Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Imagine bigger, better and more complex Fallout set in steampunk world. Arcanum had some bugs, the battle system was flawed (why would they go with hybrid system? why?) but it had everything to become one of the greatest games ever made. The main quest is ENORMOUS. The amount of dialogues is just gigantic. EVERY of thousands of dialogues have separate lines for different intelligence levels, different races, attitudes. Technological trees are huge, you can play completely different games depending if you are a techie or a magic character. And you'd better specialize. Playing character balanced in the middle of technology/magica line, would take a lot of fun away from the game. I wholeheately recommend the game.

This game is incredible. Fans of Planescape, Baldur's Gate, and of course Fallout will love it. The charm, music, story, rpg system in general, etc. are all unique and A+

Now why did I put a one here? Well, it's to warn people. If you want to play this game, on win 10 and modern computer, you have to read and follow a rather long and quite booring and tedious instruction thread in the forum to get the game to work. That is, a stuttering, slow and crappy version that feels like it's drudging itself from frame to frame and you would think you are trying to run the game on a 386 system. After installing fan patches, widescreen support, putting miscellaneous dll's in various folders and get it all working, the mouse cursor is still slow and choppy. The game still slow and sludgy, but hey, it started at least. This feels abandoned and not much lover from GOG into the currant version, which is sad. Really sad. The game itself is a small unpolished gem of very fun world and a solid RPG with many different routes to be taken. Character wise and game progression wise. This used to be one of my all time favourites, and I believe I will try and keep my memories intact by not trying to get his POS running and ruing my memories. If GOG would do something to make the game work better and run fluent, this is a gem worthy of the 5 star reviews. Now, it is an idea lost in a poor optimisation engine...

I bet this game is great. I created a new character and was overwhelmed by the number of choices I had available to create a character. This is kind of a game that really has something for everyone, and I think that unfortunately is why this game is completely unplayable. As soon as I finished my character creation the game kind of just stopped. I mean certain things worked, the hud showed up, but the actual stuff I was supposed to be seeing was just a black screen. Aslo mouse movements and actions had an extremely delayed reaction time during the character creation process. I don't know if the game has always been this unplayable, but I certainly can't play this in windows 10 (and the unofficial patch didn't help at all when I attempted to download it). Based on other reviews this seems pretty consistant, even the positive reviews point out that it's insanely bugged and flawed. I dunno if I just didn't install the unofficial patch correctly, or if that is bugged too, but either way I would love to actually play this game if GOG added the unofficial patch to the regular download, or if the game just actually got patched to work on modern computers. Either way this game is completely unplayable in its current state, at least on my pc.

I've always been a first-person shooter gamer, but I have occasionally delved into the RPG genre several times (specifically Dragon Age and Mass Effect, among others). That being said, Arcanum was the first traditional isometric RPG that I've played, and to say that it ate up one of my summers is a bit of an understatement. Arcanum hooks you from beginning to end and offers you a fresh experience if you've never played an RPG before or are already an RPG vet. I have played bits and pieces of the original Fallout and Planescape: Torment (but never to completion, unfortunately) enough to know that if you liked those games, you'll find something to enjoy in Arcanum. The game offers a nice variety of choices and excellent replay value with the different skill paths you can take. You can play a technology-focused character the first time and switch to a magic-focused character the second time and have a completely different but equally enjoyable experience. Want to create a character that mixes both magic and technological skills? You can do that, too, and the challenge of keeping those skills in perfect harmony is a game in and of itself. What prompted me try out this game originally was the review given by PC Gamer, where Greg Vederman stated Arcanum was "arguably better than anything in the Fallout or Diablo series". I then tried out the demo, liked it, and later bought it used at a Gamestop (I was in high school back then, cut me some slack). I have since played through it several times with different classes and mods, and it never got old. I was ecstatic to learn that it was released on GOG since it gave me a second chance in showing my support for it in a way that I didn't do the first time around when I bought it used. However, there are a few minor complaints that I have for this game. There are some areas are fairly difficult early on. This game does not necessarily scale based on the level of your character, and while this is a good thing for the most part, it also means that you can be dominated fairly easily if your character is in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are also main story quests that can punishing for low-level characters (the Black Mountain Mines is a prime example) without proper planning and preparation. Of course, the first time you play through it you wouldn't know how to prepare, and this is the same for pretty much any game out there. The graphics also seemed outdated, even at the time, but it never really bothered me, and if you can't handle outdated graphics, then you probably wouldn't be on GOG anyway. Bottom line, if you liked any of the Fallout games (even the 3rd one), then you owe it to yourself to try out Arcanum. The story is engaging, the replay value is staggeringly high, and the majority of the side quests are varied and interesting. If you're looking for a game to sink hundreds of hours into, you have found it.