pick a fight and lose, then realize that I haven't saved in two hours... well, that's frustrating, but I took the gamble. If I face the same issue, though, again and again and again and again because the game gets stuck virtually every time there's a fight, that's just much worse. It's upsetting, because I'm one of those people who thought this game looked cool when it came out, but then couldn't find a copy for over ten years. I was excited to hear it was available here and I'm still holding out hope that it will redeem itself - but let this review be a warning to anyone considering the purchase.

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Jittery game play, annoying travel, retarded AI... those are my issues with this game. I got it as it seemed to have gone beneath my radar and eventually had to stop playing as i felt it was a limited environment and i wasn't quiet gripped by the quests as i have been with say... black isle games. However i still put loads of game play into it and it does have some interesting tweaks. The crafting is great. If you don't read through a few guides before character creation though you can end up having a really rough time through the game and it can really effect your enjoyment. 3 stars for trying hard, engaging me (in places) but don't expect anything to the caliber of icewind dale, baldurs gate or planescape

This would make an excellent TV show.