Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

I really wanted to like this game. I liked the setting, the ambiance, the music, the character portraits (the best I have ever seen) and what little I could grasp of the story before I realized that I had wasted about 10 hours of my life trying to master an unbalanced, frustrating, counter intuitive, graphically ugly, repetitive and utterly boring turd of a game. I'm sorry. I'm a full blown retro gamer, but nostalgia can not redeem this mess.

Skiddily

Why they let you be a gunslinger, why? Every RPG I play I stick with the mage class. This one I noticed you could use guns! How awesome! How many medieval fantasy RPGs let you use guns? So, I choose to use guns. Terrible mistake. Being a gunslinger in this game is terrible horrible. You'll waste ALL your money buying bullets which you'll lose in around 5 enemies. Even if you learn how to craft bullets, it's not enough! Nothing will stop the money sinking. And when the money is gone forever.... game over. The irony is that by looking around the web I discovered that being a mage in this game is god-mode. Now I'm too pissed with all the hours wasted to start again. If someone actually read this, I hope you cast your vote, for good or for bad.

The story is probably really good. The developers clearly put tons of thought into the game world, because there are tons of unique backgrounds. Character creation was so detailed that I was smiling with joy when I was making my character. However, that joy was crushed when I started playing. There are severe balance issues that make the game literally unplayable. The skill system is clunky and makes no sense, and pretty much any character you make sucks too hard to live more than 5 minutes. You can't play the character you want to play, essentially. This is one of those games that kills you arbitrarily. You will spend more time on the character creation screen desperately trying to make a character that can survive than you will actually trying to survive with that character. A good role-playing doesn't punch the player in the balls for exercising free will. It's hard to be immersed in the game world and take the game seriously when you have to min/max or use "uber meta" or die after 30 seconds. It sort of defeats the whole purpose and appeal of role-playing games. To me, this game is a hack n' slash. It is Diablo 3.

It's true! This game unlocks some sweet nostalgia for me. It is a wonderful game. A must play.