Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Troika Studies may have passed on, but in their time on this Earth they created a selection of the finest RPG's to grace the PC, and Arcanum is no exception to this. A hugely atmospheric, open-ended and ambitious (read: bugged) title, Arcanum's biggest asset is that it does something so few games today do: It acknowledges the player has a brain. Complex (but not inaccessible) gameplay mechanics, vast player customisation, a fairly adult plot and enough stat-tinkering to satisfy even the most hardcore, OCD-suffering gamer ensured that Arcanum would never become more than a cult classic. The game itself places you in what initially may appear to be the standard RPG fare of Tolkienesque elves and orcs, but it soon becomes apparent the game is a lot cleverer than that. The world is currently undergoing a cultural revolution and the ways of magic are being pushed aside by the might of technology, creating a great mismatched land of enchanted daggers and potions sitting uneasily with stream trains and gatling guns. As the player, you are given a very real choice as to not only the typical good/evil alignment, but also to your stance on the tech/magic divide. You can just as easily be an elven water mage as you can a dwarven gunslinger. Ultimately, Arcanum does expect a degree of commitment and *gasp* intelligence from the player to be enjoyed, but persevere and the pseudo-Victorian world will pull you in and you wont want to leave this bleakly beautiful classic until the fate of Arcanum has been decided. And then you will want to start again as a new character. A gnome gambler with a love for high explosives? Why not?

Now in 2019 this game works on Win10 without any problems and without any need for fan patches or workaournds. But that does not make the game better. Nobody doubts that the combat is an unbalanced mess that does neither require skill nor tactics. And there is no other gameplay mechanic that would make this game a good game. Quest are often fetch quests and dungeons are only there for combat without riddles or puzzles. There is maybe a good story that can be explored by different character builds, but even that story is hidden behind a mess of user interface. Characters look almost all the same. And their names are only displayed when one initiates a conversation, what makes it a chore to find those characters which are worth talking too. So the game might have a good story which can be explored by different character builds, but one has to work too hard for the story to unfold.

I bought Arcanum maybe 4 years ago and have never been able to get it running smoothly enough to play until recently. It's hyped up everywhere as one of the best CRPGs ever, so it was painful to know that I had it in my collection, but still couldn't get through it due to loads of frame rate and crashing problems. So, now that I've run it on Windows 10 and on Linux through WINE without those problems, what did I get? Not a particularly good game, unfortunately. The world building and writing all seem great, to start off on a positive. Nothing about this game seems poorly written. The music is also very nice and helps to get you into the atmosphere of the game. Okay, so maybe those are the only two good things I can say about the game - on to the problems. Character building is robust, yet poorly paced. There are too many stats that don't seem to be well-balanced with how few (1 or 2 per level) character points you receive for progression. I'm butting up against the word limit here, so I can't elaborate too much. Suffice to say, my first character struggled through the first third of the game and then suddenly became overwhelmingly powerful and the game just became too easy thereafter. To keep on about combat, a few mechanical issues I disliked. Enemy levels just don't make sense. What should be harder - a lvl 25 ore golem or four lvl 3 wolves? I had my lvl 15 party entirely wiped by the latter and breezed through the former. I wrote down a number of these examples and they are all equally nonsensical. I also dislike that there are dungeons that took HOURS to crawl through, only to find a bed, that I can't sleep in. Why, when there are no threats, can I not rest like in other CRPGs like the Infinity Engine games or Fallout? This just pads out the time spent per dungeon and forces me into boring backtracking. Ultimately, I made it about halfway through the campaign and just couldn't force myself to finish. 20 hrs. is plenty to spend with this below-average game.

Back in 2002 Arcanum was one of the games I wanted to buy but lacked the money. Fast forward to today I've been looking for a retro RPG experience and this game poped up. Having played the game for lots of hours I have the following observations: Story - This is where Arcanum shines. The story is well written, sub-quests never feel tedious and from the very first second you jump in the game the story and narrative gets you hooked. Gameplay - Too much travelling. Imbalanced enemy placement. There are areas where you enter as level 3 with a couple L1-3 enemies and suddendly there's a level 25 onewithout any context. This leads to revisiting multiple areas just to make a bit of a progress. Rinse and repeat. Companion AI - Good luck with that. Get them good equipment and they will steamroll regular random encounters. In crucial / challenging fights however all shortcomings appear. No healing when needed, no logic behind target prioritization random back and forth movement instead of attacking are a few of the most glaring issues I've observed. Combat - Turn based or Real time, combat in this game is bad. From the companion AI to enemy placement to terrible pathfinding when in combat this aspect of the game is hands down the worst. Overall. don't waste your money on this one. Try Fallout or Planescape Torment if you have that old school itch you need to scratch.

If you are in RP games because of 'RP' part - the possibility to create an unique character with any kind of background you like, to play it in the world that is rich in details and based on strong narrative, to embrace unique steam-punk atmosphere and *be* the one that came down in flames, you should buy and play Arcanum. If you hate so called rpg's where you can do quests only in the way creators thought of, and have no freedom to improvise, you should play Arcanum - because every quest can be done in more ways that you can imagine. Need a ship? Do a quest for dead pirate, or kill the dead pirate, or just buy it, or gamble for it, or steal it or... Get the picture? If you like strong narrative and unique quests that are written as well as any good book, by all means, get and go play Arcanum. On the other hand, if you live for next-gen graphics, just do the world a favor and go away from this excellent website :P