Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Yes the creators of this is certainly the same that co created Fallout. But they fall deep on this one. The start is awesome and the story is for sure fine, but where the nuke really hits home is the AWEFULL balancing of this game. Playing a gunslinger is next to impossible and any other combat than fist or hand to hand is a very painful experience since someone got that great idea that you get XP per hit?!?!?. And yes I am old enough to remember the orginial release and frustrations. Do not believe any who gives much praise to this game - it's rushed out the door to save a company that went broke quite fast after the release of the game. Have fun with many other games :)

Good story...boring combat..aweful random number generator...way too hard at the beginning...way too easy at the end. Save your money on this one.

...and Arcanum proves it. Even the most compelling concepts get ruined by their slipshod work

... you can't delete on your own. Help, I really wanted to like this title. I bought this game in a nice carton version when it first came out, but it was unplayable. Recently I bought the gog version and under Win 10 64 BIT it worked the first time. I must admit that I tried several times to get into the predecessor fallout games, but without success. I hated the boring and time consuming turn based combat of both first fallout games. In Arcanum you have the possibility to use a real time option for the combat with the result that the combat in real time is totally fast, flat and uninteresting. The music is nice but due to the permanent loop absolutely nerving after hearing it dozens of time therefore you will hate this music fast. The 2D art style and models are drawn very nice, I like these old graphics. I played until level 16 and solved a lot of quests but all the time I felt lost in this world. You will have to run around endlessly, speak to each person and really don't know what to do. The cities are confusingly big especially Tarant. To run from one corner to the other takes as much fun as filling out the annual tax declaration. All the time I had the feeling that the game will need a few more time to ignite but it didn't. Yes, some turns in the story were funny, but on the the other hand not that exceptional in my point of view. Playing Arcanum I always had in mind what the hell am I doing here? What did I make wrong with arcanum or these fallout games which everybody find ingenious?

I wanted to enjoy this game, I really did. I love steampunk, and the idea of a D&D style Steampunk game was right up my alley. Unfortunately, the game is only designed to be played with their game style, there are too many opportunities to get softlocked because of a decision you made (even as early as your character creation). After repeated attempts to get further than the first city, I gave it up as a bad job.