Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

If you remember old Fallouts fondly, or if you are into tech/fantasy worlds, I'd say try it out. The gameplay is sadly rather awful and character development a bit hard to figure out (and if you mess it up you can have hell of a hard time), but the multiple endings and immense world with a sense of both tragedy and black humour hovering about can be worth it. The music is awesome, the atmosphere of the Industrial revolution going all wrong and magic trying to survive is really unique, and the game has just a very different feel about it than most games of the fantasy genre. Pity the interface and combat are bad, though not entirely horrible. If you decide to try it - worth the money, I'd say - be prepared. This not the RPG of today. You die fast even to the lamest, three-legged, two-teeth wolf.

There are two things that make this game stand out: 1) A cyberpunk setting that, sadly, has been largely ditched by the rpg devs with time. Choose magic or technology as your path or try to balance both. 2) The devs - Troika games - featured people working on the Fallout series and responsible for their own Vampire: The masquerade series, famous for their originality. Result - expect Fallout-style gameplay (multiple ways to solve quests, random encounters, witty humor in dialogues and stuff that generally makes an RPG a real RPG and a not just a click-kill-loot game like Diablo) with a few Arcanum-specific twists. Not to be missed by any serious RPGamer.

My first play did not go so well, bad character creation, no chests would open, other minor issues. So I consulted game FAQS and found unofficial patches and hi-res/widescreen mods! Here you go and yes, the second play-through is going much better.

I don't understand why folks make statements like "this game is full of bugs, but also has a lot of charm" and then proceed to give it a five star rating. Probably "nostalgia points". Let me try to level with this one. Yes, I love it for nostalgic reasons--I played it way back when, but I've also played it recently. I'll keep it real here though. Too many bugs and 'awkwardness'--too many times where an NPC would get stuck somewhere because of bad path-finding and I'd have to reload. Some weird animations, from character animations to spells (e.g. most of the spell animations happen very quickly and awkardly--always a let down, but in BG series, spell casting was epic) to combat (just not up to par with other games of the same period)--I also think their art design pallete for areas (city and wilderness) wasn't as extensive as what they wanted, so artistically it doesn't feel as expansive as what I had hoped for. It's not a bad game though, I love it for reasons beyond nostalgia--a lot of great/funny writing, some very interesting and fun quests, diversity in how quests can be completed by making use of the various skill-sets and just straight up player choices with the dialog trees, narrative, setting... But it's not perfect and doesn't deserve all the five stars that it's getting. I'm going with 4.

I remember a friend lending me this game back in my Freshman year of high school. To have a game stick in your head as a fond experience for all these years is a real accomplishment. However it has some quirks as all old software does and so I'm subtracting a star because it might not run the best on other machines. The game really put forward something that was 100% unique for it's time and still is pretty unqiue in so far as I know. There are very few Steam Punk games and very few that force us to choose either magic or technology. Just that concept alone is what makes the game memorable, but then the game's characters have this loveable charm. Just going to add this here... If they ever remade this game or created a second I would gladly pay a AAA price for it.