Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

For me Arcanum was hard to get into. It might not be for everyone, eventhough is plays like Baldur's Gate/Fallout. The world map doesn't have any question marks to point the player to the nearest explorable place. Arcanum doesn't hold your hand from A to Z. It instead lets you do anything you want. Be a hero/gentleman, and save the day helping maidens in need. Be evil, lie, rob banks, assist thieves. And this game is sometimes unforgiving, forcing the player to complete other quests before moving to the next territory of the map. Gather a party and equipment. To assure your survival in the world of Arcanum!

I first got and played this game at some point in high school, when it first came out. At the time, I spent about 12 hours on it and my impression of it was overwhelmingly negative. My dude couldn't kill a fly (not for lack of trying), the combat was completely uncontrollable, and I found myself being unable to keep focus on the central plot because of the absolute insane amount of sidequests (if I remember correctly, I spent 10 hours in the first big city alone). That being said, I bought it on a whim here to give it a second chance. I don't know if it's cause I'm older and have more patience decomposing the character creation or if I'm able to focus better on the main plot while doing the side quests or if the various patches radically improved the playing experience, but I almost literally haven't stopped playing this game since GoG released it. I wake up, play Arcanum, go to bed, and repeat the process. It's been like that for a week now with a two-day break for a road trip. It's killing me! The game holds you in that well. The combat is still a problem, though I'm pretty sure I didn't know about the turn-based option (real-time is default) when I played it high school. Playing it turn-based makes it a lot more bearable, almost (but definitely not) to the point of being okay. What keeps it firmly in the realm of bad combat systems is that you can't control your party members *at all*. What this means is that combat will be one of two scenarios: either you're fighting easy dudes and your party will mop up or you're fighting moderate dudes who will gang up and kill your guys while you're helpless to advise with tactics or anything. Forget about chilling on the other side of a choke point and shooting spells or projectiles at the enemies to force them to charge through the gauntlet. What's going to happen is your entire party rushing through, getting surrounded, and slaughtered. And don't even try to think about retreat. Once you're in battle, it's to the death. Even if you try to run, your party's not gonna have anything to do with that. I think the best thing to do with this combat system is to have a party composed completely of tanks who can take the damage that you're going to get whether you plan otherwise or not. The balance is a lot better than I remembered it. I always play thieves and, in a true rarity for RPGs, was finally able to create a viable, successful thief character. Right now I have a techie (gunslinger) thief, which is working out great, and some time down the road I might do a playthrough with a mage-thief maybe. Or maybe some sort of super-evil dude for a change, or maybe a Gnomish mechanic, or maybe.... Despite the combat system, this game gets 5 stars from me. The rest of it is that good. The sheer amount of quests and ethical choices, the awesome plot, and the insanely customizable characters make playing this game an absolute necessity. Even with its flaws, I'd probably buy it at $50 today. At $6, it's almost criminally inexpensive!

This was one of my first real RPG games I played. So for me it comes with a metric ton of nostalgia, so take this review knowing that. I don't remember the exact year I played it first, but it was some time between 2003 and 2004. I was amazed by how it looks, the great stories told, the war between magic and technology, corrupt governors and disgraceful guard captains. I never played Diablo or Fallout games from that period, so all my love went into Arcanum. I played the original game in almost every possible way replaying it for more than 20 times. I think I knew every way to finish quests, get followers and complete the game. Knowing all that I now understand that game is not perfect, there are bugs, glitches and weird things, but that doesn't take anything away from it. Yeah, sometimes you get stuck on rocks or behind a tree, but an extra click and you're on the way forward again. This game is not for everyone. This game is for people who appreciate games which are not perfect and like them.

I bougth it 15 years ago.... i spent several hours playing this game.. now i find it again!!! so its downloading... even if this game is very old.. y cant wait to play it again!!!!!

Arrgh this game. I played it alot when it came out and have to say it wasn't one of the best RPG experiances around at the time. For one thing the Graphics. They're terrible, not even good by the standards of the time (this was released after BGII, which had much nicer graphics). I get the point that a game shouldn't be just about graphics, but the problem is it just makes the world look grainy and uninteresting. Hell even the original Syndicate looked better, this game really does look like it's been rerendered through a C64 filter or something. Which is a shame because the scale and scope of the story is breathtaking. There is literally tonnes to do and see, oodles of followers and quests. The story is also clever and extremely well woven into the world, with in some cases incredible amounts of speech options (of an IWDII level I'd say). But the problem is that to get through to this you have to face the Graphics and the dismal combat system. Aside from the fact graphically it looks awful, the pacings way too fast and things acrue wear and tear too quickly. I get it that maybe they were focusing on other area's of the game, but if that's the case why not tone down the level of combat needed? about 75% of this game is still hack and slash dungeon trawl, so why neglect one of the key area's of the game? Lastly the skill system. I can see what they were trying to achieve, but the way it's executed was just too messy. The scope is awesome, but given the terrible combat all the variables don't really add up to anything noticable. That said if you want to be an intellectual ogre (though with numerous sacrifices in other area's) go for it. Despite it's myriad flaws, there is a game underneath which is just about playable (barring the odd broken quest). So if you can endure all that there is a rewarding experiance, but I think to be honest there are comparible 2d isometric RPG's that offer as good an experiance without having to force a camel through the eye of a needle.