Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Most people probably only remember Troika for it's TOEE release, which most thought of as a rather mediocre release. But before that, they were still fueled with the energy from their work on the game Fallout, and it shows quite well in Arcanum. Instead of picking a very generic king's-and-castle's, heart-of-Europe style game, they chose a much more intriguing setting, with an even more unique period of time: during a major industrial revolution, where technology slowly treks onward and upward, and the traditional practice of magic is trying to coexist, unsteadily. The initial look and feel of the game may seem clunky, and the combat system is rather overly-simple in its execution, especially to newcomers who've enjoyed newer RPG's and those who have played the Fallout game, but the class, style, story and role-playing elements have been defined with such polish that it could be considered a contender with most of the newer RPG's that have come out recently. The variety in the game makes it's quite open-ended, and though the game does not have an exact class system, the lack of it proves to be quite beneficial, allowing you to really define your character in many different aspects. (A friend and I got a real kick out of reading the descriptions for the Backgrounds you can select. For instance, look up "Pyromaniac.") The story unfolds with a nice lingering depth, and a good deal of mystery, as you start out surviving an confronted by a befuddled monk named Virgil, with nothing but a mysterious ornate ring, and a cryptic message: Find the boy. From there its a very open adventure, with practically the whole of Arcanum to play in. Be prepared, though, as the game CAN and WILL present some tough fights, and what goes into your character can effect how well certain fights turn out, or if a fight is inevitable or not. Although an issue, being that with the freedom to develop your character initially may make the game a bit harder or a bit easier depending on your choices; it rarely hinders the game, and can present unique opportunities, even at the very beginning of the game. All-in-all, if you must have at least one RPG in your collection, Arcanum is definitely one to consider.

If you know anything about Troika's portfolio of work, you've come to expect two things from their games. First, that they will be crippled by a number of bugs ranging from the mildly annoying to game-breakingly problematic, and secondly, that the game will be an impressive, endlessly enjoyable romp through an immersive, atmospheric fantasy world, in spite of it's technical issues. If you are able to forgive (or at least put up with) the clumsy interface (one that almost makes Planescape: Torment's UI look intuitive by comparison), the glaring balance issues (mostly related to combat), and the somewhat lackluster tileset, you will find a staggeringly open-ended game that takes the cliche gaming themes of 'dungeons and dragons' that we've come to know and love and pairs them with a humorous, mature, and masterfully written narrative that turns the entire concept of a 'save the world from a terrible evil' dungeon crawl on it's head. The bare bones of the story is a fairly typical 'hero is thrust into a conflict between eternally-battling cosmic forces' trope, but the real meat of the plot comes from the staggering amount of sidequests that flesh out the Arcanum universe. During your adventure, you'll wrestle with complex ideas regarding the problems and benefits of over-industrialization and social inequality in a world inhabited by races as diverse as they are are fundamentally similar Whatever sort of character you like to play as, whether it be a kindly, sword and shield-wielding knight, a haughty and head-strong magician, a cunning, manipulative, pistol-slinging thief, or even a bumbling ogre who speaks only in grunts, the game has a path custom-tailored to your liking. This, coupled with how staggeringly large the game's world actually is, the game's 'replayability' is virtually infinite. I play through Arcanum at least once a year and find myself discovering something new each time. I could not recommend it more for someone who enjoyed games like Fallout or Planescape: Torment and wished there more games were made in that general direction. It's worth nothing that, as with all Troika products, there are a number of fan-made 'patches' which are worth searching for, as they greatly improve the game's stability by several orders of magnitude.

Yes, I'm biased towards old school RPGs, and this is essentially the best one, along with Baldur's Gate II. It has character creation without classes, many playable races, reactions to your actions (although not too much, mind you), more stat modifier than you can shake a spreadsheet at, and just enough skills to cover everything, but not too many. It has some bad spots though. The combat is a bit clunky, but if you play turn-based, as God intended, it's fantastic. Realtime is for when you're overpowering your enemies anyway. It was fairly CPU intensive for it's time, but this is not an issue now. And some stats are slightly overpowered. Magic users that go magic only are better than those who spread out their points, and technical skills are only worth their investment in XP when you combine them with other skills, meaning that the technologist and the mage-warrior type of builds aren't very useful. If you can survive that, and don't mind isometric graphics (why would you?), you'll find plenty to fascinate you here. The story is wonderful, with just enough twists and turns to make you enjoy it. The setting is fantastic and actually does capture quite a few unique items of interest, and shows societies changing, old powers crumbling, new ones emerging and so on. The characters are well written too, and anyone not liking Virgil after his quest has been through has no heart. The dungeons are always interesting, and the fact that the random trash you pick up can be used to make ammunition is a neat touch. (Want to make cheap explosives? Buy some kerosene and rummage around in the rubbish bins to get molotovs. Can't complain about that.) Oh yeah, this game also respects different playing styles. If you like hack and slash, you'll be able to do that. Magic? Come right on in. Guns? Thieving? Social conniving? Everyone's welcome. And that makes this game fun. If you want to make a Halfling necromancer, why not? An ogre technologist? Sure. The sky's the limit, and this makes it actually worthwile to replay the game as a different type of character. Try playing through the game as an idiot once, for instance. (For those of you who wonder about the title, it's a common critisism of Fallout 3. If you know what I'm talking about and agree, you'll love this game. If not, you'll still likely love it, but at least you know where I'm coming from.)

The only reason I personally haven't downloaded this game from GoG.com yet is because I still have my copy and it is one of the few games that will work on XP, though I haven't tried Vista or Windows 7 yet. I have never played fallout so I can't say if is like fallout or not. This game gives you a great deal of freedom. You can be as evil or as good as you want but there will be repercussions regardless of what you do. Some people of course will not help you if you are too evil likewise they may not join your party if you are just good for their taste. In addition to how good or bad you want to be there is also how tech or magic you want to be. The more tech you are the less magic will effect you, for good or for ill just as tech will stop working the more magic you become. If you are one of those people who likes playing these kind of games for the story and exploring the world this is about as good as it gets. The entire world is open to you, you can go almost anywhere at any time. The game's character creation system offers a good deal of depth I haven't seen in a lot of games recently. Not only do you get to mess with your starting skills and attributes but you can also select a back ground which gives you even more depth. Now for the bad stuff. There are a number of noob traps in the game that can easily kill you or get you stuck if your not watching for them, like the wolves just outside the crash sight. It is also possible that you might create a character that is simply not suited to a particular part of the game. Probably the worse part of it all is the leveling system. Like most games you get points with each level that you can spend on...whatever problem is there is a lot of 'whatever'. In addition to 8, count them 8, basic attributes to up there is also around ten different types of skills not to mention twelve different technical disciplines and twenty schools or magic. The leveling system needs work but they do offer a way out, if you really can't get around it and still want to play. You can choose an level script which will spend your points automatically. If you like fallout, or just want to play something a bit different, check it out.

No game to this day has ever captured the feel of table-top role-playing like Arcanum. It's varied, non-linear, open world style is just awesome. Unlike modern games where there are a thousand places to go kill people, Arcanum has a fairly small world. But almost every NPC has an interesting story to tell, a fun quest to give, and atmosphere to add. Arcanum's greatest strength by far is that you can play through it in many different styles. You can kill your way through in a dozen ways: as a deft swordsman, a brutish ogre, a master of the bow; you can be a master gunsmith and craft yourself a machine gun; you can master the many schools of magic. In addition to force, nearly every quest can be solved in other ways. You can sneak past enemies and steal whatever you need. You can seduce NPC's with your beauty, or use your gilt tongue to persuade them to see your point of view. The character creation system isn't always balanced, but it has so many wonderful options. Charisma may seem like a dump stat to some, but a high score allows you to recruit additional party members. I once played through as an orc with the background "just plain ugly"- I figured how much could a low beauty score really hurt? Well, aside from constant racial slurs, merchants would charge me 5 times as much as in my last game. Sometimes people would outright attack me on the streets. The story is a bit standard at first, but before long it takes off and twists into a really epic tale. Honestly, the ending of Arcanum might be one of the most sadly beautiful in any game. Humor, philosophy, creativity, ethical dilemmas- Arcanum is really a treat for anyone looking for more than just a dungeon romp. The combat system is pretty bad though. You can switch between real-time and turn-based and exploit the game with this. Spamming molotov cocktails is an easy way to get through the game. Magic is clearly better than technology, though less rewarding. Most of the items in the game are not very interesting. There are also a good number of annoying glitches. Baldur's Gate this is not. If you just want to run through the game killing monsters and amassing treasure, this isn't the game for you. If you want to be immersed in a crazy, funny, different world, to try new things, you will LOVE it. Since getting this from GOG, I've played through the game 4 times already.