Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

First of all, disclaimer: This is in the running for my favorite game of all time. I will gush a bit in this review, but I'll try to be helpful. Arcanum is one of the most flexible games of its kind. It's open world, both in the sense that there's a big field where you can run around doing sidequests if you want to and in the much more enjoyable sense that your character can make decision about how you want to shape the world and see the setting respond to those decisions. Character creation is incredibly flexible, with all skills and abilities open to all characters (though magic and technology have an interesting tug-of-war going on). Your stats have definite, visible impacts on how the game world responds to you (having a low intelligence in particular makes for a hilarious game, though it's not a good choice for your first playthrough). With one exception, the quests and encounters are beautifully written. Your companions have opinions and agendas of their own (though their decisionmaking is mostly limited to "stay" or "go"). The game's various factions, companies, prominent citizens, and farmers will remember past interactions with you. Best of all, each objective you have allows for multiple coherent solutions. It's that rare game where you can encounter an enemy and fight them, join them, hire them, or engage them in philosophical debate, and any one of those routes can lead to a win. That being said, the interface is, not to put too fine a point on it, almost two decades old as of 2019. You will feel that clunkiness, as other reviewers have said. If you have played any isometric game from this time period and enjoyed it despite its age, though, you will definitely love Arcanum.

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This game was and is the gold standard for small unit rpg. The fact that your stats matter out in the world in interactions is something that still hasn't been done to such a level decades later and that is a lose to the community. The only game in recent time that is any threat to this one is Kingmaker..and yes both have their bugs and poor decisions..and stil I, on of the harshest critics of gmaes over the years, rate them both highly. Why? Because, while they can and should be improved, what they did right is to go above and beyond in depth and feel. This genre is about exploration and it is about character development..games that do that poorly, whatever they do well, are failures to this genre. Few other games come close.

I played this game for the first time this year. I didn't grow up with old cRPGs but I eventually fell in love with the genre, after playing Fallout 1/2. This game is really old and outdated, it caused my computer (I7-10th gen and RTX 2070) to brick. I lost 2 save files and had to redo 10 hours of gameplay. You would think that this would make me quit, right? Nope replay it and still loved it, this game is a gem and in some aspects a masterpiece. The best parts about this game is the story and the world building, it may seem like a run of the mill fantasy game but there is a lot more than that here. The magic is really unique and the tech class is outright impressive for a 20 year old game. I only played in turned based mode and the game was much more balanced, to keep in mind which mode you should stick to, since real time is broken beyond measure. Overall, this game is probably my favorite cRPG and really goes to show that despite the bugs and bad combat, this game still shines. Wish we could get a remaster or something to fix the problems, but other than that I definitely would recommend this game as someone who isn't just blinded by nostalgia.

This is a remarkable game, and it is true that it has many a flaw. I highly recommend you seek out the fan patch, as it fixes a lot of these problems and lets you really enjoy the game for what it is. Troika's developers were responsible for some of the greatest RPGs ever made (Vampire bloodlines, Fallout New Vegas) and you can see a lot of those elements in Arcanum as well.