Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Arcanum is surely not the best game out there, but it's still enjoyable. Each quest has multiple solutions (usually divided into stealthy, diplomatic, dishonest or brute force) and most character skills will influence your gameplay. The game is poorly balanced, with certain skills towering above the others and some that are utterly useless. Go for a mage on your first playthrough and get Fireball ASAP. This will allow you to breeze through the battles as you explore the game and you learn the mechanics. Add thieving skills to earn yourself a five fingers discount in the shops and you're golden. What I found more fascinating is the history of the world around the character and the ambientation. The storyline is good and it will become more intriguing as you delve into it. This is the first game that made me seriously ponder upon the possibility of joining the BBEG; I mean, his reasons are quite sound, albeit extreme... At the current price is worth giving it a try. You're not going to love this game, nor hate it. It's just a decent game that could have been much more better.

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura was the first game from Troika Games, an outfit formed by Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson, who all worked on Fallout 2 at Interplay. It's an isometric RPG set in a steampunk/fantasy world, and plays a lot like the Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, Icewind Dale 1 & 2), but with some significant differences. For example, it does not use the D&D ruleset, and the combination of magic and technology means there are interesting locations, items and different ways to solve quests.

I can't recommend this game enough but you really do need the unofficial patch. Go to Tim Cain's YouTube channel and thank him for existing.

Still a great game with immense amount of depth compared to majority of current rpgs. One thing you may want to do, is to improve the screen resolution via mods.

First I have to say, Arcanum is a terrible RPG. Turn based mode is painfully slow and tedius, and realtome mode is a macro mousebutton spamfest. If you plan to play this as a game for its' mechanics, you're in for a bad time. I'm seriously, based purely on mechanics, the game is a solid 2.5 stars out of five. So why do I give it a four then? I bought this game in boxed form on release and ever since I can't stop going back to it every year or two to try something different in the story and I inevitably run into some small tidbit of lore or side story that I don't ever recall seeing on a previous run. The universe is deep and (mostly) well-written. It's a fantastic world to explore and adventure in, going on grand quests to save the world. Or start a labor revolt! Discover horrrs beyond comprehension and be powerless to change the world for the better! Wishlist it, buy it on sale, do a run, install mods to make the game less painful, and add to choice and explore the wonderful world of Arcanum. Be a dwarf with a flamethrower, or a human wizard with a sniper rifle. (this doesn't...really work easily for in-universe reasons, but you *can* do it). Heck, buy it at full price, and then ebay yourself a second mint big box copy for a cople hundred bucks just to get a physical copy of the fantastically written manual! A++, will get killed by temporal beasts again.