Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

I made a character and progressed a little bit, before encountering a problem with bandits blocking a bridge. A walkthrough confirmed that the only way to progress in good alignment was to fight these bandits. My character build stood no chance at defeating the incredibly overpowered NPCs. One frustrated quit and some time later, I made a new, completely combat centric character. Played all the way back to the encounter. The outcome remained the same. Who knows, the game might be awesome! I'll just never find out, since I can't be arsed to reload the game 60 times until I get a lucky RNG roll. I could also restart a THIRD TIME, and build a thief character. In my mind, a great RPG should favor several builds, instead of forcing you to take specific ones right at the very beginning of the game. Fun fact: The first build I used was prebuilt into the game. Other than that, the game plays extremely sluggishly and the mouse is weirdly accelerated. The GUI was probably the biggest turn off.

This game was created by the makers of the original Fallout...and it shows. As other reviewers have noted, the game is not necessarily for everyone. The game world is huge, with tons of areas to visit and quests to complete, along with lots of character customization options. Add to that the fact that the main questline is not heavily forced on you, and you get a very open-ended game that can leave you completely lost. Also factor in the tons of bugs that you can expect from a Troika game. However, the game's rather comprehensive steampunk setting, technology-vs-magic conflict, the rich and detailed character customization options and the very well done main plot do more than enough to carry the game on their back in my opinion. So, all in all, the game deserves all five stars, especially since we're talking about one of my long-time favorite games here.

Steampunk fantasy is popular, yet people ignore this game. It maybe too similar to the first two Fallouts but only in game play. Complaining about how Arcanum similar to original fallout games is like complaining how Blood looks like Doom. If you fan of old RPGs and like steampunk stuff like Dishonored, you will enjoy it.

This was one of my favorite games when it was released! Do you want to be a Dwarven Rifleman or an elven demolitions expert? How about an half-ogre barbarian that specializes in dual pistols? There are lots of races and professions to choose from, just remember that tech and magicks don't mix! The storyline is pretty great and most of the important characters are voice acted well. If you set the difficulty to easy you can run around punching bears in half! :D There is an unofficial patch that you need to use to fix a lot of the problems that this game has and to fix the memory leak, just rename the ddraw.dll file in the install folder!

I bought it long time ago and it is still one of my favourtie Games. I fell instantly in love with the Soundtracks. It's the only game I still have on my desk. There are so many possibilities to play that game and to design your character. I can suggest the Fanpatches and a few mods.